Hitting the Lenten stride...

Well, we're back, another week of Lent has flown by here, hard to believe! At this point, it's getting hard to imagine it *not* being Lent, and that we weren't always getting up at 5am to hike out to various station churches. So let's just say the past few days of consistory-Annunciation-retreat were not only festive celebrations and wonderfully relaxing days gazing across a shimmering pool at the papal summer home, but they were also a bit surreal - I mean, it is still Lent right?

Seriously though, yes, Lent continues onward, and it is very good indeed to be here in Rome - I am actually sad to think that the station church treks are going to end in just a couple more weeks (but not to worry, it's going to go out with a bang, with the famed Holy Wednesday "7 Church Walk" to the main basilicas of Rome and the "must see" tour around Rome's churches on Holy Thursday night to visit Jesus at their altars of repose - there's still lots of churches to see here!)

Amidst all the pilgrimage walks and classes, we also were honored to have Archbishop Dolan come to the house on Wednesday night to celebrate Mass and offer a great talk on what Rome can (and should) teach us - wonderful man, and excellent preacher, and of course, as many of you know, a fabulous author to boot. Afterwards, he even took the whole house out to the favorite local gelato place - yeah, he knows how to win over college kids!

Then, of course, on Friday morning, we headed over to the station church Mass and then a few of us went straightaway over to St. Peter's to get good seats for the infamous consistory. As it has been reported online I'm sure already extensively, I'm not going to say much here. I did get some decent photos though, coming up shortly... (Then you can tell me whether our crazy rush to get there early for good seats paid off :)

After the consistory, we would have loved to have stayed for the Meet 'n Greet of the new cardinals, but alas, we needed to get back to the house to get ready to leave on retreat. Retreat itself was once again (for me, since I went last semester too) over at the English College's retreat villa on the bluffs above Lago Albano, the lake that Castel Gandolfo sits along (the site, of course, of the Pope's summer hangout). It was a beautiful silent retreat, a first for a lot of the students here, but they were great and I think everyone received a lot of graces this weekend!

Fr. Carola led us in a mini-version (very mini) of the Ignatian spiritual exercises (beautiful, of course) and we were also joined by beloved Fr. Andrew Cozzens (past chaplain here at the house for this program) for the weekend!! That was a wonderful surprise, since we do not get to see him much these days (he is finishing his doctorate). Anyway - it was a great retreat... and now we're home, and I'm looking ahead to the Fourth Week of Lent coming right up. The time is flying by! I'm going to toss a bunch of photos up now, probably with not a lot of commenting (sorry, but I'm really tired... retreating is exhausting!). See you next Sunday (God-willing)!