A Regular Sunday

This weekend is our first “regular” Sunday since the beginning of the semester. As I recognized this for myself, I realized I haven’t written about a typical Sunday is about for the community here.

Sunday in the life of the Christian should be a day set apart. We celebrate the Lord’s Day on Sunday. Catholic attend Mass and should set aside the whole day for Sabbath – for rest, family, prayer and fellowship. The reality of our lives of late is that this is harder and harder for many of us to do. That’s a topic for another post.

The Seminary community sets Sunday aside too. It has a different rhythm so that this day may be different than the others; that this day may be a time to pray, reflect, renew and grow away from the weekly schedule of classes, meetings, etc.

Here’s an overview of our Sundays….
9:00 A.M. – Morning Prayer. We pray Morning Prayer every morning we are here. On
Sundays, we start a little later.
10/10:30 A.M. – Conference. Each Sunday, the Rector, Vice Rector or Spiritual Director hold a conference. Today, for example, Fr. Peter led the final Rector’s Conference for the Spring Semester. One of the ideas, I think, is to listen to that and with the time built into the day reflect on the main ideas of the conference. Fr. Peter spoke about charity and love today and gave us much to think about.
11:30 A.M. – Mass. This community Mass is different from our regular daily liturgy. First, only seminarians attend the Sunday liturgy. There is more singing, the homily is directed primarily to the seminarians and we work to plan and minister throughout the Liturgy. We also dress in cassock and surplice for Sunday liturgy.
12:30 P.M. – Lunch – enough said!
1:00 – 5:00 P.M. – Free time. This is a time to catch up on school work, enjoy the outdoors, catch up with some friends, or take a break for a few hours. Today, for example, I did some school work outside as the weather was wonderful. The picture above shows my outdoor view today.
5:00 P.M. – Evening Prayer. Evening Prayer on Sundays is more formal. We process in with the Paschal Candle and sing all of the psalms and canticles. A seminarian preaches at Sunday Evening Prayer which is also a great opportunity for both the seminarian and the community. Tonight, Dwayne Davis preached about the promise of hope and how we must seek that out in our lives.
5:30 P.M. – Social. After Evening Prayer, we gather in the Faculty Lounge for a Sunday Social. This is a chance to catch up with one another, talk about our weekends and even look forward to the week ahead.
6:00 P.M. – Dinner. We gather for a formal dinner on Sunday nights. An “alley” sets up and serves the meal. Tonight, my alley, 3-B, set up and serve. The dinner is a little fancier, tablecloths, etc. but the community is still the same. These last two events can seem out of place at times, I admit that. Yet, it helps to highlight the significance of Sunday dinner and also is probably good preparation for many a parish social and/or dinner in the future.
7:00 P.M - ???. Free Time. Here again is some time to catch up, finish up some class work, take a walk, or even updates one’s blog (:)) as I’m doing right now.

So the Sunday pace is different and I realized missed a bit. Between speaking in parishes, guests here for Palm Sunday and our breaks, this is our first “regular” Sunday since early February. It is good to have some of that rhythm back.

Have a great week!