Leaving on a Jet Plane

April 27, 2010

Peace and Good,

Well, if all goes well, I will finally be leaving for London tonight. Actually, these days home at Ellicott City have been great. I have been out on the road almost continuously since January, and this gave me a chance to be with my own community for a little more than a week.

I also got caught up on daily reflections. I am now finished through the end of June. That means I can turn to some of my writing projects and get some work done on them.

I will be teaching two courses at Canterbury. One is an intro to the New Testament, and the other an overview of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) and the Acts of the Apostles.

I finished one book this week: The Congress of Vienna: A Study in Allied Unity: 1812-1822 by Harold Nicolson. This was a period of history that I always wanted to know about. I remember answering a question on my Regents Exam in High School about the Congress of Vienna. It occurred when Napoleon was defeated, and it was highly reactionary. The ogre/genius at the congress was the Austrian Foreign Minister named Metternich. He restored monarchies in all those countries that had become republics, forbade the formation of an independent Poland, etc. The book gives a good overview of the period, but it was heavy reading.

My schedule for the next months is:

04/17/10 - 06/12/10 - International House of Franciscan Studies, Canterbury, England, U.K.

06/13/10 - 06/18/10 - Hyatt Regency Hotel, Hamburg, NY (Provincial Retreat)

06/19/10 - 07/01/10 - St. Victor's Major Seminary, Tamale, Ghana, West Africa p.o.c. Fr. David Azambawu(Seminarian Retreat)

07/04/10 - 07/10/10 - St. Francis Convent, Mishawaka, IN 46546 p.o.c. Sr. M. Dorothy

07/11/10 - 07/18/10 - Quellen Spiritual Center, Mendham, NJ 07945 p.o.c. Sr. Teresa Marie (Sisters' Retreat)

God bless and

Shalom

fr. Jude