Saturday, January 02, 2010

Happy New Year!

I just wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a very happy and blessed new year. We're entering the 7th year of blogging and I'm hoping to be more diligent about posting than I was last year. Now that I have a semester of teaching just about tucked under my belt, I'm hoping to have a little bit more time for other pursuits.

One area that I know I will be blogging about more often is the issue of vocation. Not only vocation to the religious life or to the priesthood but also vocation as applied to what each of us is being invited into as disciples. I fear that sometimes the word vocation is used in a very limited sense. I should like to reflect in this "Year of the Priest" more broadly on the theme of vocation and think through how each of us is being called.

Mor of that, though, later.

I have to give a special shot out to my uncle Jack Duns. Uncle Jack, Aunt Nancy, and my cousin Melissa Duns were over to the house on Christmas Eve and complained that I did not mention them frequently, if ever, on the blog. I have only now to wait for them to email me the picture we took last week and I'll include that, so they might be immortalized forever on the pages of this blog.

As our Christmas vacation ends at midnight on Sunday but, for me, it's totally over. I'll spend most of today writing two final exams and preparing study guides. Tomorrow I'll write a third exam and do preparation for the entire week. In addition to teaching this week, I'm going to be directing a retreat at Loyola House, the Jesuit novitiate in Berkley, Michigan, for men who are discerning their vocations.

So as we embark upon a new decade, please be assured of my prayers. I ask for your prayerful support, too. Further still, I ask your special prayers for the novices of the Detroit, Chicago, and Wisconsin provinces who will begin the 30-day Spiritual Exercises next week. Pray, too, that we all might come to know more clearly just what it is that God is inviting us into, that we might know and name our desires and respond to God's invitation freely and joyfully.

1 comment:

Einar said...

Happy New Year Ryan! I will be praying for you and your students!

Are you planning to post many more whistle tutorials?

Flute playing priest finds YouTube fame