July 9 - The official documentation of my reception into the Novitiate and its approval by Sovereign Counsel arrived today.
July 19 - the Sacred Music program here at the seminary conspired to bring my best friend here for a week.
July 23 - 20 hour turnaround trip to LA to visit the Italian Consulate
There are these moments in life which are the fruit of what one has been working toward and from which stem an entire branch of activities and duties which shape the rest of ones life ever after. Receiving a letter of acceptance into a novitiate has always felt this way to me. A thing sought after with much effort and a thing on account of which everything is different. I am aware that it is a strange thing even among faithful lifelong Catholics to talk about receiving multiple acceptances to novitiates, perhaps there is a strange class of monastery hoping Catholics out there, a kind of variation of St Benedicts gyrovagues who have been accepted into more than one novitiate. Nonetheless, hopefully you can relate to the feeling.
This thing I have been preparing for over two years has finally arrived and now is no time for resting in that - not yet at least - rather there is a flurry of activity which is called for. A quick trip down to the Italian consulate in LA, why the drive you ask? surely there is a consulate in SF you say, well yes of course there is but I am still a resident of Arizona and residents of Arizona must be processed by the consulate in Los Angeles. I will gloss over the particular trials associated with navigating an Italian government website, enough has been said about that on Reddit. My meeting with the consular officer was largely focused on the missing paperwork in my application which was not described on the website and about which there was no possible way for me to know of in advance and therefore could not possibly have provided the poor official as it turns out I lack the ability to predict the future or read minds. Luckily the officer was not put off by my clear handicap, nor did he assume I was unfit to live among Italians who must obviously possess one of these two abilities as it seems that every interaction with an Italian official assumes them. The man’s charity moved him to provide me a mailing address to which I could send the missing paperwork.
Much else will be required of me in the next month or two before I go to Rome for my novitiate - wrapping up my work at the seminary so I can go virtual, packing and moving everything to my shed in Phoenix to say nothing of the fact that fate seems to have determined that our families habit of seeing each other every two or three years will have to take place before I flee the country. Reader, do pray I stay diligent in my Italian studies between now and then.