Happy Spring Bank Holiday!

Happy Memorial Day to all of you back home, but if you're in the UK, you're "celebrating" Spring Bank Holiday today (does it get any more generic?)  There weren't any huge celebrations here today; classes were held as normal at Blackfriars.  The only discernible difference was that the grocery store opened late this morning.

This weekend, however, was filled with a bit of festivity.  It was nice to enjoy my first weekend in Oxford with the Blackfriars students after being in Salisbury last weekend.

On Thursday night, I attended a Solemn Mass at the Oxford Oratory for the Feast of St. Philip Neri, the founder of the Congregation of the Oratory, of which Cardinal Newman was a member.  The Mass was celebrated by Archbishop Antonio Menini, who is the Apostolic Nuncio to Great Britain and is the Pope's personal representatives to Catholics in England.  The Mass was absolutely beautiful; the Oratory has a fantastic choir and had a full orchestra for the Mass on Thursday.  After Mass, we had the opportunity to go over to the parish center for a pot luck dinner (to which we contributed the brownies shown in my previous post) and were able to meet some of the parishioners there as well as Archbishop Menini.

Mass for the Feast of St. Philip Neri at the Oxford Oratory

A (blurry but nonetheless existent) photo of
Nathan, Abp. Menini, and me

Friday was mostly spent in the library finishing my reading and preparing notes for my tutorial.  In the evening, I helped James, one of the other Blackfriars students, to cook dinner, which we ate with Nathan, Emile, and some of the students from St. Benet's Hall down the road.  It was great to talk to students from one of the other halls to hear about their experiences at Oxford and to learn about how things vary from hall to hall and college to college around here.

On Saturday, Blackfriars hosted a graduation party for some of its students who had completed their degrees last year or earlier this year.  Graduations are held several times each year as students complete their degree requirements at different points during the year and choose to graduate at different times.  It was a great celebration with the friars, faculty, and students.

On Saturday afternoon, I had my first tutorial session with Fr. Guy Nicholls, who is an Oratorian priest from Birmingham and is an expert on the educational thought of John Henry Newman.  We met at Blackfriars and spent about an hour and a half discussing the texts that I'd read as well as some other general points in Newman's thought on the university and education.  We also spent a bit of time talking about the state of Catholic education in the United States and how Cardinal Newman might have assessed and responded to the situation.  Fr. Nicholls was very nice and a pleasure to talk to; he was also quite knowledgable, not only about Newman, but he was also able to answer some of my questions about the relationship between Cardinal Newman and Thomas Aquinas (I just can't leave good St. Thomas behind!).  Fr. Nicholls gave me some other reading suggestions, and we will meet another two or three times during my stay here.  I've also come up with a few essay ideas to work on between now and our next meeting, so hopefully I'll have some productive days in the library soon!

On Saturday night, I joined a number of the Blackfriars students in the JCR (the common room at Blackfriars) to watch Manchester United play against Barcelona in the Champion League Final in football (soccer).  It was a pretty exciting game accompanied by great conversation as well as plenty of great food and drink!  In the end, Barcelona came out on top by a margin of 3-1, leaving most of the Blackfriars students disappointed, but all in all, it was a great night.

Sunday was a pretty laid-back day.  I went to Mass at the Oratory in the morning, and in the afternoon, I joined a group of Blackfriars students for a trip to the Turf Tavern Pub to get traditional English Sunday roast dinners.  The Turf dates back to the thirteenth century, and the pub area is a bit more recent (1600s).  It really makes you feel like you're in a medieval village with its narrow passageways, low-beam ceilings, cobblestone floors, and beautiful walled-in gardens.  We had dinners of roast beef, boiled potatoes, carrots, peas, parsnips, and yorkshire pudding.  The food was pretty bland, but for one like myself who likes things plain, it was delicious!

The Turf
(photo courtesy of NY Times Travel Guide.
I forgot my camera, but the place was too cool  not to show you;
we sat at the table right in the foreground!)

After dinner, Nathan and I went to Vespers at the Blackfriars Chapel and then went for a walk around the gorgeous Christ Church meadows and gardens and got some ice cream. It was a great end to a wonderful day!

Scenes from Christ Church gardens

A view of the tower of Magdalen Chapel from Christ Church meadow

Today was a very cold and rainy day - the sort of weather I had expected to be the norm in Oxford, but, surprisingly, the weather has actually been quite pleasant on the whole.  The precipitation, however, made today a good day to spend indoors.  I went to Fr. Aidan Nichols's Mariology lecture on the Assumption this morning, spent some time in the library finishing a book on Aquinas's educational thought, and made tacos for dinner. 

For the rest of the week, I'll be reading A.G. Sertillange's classic work The Intellectual Life as well as John Henry Newman's memoirs, My Campigain in Ireland and starting an essay about the comparitive thought Newman and Aquinas on education.  In addition, the weather is looking to be quite nice for the rest of the week, so I'm looking forward to exploring Oxford a bit; I'll be sure to update with pictures of my adventures.