This continues a series of entries that describes the time when I first entered seminary in the Fall of 2006.

I know that this is going to sound dumb to some, but one of the things I had an issue with when I went to seminary is that I would be going back to a twin bed.  I’m 34 years old and downgrading to a twin bed – it might be YEARS before I ever sleep in at least a full size mattress again, to live again like that group of people commonly referred to as “grown-ups.”

There may be some people out there thinking, “Why would YOU need a double bed? (heh heh heh)”  Well, I know people who have no hope of scoring in this decade and yet have at least a full size bed, so shut up.

After I finished my years of volunteering out west a few years ago, I was sleeping in the same bed I grew up in: a twin.  Because that’s the time I had started wrestling with feelings about religious life, I felt my life was in a kind of limbo and I was reluctant to make any big purchases I would have to dump in a year or two anyway.  Eventually, during one of the frequent times when I thought—thought—that I was winning the debate against God as to whether or not priesthood was in the cards, I decided to buy a full-size mattress; it was a lower-end model (just in case) but full size nonetheless.  Of course the salesclerk at the store after learning how much I was looking to spend said, with a raised eyebrow and a smirk on her face, that it was a good bed to buy if I was just going into college.  I still fantasize about meeting her sometime in the future when she is gravely ill and denying her last rites.

After our visit to the New York house, we head back to the retreat center in Oak Ridge, New Jersey where we are staying.  And although I am …

This continues a series of entries that describes the time when I first entered seminary in the Fall of 2006.

It’s probably appropriate that when I crawled downstairs during the early morning hours of Good Friday in April 2006, Jerry MacGuire was on.  I’ve never known how quite to describe preceding two hours; some people might call it “metanoia” (a word I had never even heard before until recently), others just a straight conversion experience.  For me, the only language I have been able to come up with to describe what was going on within me is taking the decision of Tom Cruise’s character to write a mission statement, Kevin Costner’s hearing of a voice in the cornfield, and then pressing the “puree.”  Except at the end of this movie, I realized that the time had come to finally join the priesthood.  This was opposed to shacking up with Renee Zellweger or building a baseball field, two options that actually would have ranked higher on my list.

As with all things in life, this particular evening did not happen in a vacuum; I had been experiencing taps on the shoulder about religious life for roughly ten years before my sleepless night, but effective guideposts for discernment during those previous ten years had been few and far between for me. Most stories I encountered fell into one of two categories. The first involved people who always wanted to be a priest and grew up playing with “Lives of the Saints” action figures. The second category usually featured somebody waking up one morning laying face down in a pool of his own vomit next to “Circus Circus” on the Las Vegas strip, suddenly realizing he needed Jesus.  I fell into neither category. On the one hand, my action figures growing up usually featured light sabers, not rosary beads. On the other hand, I never lost my soul in Las Vegas… only $500.

It’s not as if popular culture understands the process of discernment either. Dr. Phil doesn’t devote a lot of programming to people hearing THE VOICE OF GOD, and when he does aluminum …

This is the first in a series of entries that describes the time when I first entered seminary in September of 2006.

“Now I know that rose trees never grow in New York City…”

I find myself standing in front of the Carousel in Central Park in part because of a sleepless night six months ago; it was a sleepless night in which I heard THE VOICE OF GOD telling me that it was (finally) time to enter seminary. I know, I know; some of you might be asking how I knew that it really was THE VOICE OF GOD telling me that it was time to quit my job as a web developer, sell my house, and eventually have a very complicated conversation with Marie. Even if the fact that this night happened on Holy Thursday is merely a coincidence, I just ask you to assume right now that THE VOICE OF GOD was indeed speaking to me… and in return I promise not to suggest that unless one million dollars is raised for my university, I will be “called home.” Because what is more important than any personal need for head ware made out of Reynolds Wrap is the fact that I am stunned to be back at the Carousel in Central Park starting my first year in a religious community… and not going ring-shopping.

“Seminary” is actually in Washington, DC, but we are now on the first stop of a three-week road trip to visit other parishes of my new community, the Paulist Fathers. First stop: St. Paul the Apostle, the Paulist mother house located two blocks form Columbus Circle in mid-town Manhattan. The second largest Catholic Church in New York City, it is a gorgeous building dating back to the 1870s. It’s where the founder of the Paulists, former New England Transcendentalist Isaac Hecker, is buried. But it’s really known for being the place where Regis Philbin was baptized.

However I have not yet adjusted to spending every waking moment in a building with …

From time to time, I will be including homilies I am currently giving at my pastoral assignment in Austin.  Below is the one I gave today to commemorate the Feast Day of Martin of Tours as well as Veterans Day.

91 years ago in 1918, on the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month,” a cessation of hostilities was signed between the Allies of the Western front and Germany, thus ending World War One. The War at the time, was known as the “War to end All Wars” because it was one of the deadliest conflicts in history… it was so bad that the citizens of the world said at the time that war was such an atrocity that it could not ever be allowed to happen again.

Perhaps coincidentally, November 11 is also the day we celebrate the Feast of Martin of Tours.   Born in the early 300s, his father was a Roman Soldier and he was named after Mars, the God of War.   He eventually became a soldier as well, but then early in life he had a conversation experience in which he maintains that he encountered Christ in the appearance of a beggar.  Soon after this experience, he determined that his faith prohibited him from fighting, saying, “I am a soldier of Christ. I cannot fight.”

One of the reasons we remember Martin of Pours is because his life represents a transition from a condition of war, to a condition of peace.  And after World War One ended, President Woodrow Wilson establish November 11 as a national holiday to honor a day in which a similar transition from condition of war to a condition of peace was made: Armistice Day.  The day in America would eventually become known, of course, as Veterans Day in order to honor and thank all of those who have served our country in the armed forces, in order to honor all of those who put themselves in harms way to preserve our safety and our freedom.

The freedom and the safety we have received from these men and women as well as their …

I have never technically been a New Yorker.  Even though my parents both grew up in Brooklyn and I grew up in Northern New Jersey—the half of the Garden State that roots for the Yankees and knew Al Roker long before he moved downstairs to the Today Show—full membership into the Big Apple was always for me a distant beacon that loomed past the horizon… much like Karl Rahner’s description of the experience of God.  For me, it was not until I would be required to memorize subway routes in order to plan a regular morning commute could ever I hope to become a part of the club that understood Seinfeld on a deeper level.

But on a sunny morning this past May, I woke up to car horns and the magical smells of the breakfast cart five stories below… yes, I find ham and egg sandwiches magical.  Later in the day I asked three different guys which place in the neighborhood had the best thin-crust pizza… and got five different answers.  On the way to suggestion number four, I passed by a bar in which the Yankees were playing.  Do you have any idea how long it has been since I have lived in a city that roots for the Yankees?  Answer: too long. And all of this “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” was happening in my new mid-town Manhattan address: St. Paul the Apostle.

At this writing, I am at the halfway point of my formation towards priesthood: three down, three to go.  In the previous three years with the Paulists I have shopped in independent record stores in Berkeley, crossed the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, eaten gelato in front of the Pantheon in Rome, and visited Graceland.  In between these adventures I have been praying, studying, and discerning what the life of a priest might mean for me.  And the last two words of the previous sentence were added intentionally: “for me.”

There has been a charmed aspect of “unreality” in my formation thus far; an unreality I have certainly enjoyed but on some …