20 Hours in Norway

The Hotel Dining Room

One of the most absurd parts of this semester in Europe will have to be the not quite full day we had to spend in Norway last weekend (or perhaps more precisely outside of the British Isles) to satisfy the immigration requirements of the UK Home Office.  Basically, we couldn't enter the country until a week before starting classes under our student visa, and so we had to leave and come back again to switch to our student visa.  Unfortunately, under the circumstances, we didn't get a chance to see anything of the city of Oslo.  All we really saw of Norway was through the window on the one and a half hour bus ride to our hotel.  It struck me as sort of a European Canada.  The landscape in some places quite rocky, and there were a good deal of pine trees and trees which had already lost their foliage.  The houses had steeply angled roofs and a rather north woods look to them.  However, the commercial buildings all looked quite new and modern.  Everything was quite expensive as well.  You can get about 10 Kroner for a pound, and 6 Kroner for a US dollar, but the 6 minute shuttle ride from the second airport to the hotel cost 60 Kroner, and candy bars sold in the airport for 18+ Kroner.  The redeeming quality of the trip was the posh hotel we were put up in for the night, which had a really nice gym, bar, and dinning room, as well as very up to date rooms.  The breakfast was very nice, although the choices included various questionable looking fish concoctions.  I was struck with how everyone spoke decent English, how hotels and airports had everything written in English underneath, and how familiarity with English that seemed be part of the culture, as evidenced by commerical signs in English (they had such signs in France, but not plastered in huge letters on office buildings).  Perhaps most noteworthy in terms of personal accomplishments is that Norway is both the farthest North and the farthest East I've been to date.  Gardermoen, north of Oslo where our hotel was, is over 60 degrees North and over 11 degrees East.  That's farther north than Juneau, Alaska.  Also, there were plenty of blond haired people there.  It made me feel quite at home.  And I now know two Norewegian words.  I know the word for 'and,' which is 'og,' and the word for 'airport,' which is 'lufthavn.'

Norwegian Countryside (as seen through a bus window)



Now just a couple of public sanity pleas.  The first goes to all the border control agencies of the world: Please don't make people go to Norway just to change their status.  There has got be some easier way.  The second goes out to all the travel agents of the world: When you book your client a hotel near the airport, make sure it's the right airport and not the one over 100km to the north.

A Taste of London

Big Ben and little Ben

After landing in Heathrow, spending two hours in the immigration line, buying Oyster cards, taking the Tube, walking around aimlessly, and then taking a taxi, we finally arrived at the seminary.  A few noteworthy things happened in our first couple of weeks in London.  One was the ordination of a new auxillary bishop for the diocese of Westminster.  This was my first trip to Westminster Cathedral, and my first episcopal ordination.  I had never seen so many bishops in one place in my life, and the Cathedral boys choir was quite good.  And don't ask how it happened, but I somehow ended up ministering the cup to a bunch of deacons at that Mass (I don't think anyone intended liturgical inpropriety).  That was on Wednesday.  On Sunday the 18th we would return to the cathedral to have a talk for the seminarians follow by a Mass of thanksgiving to mark the one year anniversary of Pope Benedict's visit to the UK.  It seems like the Pope's visit was quite a big deal to this country, at least to the Catholics here.

Jumping back a day, Saturday was my first real free day in London.  I took the opportunity to get a better feel for the city by going downtown.  Taking advice to get off the bus when we saw Big Ben, KS and I first got a look at Westminster Abbey and the Parliment building.  I must say that I was rather more impressed by Parliment, though both appear to be in a Gothic style of architecture.  I imagine I prefer Parliment in part just because it's a much larger building.  We crossed the river (Thames, pronounced 'temz') to get a better look at the London Eye, and then crossed back and walked through St. James Park toward Buckingham Palace.  We saw the Palace, Hyde Park, and then went back towards the river, ending in Trafalgar square.  I was vaguely hoping to find the Notre Dame London building, but since we didn't know where that was, we got on the bus to get back.  It was a good thing too, because, although it had been sunny shortly before, it started to downpour just as we got on the bus.  That evening, I had a long conversation with a couple of the guys at dinner about the rules of cricket, and I'm excited to get the chance to see a match.  After dinner, we (the Americans) watched part of the Notre Dame v. MSU football game, although the English seminarians did not seem particularly interested in the game.



This past Friday (the 23rd), KS, JD, and I went out to Ealing where we had lunch with one of the guys who lives out there and visited his house.  That was my first time out of central London since first arriving, and it just felt more spacious and breathed a little bit easier.  It's hard to describe what exactly caused the feeling, but it came instantly after getting out of the Tube stop.  It was here that I saw my first English common, Ealing Common, though I didn't walk through it.

The rest of my time during these two weeks was spend mainly in pastoral ministry workshops, or, occasionally, sampling English ales.

Paris

Notre Dame de Paris

On September 9, we switched locations to Paris where we were hosted by the Holy Cross community there.  After settling in and having a quick look at the Holy Cross school, St. Michel de Picpus, we went downtown Paris.  I had never toured a city quite like Paris before, with so much to see (and so many other people wanting to see it as well).  The first thing we visited was the famous Notre Dame cathedral, which now stands as the most impressive Gothic building I've been in to date.  Afterwards, we visited Saint Sulpice, a church in a more Renaissance style, but equally impressive.  Together those churches are the two biggest in Paris.  After walking around a beautiful, expansive, and very old garden in central Paris, we took the Metro out the the Eiffel tower.  For being a structure created with no practical purpose, it was really quite cool.  We paid the 3.70 Euro to climb to the second level, which afforded us with a great view of Paris.  Notably, I was able to spot Notre Dame Cathedral and what we later found out was the Basilique du Sacre-Coeur.

French Garden

The next day, Saturday, we made good progress on Paris sightseeing.  First we went to the Basilica of Saint Denis, which was the first Gothic church ever build.  Then we went to Sacre-Coeur, a beautiful Renaissance style church, complete with a dome and situated on a mountain of sorts.  There was caught the morning Mass and midday prayer, before walking around the interior.  After seeing our churches for the day, we took the metro to see the Arc de Triomphe, as massive arch situated in the middle of a huge traffic circle.  The arch was commissioned by Napolean and Wikipedia tells me that it is 50 meters (164 feet) tall.  However, most of our sightseeing for the day was taking up the famous Louvre museum.  In the museum is really an embarrassment of riches.  I had never seen so many painting, sculptures, and artifacts in the whole rest of my life.  Just imagine walking down a long hall, the walls absolutely covered beautiful paintings, and you have some idea of one wing on one floor of the museum.  It was impossible to spend any time at all with most of the art, except in walking by it.  Yet each piece deserved contemplation and could have been the jewel of any small collection.  The most famous piece in the Louvre is the Mona Lisa, but after seeing it I kind of wonder what all the fuss is about...

Basilique du Sacre-Coeur



Sunday, September 11, we left France and flew over the English Channel and into London.  After waiting two hours in the immigration line, buying an Oyster card, taking the Tube, walking about aimlessly, and taking a cab, we arrived at our home for the next four months.

I suppose at this point, it would make sense to say a few general things about France:

1.  Awesome food.  Lunch and dinner were almost always three courses.  Notable food items included a prevalence of raw tomatoes, seafood, cheese, and grapes.  However, the absolute staple of the French diet was bread and wine.  No meal was without bread, and, excluding breakfast, only one or two were without wine.  This was even true at the monastery.  I think having so much bread and wine really helped me to better understand the Eucharist and the power of that particular symbol.  The only downside foodwise was that the breakfasts were not particularly big. (The French phrase for breakfast is 'petit dejeuner.'  It's a bad sign when the name of the meal itself includes the word small.)  But having toast and jam for breakfast was great, and the small size of the meal was more than made up for by the other two.  I don't think I would even have wanted a large breakfast.

2. I really enjoyed simply driving between French towns, taking in the verdant and rolling hills of the French countryside.  Also the streets of the towns often looked like something I had experienced once in a storybook, but had now come to life.  It had a historical and cozy feel that is difficult to describe.



A painting in the Louvre of a hall of paintings in the Louvre



3. Being in Europe in the days leading up to the tenth anniversary of September 11, it was interesting to see what a big deal that event was for them.  9/11 was brought up many times in conversation with us, I suppose in good part because we were American.  Perhaps part of the reason for the event's continued significance lies in the prevalence of multiculturalism as an issue in European culture today.

4. In Notre Dame Cathedral, I had this reflection about these great churches.  While they are engineering marvels to be sure, far ahead of their time, I still found myself disappointed in them. I guess I am speaking here of Notre Dame in particular.  Notre Dame didn't flood my soul with aesthetic pleasure, it didn't make me perfectly happy, it didn't give me a mystical experience.  The tallest church in the world was still too small.  When we humans built Notre Dame de Paris, we gave God the biggest, the most beautiful thing we could.  We put years of effort, tons of stone, millions of dollars, and whole lifetimes of men into the effort.  We did as much as we possibly could to pay off an infinite debt of gratitude.  Yet, our offering is still incomprehensibly small, and God so incomprehensibly large.

Cheese and grapes just prior to being eaten



5.  You really do need to speak a language other than English if you want to get by in non-English speaking parts of the world.  That may be changing as generations of school children grow up learning English as a second language, but without hosts who knew English I don't think we could have made it on our own.  (Paris might be an exception to this.) However, by the end of my stay in France I had learned to say (functionally speaking) "please," "thank you very much," "you're welcome," "I don't speak French," how to order something in a restaurant (kind of), and how to buy a stamp to mail a post card to the US (which I did do by myself, thank you very much).  By the end, I was even able to get the basic idea when reading a sign and even occasionally figure out the topic of a conversation between two French speakers.

After experiencing a language barrier myself, I have much more empathy for, say, native Spanish speakers living in the States, and sympathize much less with people and politicians who have an "English language only" mentality.

Bottom line: France was a pretty cool place, and I kind of want to learn French

Into France

My blog about this semester should rightly begin where all things begin: at the beginning.  In the context of a blog about a semester spend in a foreign country, the beginning means the plane ride from Chicago to Paris whereby I said goodbye to America for the longest length of time in my life.  The plane was alright as far as overnight travelling is concerned, and after a night shortened by a seven hour time change (but made more tiresome and onerous by an equally long flight) we landed down in Paris.  After waiting several hours in the Paris airport and meeting a nice student from Austria studying in France, we boarded the train to Le Mans.  There we rendezvoused with the superior of the French CSC community, who took us to the provincial house.  He was a very gracious host to us over the next weeks and took us to see many sights of relevance to the history of the Congregation of Holy Cross.

The Cathedral of St. Julian



I should mention that when we arrived in France, the date was Thursday, September 1.  That afternoon, Fr. took us to see the church of Notre Dame de Sainte-Croix.  We celebrated Mass (in English here) in the transcept where Blessed Basil Moreau's tomb is.  We also visited the crypt of the church where Fr. Moreau was formerly buried.  I believe Notre Dame de Sainte-Croix was the chapel for the original Holy Cross community.  In any case it is right next door to the original community house, although it is no longer owned by Holy Cross.  Like most of the church owned properties, including the famous Benedictine abbey of Solemes, it was confiscated by the French government in 1905.  Unlike Solemes and Notre Dame de Sainte-Croix, it was never bought back.



On Friday, we had lunch with the Marianites and their Solitude House.  This house was the first novitiate of the Holy Cross Priests.  This was quite an interesting experience because we did not speak French, and they did not speak English.  Fortunately, KS managed to communicate in French that we were seminarians of Holy Cross, and said "Oui" a lot so that they would keep showing us around.  We saw the chapels where Fr. Moreau would have celebrated Mass, the bedroom of Fr. Moreau and a room full of his relics.  In the afternoon we saw the Cathedral of St. Julian, which was the first really old building I had ever been in.  It had a Romanesque nave and a Gothic transept and choir.  The choir was consecrated in the 13th century.  Of historical significance, Henry II of England was baptized in the Church.  Following the visit to the Cathedral, we walked around the historical part of the city, the Cite Plantagenet.

choukette (pronounced "shoe ket")

 On Saturday, we visited Chateau-Gontier, where Fr. Moreau first started off in seminary.  It was here that I ate my first two (and last two) choukettes, a delicious French pastry.  From here we went to the Holy Cross boarding school, Notre Dame d'Orveau, where we had lunch with the community.  After lunch we went into the surrounding town(s), and saw of couple of churches.  One was dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene, and the other had an altar dedicated to someone who had been killed defending the Church during the French revolution.  It was here that we met an American (a Texan, in fact), who knew the priest we were with.  She was the first native English speaker we had met on our journeys, and had a southern drawl to boot!  She taught at Notre Dame d'Orveau and her husband was involved with a French abroad program for St. Edward's University in Austin.  Among topics of conversation, was the difficult state of the Church in France and the fight to save the neo-Gothic church we had met in from destruction.



Solemes Abby

Saturday evening began what was one of the most memorable experiences I had in France, when we went to the famous Benedictine Abby at Solemes.  We arrived for dinner, and stayed in the guest house both Saturday and Sunday nights.  Before the first meal any visitor eats at Solemes, the Abbot personally washes his hands.  Then the guests are led in silence to the dining hall, where during the duration of the meal there is no talking and one monk is reading selections aloud in French.  Lectio during meals suited me just fine, because I wouldn't have been able to converse in French anyway.  During our time there, we celebrated all the Hours of the day with the monks in the chapel.  The Liturgy of the Hours was sung in Latin, which suited me just fine, because my Latin is much better than my French, which was placed in the prayer booklets opposite the Latin.  Having the Mass and Hours in Latin actually made me feel quite at home.  For those moments, I could have been anywhere in the world, including back in America, and my experience would have been the same.  It turns out there is something in the idea of having an Ecclesial language.  The monastery's day began with 5:20am Matins, and concluded with Compline at 8:30pm (if I remember correctly).  I must admit when I said I attended all the Hours while at the monastery, I neglected to mention that I didn't get up for Matins the second time around (on Monday).

One of the most powerful things about the monastery was the absolute silence I experienced there.  There was literally nothing to do all day but eat, sleep, pray, and read.  Granted, the monks there would have more to do then that, but the overall effect was stunning.  I experienced something of the power of silence, and realized that true silence was something I had never had before in my life.  Even in the quietest moments of my life prior to that, the world and all its distractions were just around the corner, waiting to reenter.  I will probably take up this topic at greater length elsewhere, but for now let it suffice to say that silence has the power to captivate hearts in a deadly way.

 

Angers Citadel



After leaving Solemes on Monday, we went to Angers, where we visited the Citadel of Angers and the famous tapestries there which depict the book of Revelation.  The Citadel was the first real castle I had seen, and even today it would be near impossible to capture with infantry.  When the kingdom of Anjou was assimilated into the French kingdom, the French king ordered the towers of the castle shortened, because the castle was bigger than any in France.  In Angers, we also visited the Cathedral of St. Maurice and the seminary where Fr. Jacques Dujarie began his seminary formation before the French Revolution.

Tuesday we visited Laigne en Belin, the birthplace of Basil Moreau.  We saw the actually house where he was born and lived and celebrated Mass in the village church.  The church where Moreau was baptized and would have altar served was destroyed, but we saw the old foundation, altar, and crucifix from that church.  The church was rebuilt close by in Moreau's lifetime and Moreau did celebrate Mass at the new church.  This was where we had our Mass.  In the afternoon, back in Le Mans, we choose to visit a couple of museums and to walk around the Cite Plantagenet, getting a good look at the Roman walls.

Petit Providence

Wednesday we visited the Sisters of Providence in Ruille.  The Sisters of Providence were the original religious order founded by Fr. Jacques Dujarie, and we saw the original building and chapel the community inhabited, called the "petit providence."  The building lived up to its name, and it is almost impossible to imagine that 50 religious sisters once lived there at once.  We also had a nice lunch with the sisters and toured "grand providence."  We also saw the church where Dujarie was pastor and the original community building for the Brothers of St. Joseph, which he founded (and which later turned into the Brothers of Holy Cross).

Thursday we visited Alencon, the birth place of Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower.  Therese lived here until she was four.  We saw here tools used by both of her parents and some relics of Therese.  The rooms of the house were recreated, animated, and some even had original artifacts from the Martin family.  Most notable was the bedroom where Therese was born, which could be seen through a glass panel from the adjacent chapel.  The chapel was absolutely beautiful, and we were blessed to celebrate Mass there.  It seems providential that this day was September 8, the Nativity of Our Lady.  That evening, our last in Le Mans, Fr. provincial took us to a creperie where we each had a savory "crepe" (I guess they are called something else when they are savory) and a desert crepe.  Both were absolutely delicious and I don't think I've had anything quite as good since.

While I haven't nearly finished writing about everything that has happened, I will end the post here before I begin to talk about Paris.