Hello friends. My name is Blake Thamer and I am a first-year seminarian at the North America College in Rome. I have been in Rome now for about 10 weeks. Over that time I’ve studied eight weeks of Italian, had an orientation, and had a weeklong silent retreat, which was pretty nice. I was able to slow down and take some time to adjust to the vastly different life of study in Italy.
This week is diaconate ordination week and Tristan is going to be ordained. It has been a lot of fun to meet with the pilgrimage group from the archdiocese. We had dinner a few nights ago and went to the Vatican museums after. I really enjoyed catching up with people from the diocese, and the Sistine chapel is great no matter who you’re with.
The museum was enriching in two ways, the sculptures, and the Sistine chapel. The talent of people is amazing. Over the silent retreat, I was trying to do some wood carving, but I was terrible. It made me admire the artists working with stone with significantly more skill than what I was trying to do with wood. When people use their gifts to praise God it is a beautiful thing. At the chapel I spent the most time looking at the last judgment painting which is on the back wall behind the altar. I enjoyed talking with one of my friends about the theology of the fresco. Those at the top were saints, those in the middle were struggling with or against both angels and demons, and the two sides on the bottom depicted both hell and the earth. In almost all of them, you could see how a struggle either enhanced the virtues or made one give up.
The ordination itself was today and I had pretty good time with it. I was in the choir, and I liked being able to use my gift (if I can be said to have any) for the glory of God and as a gift of some sort to Tristan. Archbishop Sample was the ordaining prelate, and one of my favorite parts of the Mass was the homily, where archbishop reiterated the importance of remaining a servant rather than getting a big head for yourself. There was a lot of ceremony at Saint Peters, but the heart of it is still the same, the newly ordained deacon takes on the serving heart of Christ.