Seminary activities in
2007
During the year there are a lot of
activities we do together. The year starts in september and
usually after a month or so there is the day for the
parents. All parents and other family come and we have a
good time together. In 2007 we went on a boat trip to
Heusden. Here you can see some pictures. At the end
of Oktober there is a longer retreat in silence. We go
to a retreat house or a monastery for a week of prayer
in silence. These weeks are good because they are very
suitable to move the arrow of your life to the right
direction. It is good to answer the following questions
for yourself: For Whom am I in the seminary? For Whom am
I doing this? How am I doing in normal life, where is
some room for improvement?
A retreat is ideal to do some more praying and I always do
a piece of spiritual reading too. In 2007 I had the
biography with me of Saint Teresa of
Avila. She was
the reformer of the Carmelite movement. The coincidence
was that we were having the retreat in a Carmelite
monastery in Gent in Belgium. So the whole place was
full of statues of Teresa of Avila. I also like to do
some walking, but this retreat I didn’t do too much
walking. That was because of two reasons: I had injured
my foot badly shortly before the retreat after a fall
down the stairs in the seminary and the monastery was
located in downtown Gent.. I did some walking, but only
to keep the movement in the foot. Sitting still the
whole wasn’t good either so I made a few short walks. I
photographed some nice buildings in Gent. You can see
the pictures here. Pictures I took from the churches will
be posted in a another section of this website soon.
In Gent there was an altar piece that I really wanted to
see: The Lamb of God by Van Eyck. It was an altar piece
hanging above the altar in one of the chapels in the
Cathedral. It is famous because of the painting but also
because of the robbery of a piece of the painting. The
original lower left panel known as the Judge Judges was
stolen in 1934. The panel has never been found and the
whole story is the biggest mystery of Belgium. Every once
in a while there someone claiming that he or she knows the
location of the panel. The story is surrounded by mystery
and conspiracy.
In the beginning of 2007 we
also visited the old seminary in Haaren and in the
beginning of the year we visited Professor Van Calster in
his parish in the South-East of the Country.