Crying in Vienna

I’m going to begin with a sincere apology for the fact that it has been so very long since I’ve updated everyone on my life. Totally unacceptable, I know. In my defense, I am insanely busy. I am currently on FOP team, in a Music Ministry group, working two days a week, going to weekly Bible study, keeping up with homework, doing Ministry for Moms, leading morning praise two days a week, and trying to have a prayer life. Oh, and I’m planning trips around Europe. That too.

Now that I’ve attempted to make my excuses…

I believe the first thing I failed to blog about was Vienna. That was on the weekend of January 22. According to my notes…

I ate fruit salad? I forgot about that. Apparently I made and ate fruit salad for breakfast. Then we got on the busses. I sat between my friends Emily and Elaine.

Emily

Elaine

A couple snaps of the view from Gaming to Vienna

When we arrived in Vienna, the first thing we did was walk to one of the local churches for Mass. The Mass was beautiful. The music was led by Couples for Christ, a Catholic group from the Philippines. I love Mass. (:

After we celebrated Mass, we went on tours led by different FUS faculty members. The tours were fun. Vienna is beautiful. A bunch of the faculty had brought their kids with them, so we got to have little ones with us. It was awesome. Here are some of the pics:

This is the statue outside the Church where we had Mass.

I have no idea why this was here, but it made me lol, so I took a picture.

Ana, one of Maros’ kids. (Mar-o-sh)
[Maros is the “Almighty Handyman” on campus here. Basically, without him, everything would simultaneously fall apart and explode.]

When Ana first meets people, she tells them her name is Bernadette. She’s lovely. (:

So beautiful…

The altars in Europe are amazing.

I love how this picture turned out.

This was in the Michaelerplatz (St. Michael’s Plaza) outside of Michaelerkirche (St. Michael’s Church)

This was inside Michaelerkirche

This is the altar in Michaelerkirche

For those of you who don’t know, Regina Angelorum has a special devotion to St. Michael the Archangel. Because of that, and my own personal (massive) attachment to St. Michael, this church was an incredible experience.

One of my favorite things about Austria is that the entire culture is rooted in Catholicism. As a result, there is religious art everywhere. It’s cool to be walking down the street and see statues of demons getting beat up by angels. I’m a fan.

I love this view. We were standing in a big square. From this perspective, the balcony and building below was behind us.

When Hitler came to Austria, he stood on this balcony and informed the Austrians that he was taking over their country. Years later, the Holy Father gave a speech from the same spot. Turns out, at one point since the Austrian Program started, Franciscan students led massive praise and worship. It’s awesome to think that we were able to bring Light to a place where Hitler spoke forth so much darkness.

The full building. Most of it anyway.

This is a close up of the building above (in the pic with the horses)

This was in a shop window we passed by. It’s a CAKE!!!

This is Olivia. She’s Ana’s older sister. We got to be great friends on this trip. I ate lunch with her and a few other Frannies. I’ve gotten to know here even better since then. In this picture she was freezing, so you can only really see her pretty eyes, but this girl is beautiful.

Walking down the street…

Those are Christmas lights hanging from the buildings. We didn’t get to see them light up, but I wish we had. They were everywhere! It would have been really pretty.

This was a really, really ornate church. I took a video so you could get the full effect. Sorry it’s such poor quality.

 

Something I didn’t know about Europe before I got here: There are street performers everywhere! Jugglers, dancers, musicians, living statues, you name it, they’ve got it. This guy is balancing a TON of stuff on his nose (those glasses and bottles are full of liquid) and playing on a clarinet at the same time!

This was our first sight of St. Stephen’s Cathedral.

One of the Kartause kids. Honestly, I can’t remember his name. He’s riding on Justin’s shoulders. Justin is a friend of mine. He sings in my music group! (:

Street Dancers

After the tour we all ate lunch at a fancy restaurant. Technically, we paid for it when we paid our Austria Program fees, but since we don’t have to shell out the cash on the spot, we like to pretend the school covered it. Lunch was cool because we ate authentic Austrian Wiener Schnitzel. I forgot to take pictures, but I know Hannah wants to know what I’m eating, so I stole this from the internet. It’s basically exactly what our plates looked like, except ours was even more huge. So. Much. Schnitzel.

After lunch we all broke up into individual groups with whoever we wanted to and had a few hours of free time in Vienna. I was with these kids:

From the left: Chris, Helen, Emily, Ian, Mary, Storm, me!, and Matt

For awhile we just walked around and took pictures. We stopped in St. Stephen’s Cathedral. It was really cool. The church was pretty, but my favorite part was the people. It was the first time I’ve ever really been hit with the depth of the universality of my Church. In the fifteen minutes I was in the building, I encountered people from at least four other countries. There was a grandmother teaching her granddaughter how to genuflect and make the Sign of the Cross, in Polish. Obviously, there were people speaking German. I had a pseudo-conversation with some people from Italy. I heard accents from England. We’re American. All of the people, from all over the world, believe what I believe. It was like going to a family reunion and finding cousins you didn’t know you had. Here are some pics of the church. Lighting was horrible, so sorry for their quality.

 

 

After the Cathedral, we headed to the Schatzkammer (Imperial Treasury). I was kinda like… eh… yay shiny things? I’m not a huge history buff, so the idea of paying money to see fancy furniture and clothes that are only important because someone who was important wore it before they died (a long time ago) wasn’t really thrilling. However, I was happy just to be in Vienna with my friends. Here are some of the shiny things:

Royal Baptismal Outfit

Napoleon

This emerald was approximately the size of Joey’s head.

    
This was advertised as being a unicorn horn (hence Mary’s silliness). I don’t think it actually was. Probably not. ;)

After the shiny stuff, we got to what Rick Steves calls “religious items”. I thought it was cool because there were nifty crosses and such. Pics:

   

    

I had just resigned myself to having spent 12 euro on an opportunity to see some nice pictures and shiny stuff, when one of my friends (a bunch of other groups of Franciscan students happened to be going to the museum at the same time as us) pointed out that there was a special reliquary (holder of relics) sitting on one of the shelves. It held a piece of one of Mary’s veils. Mary as in, Mary, Mother of God.

I know the first thing that pops into anyone’s head when they hear “Oh yeah, by the way, we have the Virgin Mary’s veil chilling in our treasury.” is “How the heck do you prove that?” Well, let me preface what comes next in the story with this explanatory note.

As Catholics, we’re really big on relics. I’d type up a thesis on the subject, but this is already the longest post since the beginning of time, so I linked a decent page earlier. You know me, I’d be more than willing to answer questions about it, so ask away if you so desire. For now, in regards to the validity of whether or not the relics are actually what they claim to be, I’ll say this. We pass stuff down. 2,000 years of tradition and heritage. Unbroken line of popes traced back to Peter. 1 Timothy 6:20 “O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you…” We believe in guarding truth, and we have a lot of practice at it. One of those truths comes in the form of objects that are sacred, like relics. I can’t say for sure that this fragment of fabric is, for sure, a piece of Mary’s veil, but only because I didn’t see a certificate of authenticity from the Vatican, saying that it had been analyzed and found to be authentic. However, in not being sure, I opt for treating it with reverence, because I’d rather feel stupid for caring so much about a normal fabric square than find out I treated something precious as ordinary.
Whew. That being said… (:

It was really cool to see the piece of the veil. However, it was nothing compared to what came next. I went in the next room and one of my other friends pointed out two more relics. One was Veronica’s Veil, and the other was one of the Nails that pierced Jesus’ body.

I was in shock. It was one of the most incredible experiences of my entire life. I stood there, in the museum, surrounded by my friends, and strangers, and cried. I just stared at the Bloody Veil, and the huge Nail, and cried. I don’t have words to describe what Jesus did in my heart in those minutes. Time flew by. Before I knew it, my group was saying that we had to get going. I had been crying for half an hour. It was amazing. I have pictures, but they don’t do it justice.

You can’t really see it at all, but in person, you can see eyes and a nose and mouth much more clearly. It was beautiful.

    


I just stood there thinking “This pierced the hand of my God.”
… and I cried.

We are so loved.

After we started heading out, we came across some more incredible things. The tip of the Holy Lance (the lance that was used to pierce Jesus’ side) and a reliquary holding pieces of the True Cross.

I cried some more. Matt poked fun at me for not wanting to come into the museum. Little did I know it was going to change my life…

Whew. That’s the hardcore stuff.

After the museum, we stopped by the café where Bambi was written. Yeah. It was legit. I got to get hot chocolate, because basically no “sweets” in Austria actually taste sweet at all. I remembered to take a picture of this one.

Yep. After that, we looked around a bit more, and then Emily and I broke off from our group. We got lost. It was fun. We made it back to the bus with everyone. Then we came back to Gaming. It was good to be back.

Ok. So. Sorry again for taking so long to update. I hope the ridiculously long quality of this post helps to appease the anger of those who have been waiting to stalk me.

More to come soon! I love you all!

I Don’t Know What to Call This

This is the first time I’ve blogged about a day on that day. I’m proud of myself.
I got up and went to the Church. I’m starting to get back into a good prayer schedule, and, as always, I’m seriously regretting ever falling out of it. When we get lazy, we aren’t happy. End of story.

After morning prayers I grabbed some breakfast and headed to the Audi-min for the morning praise and worship. It was lovely, and when it ended my friend Mary Rose, who was leading, asked me if I wanted to take over leadership for the rest of the semester. I’ve been feeling called to step out musically lately, so I said yes.

Then we had Christian Spirituality. My notes are filled with things like “Oh. My. Goodness.” and “Flippin Pancakes this is incredible…”

Some quotes from class:

“First, we must understand that the spiritual life of a Christian believer is a work of God. It is something that God is doing. The activity of God always comes first. The spiritual life is a kind of fruit of God's initiative. As a work of God, the spiritual life shares attributes of God because all of God's work reflect Him. As such, the spiritual life will be a thing of power and majesty, beauty, wisdom, mystery, and above all, love. The spiritual life is God loving the believer and the believer returning that love. As in all Christian theology, the culmination is the Person of Jesus Christ Himself.”

“We also want to make the point that the spiritual life represents and corresponds to the basic human condition. How we exist is intimately bound to the fact that God has created us. What we do is a matter of responding to what God has done. To be human is to be loved by God and to be able to love Him in return. This is the basic definition of what gives us human dignity. We have been loved into existence by God and have the ability to love in return.”

“Do not be frightened by the many things that you need to consider in order to begin the journey to heaven, a great treasure is gained by traveling this road. No wonder we have to pay what seems to us to be a high price. But in time you will come to understand how little everything is next to the reward you are given.” - St. Theresa of Avila

This is going to be a life-changing class.

After class I chilled in the apartment with Mary for a bit, then we headed to Mass. It was lovely. Afterwards I played with some of the kids from here and we had a massive snowball fight. I took one to the face, with my eyes and mouth open. It even got in my nose. These kids are intense. I had so much fun. Everyone thought I was upset though, because I had tears pouring from my face. Then it was bad food for lunch, attempts at homework, a long nap, and really bad food for dinner. We just got done planning our trip to Vienna. Well, everyone else did a lot more planning than I did.

Oh! And it’s FREEZING. It started getting cold a few days ago, and then it started snowing. It has continued snowing. My coat and boots have held up well. Really well. I’m warm and my ankles are doing ok. It’s a good time. It is gorgeous. I’ll take pictures from around campus soon. We’re going to Vienna tomorrow, so expect lots of awesome pictures and details. It’ll be great. (:

Classes!!!

Wednesday I turned my alarm off and slept in, which was a fail. Then We grabbed breakfast and headed to the Audi-max for another orientation meeting. It was the longest and most boring, by far. The president of the program is a good guy, but he says “Fair enough? Fabulous.” approximately every other sentence. It was uber-distracting. Then we were given our travel mugs, text books, and laundry baskets. Woo laundry baskets!!! Woo mugs for tea!!! Then there was an optional tour of Gaming, but it was raining and gross and I was exhausted, so I opted for a three hour long nap. I got up just in time to head down to the town church (different than the church in the Kartause complex, the Maria Thron). I stayed in the church for a long time, just praying and letting God talk to my heart. It was lovely. I said a rosary too, so I got to love on Mama Mary. (:
Then it was back to campus for dinner and a meeting with all the music ministers. It was fun. We learned how to sing the Sanctus (aka Holy Holy, the Mass part right before we start kneeling for the Consecration of the Eucharist) in German, and it was so awesome. The music ministry team (so basically the people on campus who can/love to sing) got to sing together. We busted out harmonies and it was fabulous. I’ll get a picture soon of my team, so you can see who I’ll be talking about.
Thursday (yesterday! I’m getting caught up!)
We started classes! I woke up early and headed to Maria Thron to pray. I’m working on starting my day the right way (:
I missed breakfast because I lost track of time, and headed directly to class.
We’re doing things on a block schedule, which means that instead of classes being assigned to days they are assigned to schedule blocks. Yesterday was a B block, and for the most part  Mon./Wed. will be A block Tue./Thur.
A Block:
8:40am – 10:10am – Christian Spirituality with Dr. Asci (pronounced Ashy)

B Block:
8:40am – 10:10am Christian Marriage with Dr. Asci
10:20am – 11:50am – Sacraments with Dr. Newton

1:45pm – 3:15pm – Theology of the Church with Dr. Cassidy
Dr. Asci is an amazing man of God. He sounds a little German. Or Spanish. Or something. Honestly, no one can figure it out, but he’s American. He is passionately in love with God and our Church and he lets it shine in his classes. Discussing the sanctity of marriage is kind of one of my passions, so I’m looking forward to learning more about it from someone as knowledgeable as he is. Then this morning (Friday, not Thursday), we had Christian Spirituality. Basically, it’s a class on how to pursue holiness. How to pursue God’s heart and allow Him to work in your life. How to let Him love you and how to love Him in return. Yeah. I know. Epic.

Dr. Newton is British and he has an accent. Therefore he is innately awesome. However, deeper than that, we opened with a discussion of Thomistic philosophy and theology (as in from St. Thomas Aquinas), so I’m thinking it’s going to be a pretty kickin class.

I still haven’t had Dr. Cassidy because up until yesterday I wasn’t technically in his class. I had Spanish in that time slot, but when I realized it was going to be like every other Spanish class of my life, I decided to drop it. Everyone I know came back from Cassidy’s class with their brain cells fried by the particular level of awesome that they found there. Apparently he’s the greatest thing ever. Oh, and he has a Scottish accent. I can’t wait.
Greg (the leader of our worship group) and I got together to practice songs. It went well and I’m excited to see where God takes it. Then it was dinner and chill time until 9pm when we had a meeting for everyone interested in FOP team (Festival of Praise). I went, and we did p&w, and then prayed and discussed who we thought should hold the three leadership positions within the team. Then it was bed time.

And Then It Was Tuesday

Tuesday was considerably less exciting. I’m getting the feeling that posts are going to continue to shorten in length and the depth of how interesting they are. Well, posts from days that we don’t travel anyways.

Tuesday I woke up and went to breakfast. I’ve still eaten yogurt/granola with every single meal. That means I’ve eaten yogurt with eleven meals, and odds are the trend will continue. After short talk where they introduced the various religious sisters on campus and their ministries, then we went on an RA guided tour. It was pretty funny, because our guide skipped the parts he didn’t think were important and made sarcastic jokes about the parts he did talk about. As soon as the tour ended I booked it back to our room/apartment/place of residence and grabbed my guitar. Then I headed to Maria Thron for practice. I helped Sister John Paule lead worship for Mass. Then she had me audition for music ministry. The next day I got an email telling me which group I’m in. We’ll be leading worship on Mondays (:
After Mass I chilled in the Church with Jesus for awhile and did some praise and worship with the epic acoustics that are in there. It’s awesome. Then I grabbed some lunch, followed by guided tours of the whole Kartause complex. These are the pics:

Maria Thron:

                  

                     

Old Baroque Library (usually not accessible to students):

 

The ceiling of Maria Thron is actually a newer ceiling. The monks who lived there kept getting sick because the original ceiling was so high and drafty, and they had no heat, so they added a newer one in the Baroque style. We still have access to the older ceiling, and these are the pictures of us walking across the newer one, under the old. There is a small walkway between the old and new tower, and we went around that. The cool pics of the town are from the windows there, and the looking down into the Church are too.

Bell Tower (Old. Dark. Unstable. Fun :)

 

Then, that night, we had a (sort of) surprise birthday party for Emily. They got me grapes so I could eat something while they were eating cake, haha (:
I love my friends.

  

Then I got together with Mel McChesney, Emily Dunphey, and Katie Erskine (Regina Angelorum intents) so we could go through our household box. It’s a tradition for household brothers or sisters to leave useful/funny things behind for future Austria-visiting household members. It was fun. There is also a book filled with advice written by the household sisters who have been here. It’s really awesome the way we are all so connected. I love my household. God is so good to me. (: