Ordinarily the change from one year to the next at school is relatively routine. There may be a few changes, but nothing major. However, the shift from 2019 to 2020 took on an extraordinary form at the seminary. In order to illustrate this, I must tell you about my experience from the fall of 2019 and then the fall of 2020 at Bruté.

Last year was my first year in the seminary and the freedom we had at Bruté and beyond was incredible compared to this year. Effectively, it was a “normal” college experience. We could move around freely, there were no restrictions, we could go home on certain weekends and the classes at Marian were all in person. This normalcy suddenly changes in March. We had been back from spring break for only a few days when our classes moved online, and we were sent home. The rest of the semester played out uneventfully, and the idea of returning to classes in person was up in the air.

Eventually, Marian announced that classes would be a variety of in-person, online, and hybrid and structure for the academic year slowly formed. By the time August rolled around, I was eager to get back to the seminary after being away for nearly five months.  When we got back, however, there was a long list of COVID-related rules. These rules were not hard to follow but certainly made life different than my freshman year. I was only on campus occasionally for classes, the gym, or Chick-fil-A. When on campus I was to wear a mask, do some sanitizing at certain times, and socially distance. None of this was difficult given the minute amount of time I spent at Marian.

At Brute, however, there were several health precautions: masks were mandatory almost everywhere, we needed permission to go out to certain places, we socially distanced in the chapel, we did not sing during liturgies at the start of the year, and many others. Aside from the health benefits from these restrictions, the rules were in a certain sense beneficial for us spiritually. It caused us to follow the will of our superiors, not our own will, which St. Teresa of Avila writes is “the cause of most of our ills.” Life at Bruté was manageable, and we were able to come together amidst the turmoil of the year. Despite all the challenges, life at Bruté was still life at Bruté, Christ was still King of the Universe, and many lifelong memories were still formed. For me, the semester was still wonderful, despite the differences from my first year at Bruté.