Well it is still the Christmas Season...

The Holy Father preparing to give the "Obi et Urbi" blessing on Christmas.

A view of where I was sitting for the midnight Mass with the Holy Father. Overall a good seat.
First Vespers (evening prayer) with the Holy Father. We came in very late, but were ushered right up to the front (no there is nothing special about us, the ushers just know that it is good to make the Basilica to look full for the Holy Father).
The Creche in the main chapel at PNAC.

Wow my first Christmas away from home! I did not know what to expect, but overall it went much better than I thought it would. The PONTIFICAL NORTH AMERICAN COLLEGE has been helping young aspiring priest with the holiday season for the last 149 years, and they did a good job at helping me through it. I think it was more difficult on my friends and family back in the United States than it was for me.

There are three main things that helped with the season: 1) over here we are all in the same boat for the most part, (2) Rome and the Vatican do Christmas very well, and (3) just trying to keep my eye on the prize, priesthood, and what this means for my life.

NAC treats us very well around the holidays, and the whole season starts out with a college-wide Christmas party in the refractory. It sets the mood quiet well. There are the traditional foods and drinks, caroling, a newly elected Bishop Callahan to read T'was the Night Before Christmas, a big tree. You know the usual things, for the most part. There is also a lot of support from through the strong fraternal bonds that we develop here.

While I would love to be home for the holidays, there is just something about a Roman holiday. You spend it with the Holy Father to start with. It is also much less commercial so the true signficance of it really stands out. I started out the whole Advent season by attending Solemn Evening Prayer at Saint Peter with the Holy Father, and was gifted two tickets for the reparto speciale for Midnight Mass with the Holy Father. This means I enjoyed some really good seats. See the picture that shows how close I was. The next morning I slept in late, and got ready just in time to head down to the square (which square? there is only one square, Saint Peter's of course!) for the Ubi et Orbi blessing from the Holy Father. This is when he blesses the city of Rome and the whole world besides in about 40 different languages.

Lastly, as Servant of God, Archbishop Sheen always said, a priest is not his own. It is great to spend time with ones family during the holiday season, but a priest does not do that. He has his parish family, and really taking Christ as a model, he spends his holidays with those who have no family to visit them. Being here in Rome prepares me for this, and we all have no family here, so we held each other up in prayer and with affirming words.

It is a small sacrifice, but the secret of the saints is that holiness is found very often in these everyday-ordinary sacrifices. I think this is something that I can learn from new-parents. They make many sacrifices to be good parents, and a priest must make many little sacrifices of his will (and body, and mind, and heart) to be a good Spiritual Father. All these experiences in Rome are preparing me for this.

Thank you to all for holding me up in prayer during this time, it has helped greatly. God bless and blessed Christmas season to each of you.