Friday morning, there will be a Baccalaurate Mass for ourselves and all our fellow Dominican School of Philosophy graduates at 11:00 AM in St. Mary Magdalene Church.  The actual graduation will be at 4:00 PM in our school, corner of Arch & Vine in Berkeley.  If you are able to come to either one, stop by!

 

For the most part, obviously, schoolwork wraps up tomorrow.  Now comes the hard part -- and the fun part, getting ready for everything that’s going to happen soon and very soon!  

 

 

Last week, the bishop who will be ordaining us, the Most Rev. Allen H. Vigneron, came by for an informal dinner with the four of us.  We really appreciate his taking time off his busy, busy schedule, especially considering that he’s essentially ordaining men who are not ordained for his own diocese of Oakland (although one of us will serve in his diocese, in our parish in Antioch).  

 

 

It’s official!  We’ve received our first assignments as priests.  Before we open the envelopes and reveal the contents, a quick word on assignments:

 

As we’ve noted before, itinerancy is not just a fact of life for us, but a value of Dominican life, which in practice means we tend to move around every few years.  Our first assignments are usually for four years.  How are assignments done?  We generally ask two big questions:

 

 

We apologize for the lack of recent entries.  It’s been a very busy time.  All four of us are still working hard on finishing our Masters’ degrees (a Master of Divinity is required by the U.S. bishops for ordination).  But that’s not the only testing, no sir!

 

 

The Knights of Columbus is the world’s largest lay Catholic family service organization.  They’re often there when help is needed most -- both for religious and civil causes.  In the year 2000, the Knights worldwide contributed over 57 million hours of volunteer service and more than $116 million to a wide range of programs!1