In late November we celebrated the American holiday of Thanksgiving at the North American College.
It’s quite a charming holiday: from what I can tell, for most Americans it is comparable to Christmas in being a time for family, and the fact that it is generally not as commercialised as Christmas, making it, for many, the favourite holiday of the year.
Its strong focus on family means that it is often the time when students at the NAC feel the most homesick, and to help compensate for this the NAC always celebrates Thanksgiving with considerable vigour, spread over several days.
Thanksgiving Thursday begins with a big breakfast on each of the halls of the college, peaks with a grand feast at lunchtime (together with many other Americans in Rome), then winds down in the evening with the house watching some classic movie. On the Friday evening the men gather to prepare a big communal banquet for themselves as a class.
The Saturday evening features the New Man and Old Man shows, each including over an hour of skits, videos and music.
Finally, the Sunday climaxes with the annual “Spaghetti Bowl”, an American football match between the New Men and the Old Men. The series of events amount to a kind of rite-of-passage for the NAC New Men, after which we are seen as well and truly part of the house. My own involvement was heightened by the fact that I had been elected director of the New Man Show by my classmates, which became an increasingly sizeable task as the show approached.
St Therese of Lisieux once said that if the only prayer we ever said was “thank you”, that would suffice. For myself, now that I have had a chance to catch up from the chaos of the Thanksgiving weekend, I too have been able to reflect upon what I am truly grateful for.
Whilst I am certainly in no position to complain about the wonderful opportunity that I have to study here in Rome, the distance from friends and loved ones back in Perth does nonetheless make it challenging at times.
To this end, the thing I have felt the most grateful for during my time here thus far is without doubt my fellow seminarians, particularly my fellow New Men.
There is a wonderful sense of brotherhood amongst the guys here. Obviously I felt this at St Charles’ Seminary in Perth too, but now being away from friends and family it is all the more palpable. Directing the New Man Show gave me a unique insight into this dynamic: as the preparations unfolded, I was particularly struck by the atmosphere of charity and prayerful enthusiasm that permeated proceedings in a way unlike those of other large projects in which I have been involved.
Combined with the New Man banquet and the Spaghetti Bowl, the show served to sow fine bonds of fraternal unity amongst the class and provided a concrete opportunity to thank the house for the remarkably warm welcome we have received during our opening months here at the NAC.
Strangely enough, this sense of brotherhood also strikes me during the occasional times of extended silence we have here (retreats, days of recollection and so on).
I take great consolation from training alongside such fine people, some of whom have walked away from considerable wealth, property and promising careers to be here. It is this sense of common purpose – the irresistible call we share to give up one’s life for a greater good, and of being prepared together to be sent out into potentially unfriendly waters that draws us together into an uncommon sense of union that is very much like an adopted family.
On the rare occasions when one of our number leaves the seminary, there is always a pervading sadness around the house for a few days, as though we have lost a brother.
And so, with the show behind me and the winter break upon us I am able to refocus on studies, learning Italian, prayer, etc. Back home Christmas and New Year always accompany the end of a school year, so it is strange here to have them come up seemingly arbitrarily in the latter half of our first semester.
Perhaps due to the late-Summer heat, many European universities only commence the school year in early October, hence our first semester exams do not begin until late January. We get a couple of weeks off over Christmas and New Year during which I am staying in the Belgian town of Leuven (there is another American College there and we often swap rooms, so-to-speak, during our respective holidays).
My best wishes to you all. I’ll leave you with a photo taken the afternoon our Christmas break began when, for only the second time in the last 20 years, it snowed in Rome.