Work, Travel, and Baseball

I completed my first draft of the Fall-Winter issue of Tower Topics and sent it to my proofreaders.  I received their edits and I am now working hard to make changes to the publication before sending it to the printer.  Hopefully it will hit mailboxes in one month.  It is always such a big project to work on, I am glad that it is only three times a year.

Last Friday I headed out for a trip to promote monastic vocations and establish a few contacts.  I was invited to celebrate Mass for the college students at the Newman Center at St. John the Evangelist on the campus of Oklahoma State University.  I went to Oklahoma State for two years before deciding to enter seminary, so it was a bit of a Homecoming for me.  That was rather fitting, since it was their Homecoming weekend.  No one does Homecoming like Oklahoma State.  The city was bouncing, with the highways into town filled with cars.  In the evening during the “Walkaround,” the fraternities build elaborate house decorations in a Homecoming tradition and competition.  Each fraternity is paired up with a sorority.  The streets were flooded with people at the Walkaround.  I know Homecoming well, because during my time at Oklahoma State as a student, I lived in a fraternity house and spent much time working on the house decorations.  Since then, they have only become more elaborate.

Above:  The new football training facility (on game day).

Above:  Lambda Chi Alpha’s Homecoming Decoration (my former house)
Below:  Phi Gamma Delta, I think they won 1st place this year.

Sunday evening I had Mass for the students.  It is a very vibrant Catholic population.  I was able to visit with the students and talk about monastic life during the dinner that they have every Sunday after Mass.

Monday morning I headed to Tulsa to have Mass at the University of Tulsa.  Fr. Kerry Wakulich is the chaplain at the St. Philip Neri Center.  He is my classmate from Conception Seminary College.  He is a very outgoing and popular priest who has connections everywhere thanks to his incredibly extraverted personality.  It was great to be able to visit and catch up with Fr. Kerry and pick his brain about vocations.  He organized a lunch for me to meet with several men from his discernment group.

Below:  Fr. Kerry and I pose with cutout of Pope Francis.  Fr. Kerry is not shaving for the month of October as a pro-life cause, calling it “Beards for Babies.”  We gave him a hard time because his beard is entirely gray (he is a little older than me).

Many of the monks have been keeping up with the Kansas City Royals in the World Series.  It has been a very exciting postseason.  However, with last night’s game 7, only one team would be able to win it all.  Unfortunately, it was not our beloved Royals.  They were still certainly an exciting team to watch and showed a lot of class.  We are proud of our team!

Above:  Flying monk- Br. Maximilian jumps for what we had hoped would be a World Series victory picture.  Nevertheless, I think it’s a fun picture and still recognizes an awesome baseball season.

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