March 19th, 2006 (St. Joseph's feast day...usually)
Pic: St. Joseph Shadow of the Father
It's Sunday morning at about 11:20 and I'm sitting in the dining room looking at my empty cereal bowl and listening to the birds chirping the Salve Regina, or maybe it's me humming. I don't know what to do with myself. I've finished comprehensive exams, I've had the long awaited drink and gone to the party. I've slept (though not much), gone to Mass and now I sit waiting for the next moment of obligation to hit me. But before it does, a moment of joy, a moment to just, as my beloved Dean would say, "kick back and let it be done unto me". Hah! Such a great quote. I'm going to miss this place. I do still have about 6 weeks here but somehow the end of comps seems like the end. It's bitter sweet joy ya know? Every minute passed means one less minute of these people that I've grown to love so dearly, and my gosh, this school,this incredible, life affirming, soul filling school. But then again, every minute passed is also one minute toward home (in every sense of the word) one minute toward Louisiana, toward my friends and family, toward re-creation, toward the wedding, toward my hubby to be. So, I am being pulled in both directions and I am able to just be, which is what we were made for anyway. "We need to recover a sense of the uselessness" - another great quote by Dr. S.
So, while I'm just sitting here, being, I'm going to jot down my comps questions (or what I can remember of them) so that I can remember. I'm already starting to forget.
Day 1 Scripture/Patristics
1. (it was something like) Explain the nuptial mystery within salvation history, specifically focusing on Genesis 1 and 2. (yeah, ok so it wasn't really like that...but I'm forgetting already)
2. Manicheism, Pelagianism, Gnosticism and the responses to these heresies by Augustine and Iraneus.
Day 2 Systematic Theology and Philosophy
1. What is a person? (again...not the question but there was a Ratzinger quote on person and then we had to recount the development of the term in light of Revelation and Christianity and then give an account of what Balthasar and Ratzinger's new concept of the person is...er..something)
2. (This question was like a page long so there's no way I can remember it exactly) The gist of it was explain gender difference in light of the liberal concept of the person. John Paul II's nuptial body, Aristotle and Balthasar's takes on the perfection of act, body, gender etc, Balthasar on gender in the Trinity, asymmetrical reciprocity.. and why all this has to do with homosexuality and what it's significance is and why this is on a different level than race, culture etc.
Day 2 (part 3)
Moral Theology and Ethics
1. Explain different understandings of freedom and their effects on civil law/society. What are Aristotle and St. Thomas' view of freedom. er....something else that slips my mind now.
2. The relationship between nature and the supernatural, different developments, distortions etc and what this has to say about the Christian states of life and if there is a specific Christian ethic. (er....?)
and there it was.....6 hours of writing, months of studying, 2 years of class taking and communio (ing) and it was done. When it was all over we went to our chapel at the basilica to pray a rosary of thanksgiving and Dr. S sent over a reading for us to pray with. It was the reflection from the magnificat about Fatherhood by Papa Benedict, yeah the whole text of the one below. How cute!
Ok...I shall write more later...for now I'm off 'to be'.
p.s. 2 points to whoever can tell me what movie the partial quote in the title is from.
The Shawshank Redemption, but I cheated ;)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111161/quotes
Another good one:
Warden Samuel Norton: I believe in two things: discipline and the Bible. Here you'll receive both. Put your trust in the Lord; your ass belongs to me. Welcome to Shawshank.
... and this one:
Red [narrating]I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.
... and this one...
Red [narrating]I find I'm so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.
...and this one:
Red [narrating]I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up DOES rejoice. Still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend.