NAC Fraternity Weekend

The weekend of the 30th and 31st of November drew the 200+ seminarians, deacons and priests here at the North American College together in one of the most anticipated weekends of the academic year. A weekend which, by virtue of its timing and necessary collaboration, is primarily focused on the New Men and their formal inauguration into the NAC community. It is on this weekend where their creativity is allowed to shine for about an hour on-stage before the entire house. This New Man Show, in its anticipation, is the topic of much speculative conversation and, in its wake, is cited for weeks amongst the entire house. Their thespianism and cinematographic talents ought not go unchallenged thus we, The Old Men, have our very own show as well. So as to accommodate palatable nomenclature along with the spirit of consistency we call it...The Old Man Show!

My buddies Sean and Jon were leading the Old Men in their creative designs and formed a fantastically hilarious show which embellished the routine of our community life, honored our faculty with much comedic attention and displayed our creativity through our very own skills in cinematography. I was running things behind the scene as the backstage manager, a position which I enjoyed two years ago in our very own New Man Show in 2006. We were able to resurrect some old sets which had gone the way of the buffalo and were not shy to take advantage of our auditorium's theatric potential.


These shows are the talk of the house as new talents shone before spotlights along with impressions of the faculty and the famous made known to us all. It is fun to see the personality, creativity and skill of our New Men unfold in front of the college. This is not the only area where the talents of the house were shining one weekend ago. For this we must move from our auditorium out onto our new NAC Sports Field. (click on pic for hi-res)


We gathered for our Annual Spaghetti Bowl. Another competition wherein the New and the Old face off in fraternal competitiveness by way of our American football tradition. The teams had been practicing for weeks before game-day. The coaches of each team were sizing up their players and coordinating their talents and abilities for optimal playmanship. It is common for the Old Men to walk away with a victory for we have almost 150 men at our disposal as compared to the New Men's 60. One may be tempted to consider this a sort of athletic initiation...and in a lot of ways it is. We have our very own pep band along with our color commentators with some play-by-play coverage from 'the booth'.

All this being said, the New/Old Man Weekend is one of the hallmark events here at the College as it so directly pertains to and benefits the community life of our house of priestly formation. Priestly formation has been highlighted as highly important and necessary, especially in the diocesan priesthood, which we are all pursuing. We anticipate having many close friends among the Catholic faithful but there comes a limit to the ability of these good friend to aid in the challenges of priestly life and ministry; this is where your priest friends can be of the greatest assistance.

The seeds of priestly friendship were planted last weekend in the lives of many and among those who were good friends, these seeds were nourished. We anticipate these events bearing fruit through our friendships in the future as we forgo much of what the secular world offers to make the truth of Christ known in our many dioceses across the nation!

Know of our prayers for you and forget not to remember your priests - past, present and future - in prayer that they may serve well...for many years...and with great joy, always!