It was the middle of the afternoon on a 65 degree February day when the phone rang. It was Sean O’Hare. After friendly greetings and the like, he got to the question: Would I blog on the Seton alumni website? Here’s how the conversation went from there.

Sure, Sean, that would be great. What is a blog? [Thus began Blogging 101]

It’s like a bulletin board. You put up a message and people respond.

Oh.

It can be 300 words or 100 words or a couple sentences. [I think Sean was already losing confidence in me.] You don’t even have to use full sentences. In fact, you can just use abbreviations. For example CU ltr. [He had definitely lost all confidence in me.]

OK.

If you have things of interest people will respond. You can also expect hate mail from students who flunked logic.

Hope not.

You can write about nostalgic things or current events and when people start posting comments, you can respond to them.

I see.

We’d have Mrs. Carroll do it, but she is way too busy. [This was the second time that day and the third time in two days that I was reminded that I am not too busy. A friend had written, “You don’t sound busy.” A neighbor came over and said, “When one is busy the days go by quickly – your days must go by very slowly.” And now Sean from 1800 miles away, could even tell that I am idle.]

How often would I do this?

Every week.

Might be hard. [Not because I am busy, mind you, but when one is doing basically nothing, during long, dull days, what is there to write about? To make matters worse, we do not watch TV or listen to the radio and do not subscribe to a newspaper, so Sean’s current events idea is hardly possible.]

We then discussed the need for me to have the internet, the March for Life, Sean’s businesses [he is very busy], the economy and then Sean had to go to a conference call, and I had to rest before resuming doing nothing.

But I am a quick learner, I think. Take the abbreviation thing. Let’s say I was finishing a text conversation with a former boxing great. I’d end it poetically like this: C U ltr. M____A__gtr.

Now it is time for a sense of seriousness. I want to thank Sean and Jim Koehr for the work they are doing to unite Seton’s alumni and for inviting me to do this. My 8th grade English teacher said many times through the school year, “The simple are easily amused” so I will be entertaining myself if nothing else. Sean emphasized to me the sense of community that Seton is and that this alumni website is here to promote. With all the attractions and detractions of the world, hope can ebb. So we need not even consider hate mail but instead devote ourselves to increasing the virtue of hope among us. What our Holy Father wrote about in Spe Salvi. Here in Lent, we might consider praying for the Gift of the Holy Ghost known as Fear of the Lord. Fear of the Lord is that Gift which fortifies the virtue of hope and increases our desire for the happiness of heaven by weaning us from the false goods of the earth that might allure us into sin. Besides rendering easy the practice of hope, Fear of the Lord also perfects the virtue of temperance by begetting in us the dread of the penalties and ills issuing from the illicit love of pleasure. With the aid of the Holy Spirit, we will be weaned from false goods and come to detest inordinate pleasure and grow in the hope that Pope Benedict XVI says will enable us to “face our present: the present, even if it is arduous.” Toward this end, I will be praying the noon Angelus for all alumni of Seton and your families. (It will give me something to do.) Please pray for Mom and me.

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