“I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind...”

“...got my paper, and I was free!” —Indigo Girls

After four summers, one fall semester, and one summer of comps, I’ve finally finished my graduate degree. Thank you to Saint John’s University, School of Theology*Seminary, Collegeville, Minnesota, for graduating me with a Master of Arts in Theology, with honors, emphasis in liturgy and minor in systematics.

Banquet Speech

Saint John’s University
School of Theology*Seminary Summer Graduation Banquet
July 22, 2005

By Diana Macalintal

Years ago, as I was preparing to begin my first real full-time liturgy job, I did a very Californian, Gen X thing and got a tattoo to mark the transition. And two weeks before I left for Saint John’s for this last summer of study, I did another very trendy thing and got my navel pierced. I figured if I could survive poking a hole in my belly-button, I could handle comps. These may sound like strange ways to mark these significant events, but someone told me that my last name, “Macalintal,” means “marked.” So marked I would be.

I wouldn’t have believed it back then when I started five years ago, but I believe it now. I believe we have all been marked by this place called Saint John’s, marked by something deeper than superficial tattoos and piercings.

We have been marked by feast and vigil, stone and colored glass, piercing bell and penetrating silence, wooden jubilee canes and simple pine coffins. We have been marked by the rhythm of morning and noontime, evening and night, hot sticky days of summertime heat and welcomed breezes on lazy afternoons. Mosquito and deerfly have left their marks on us, calligraphied rainbows of God’s Word have illumined us, potters hands have shaped us, music has infiltrated us, and teachers have breathed Spirit back into us.

In this place, we have been measured by the rule of Benedict, scrutinized by the alien figure of John the Baptist, and pondered over by the gaze of Mary, the bearer of Wisdom. Here we have breathed the same Spirit-filled air as those named Virgil, Aelred, and Godfrey, and we have been revivified by the loving spirit of those such as Patty, Bill, and Abbot John.

I will forever be marked by the memory of professors named Anthony, Dominic, and Theresa, Max, Christian, and Jim, Thomas, Martin, Kevin, and Charles, and by the stories of so many who have come through the summer doors of the School of Theology.

But most of all, I will be marked by the profound beauty that I have witnessed here during my five summers—that deepest beauty of creation and humanity, time and space struggling to live together in harmony; the beauty found in the cultivation of flower and harvest, in the discipline of musicians and the expectant hope of the potter and kiln, in the lectures that become poetry and you just have to put down your pen and listen. It is the beauty of student and teacher striving for truth and clarity and in the end realizing that it is all tremendous mystery. It is the beauty of a community of faith, living daily in work and prayer, struggling to be faithful through abuse and accusation, apathy and agedness. It is people of faith, working in parishes and schools, beaten down by despair and disappointment, disrespect and division, living through divorce, debt, and doubt, yet still loving this sinful and holy Church of ours, and giving all they have to see it breathe life again into our weary world.

It is this beauty that I will live for and work for and strive for, Sunday after Sunday, through word, music, movement, and environment, through action and stillness, time and timelessness—the beauty of tired hands presenting broken gifts and broken lives and knowing that they are the best we can offer before the aching beauty of the cross.

I give thanks for all of you, especially for my conspirator, Nick, the one who breathes with me. I will miss this place and all of you connected with it, but I will take with me the mark of beauty that you have impressed upon me. I believe we have come from Beauty, and I believe we will gather once again in Beauty.

My first day here, I came to this Great Hall and fell in love with these angels—not your Hallmark card angels, but angels you don’t want to mess with. Now the circle has closed and I return here again to this Great Hall and offer to you these words of love by Annie Dillard.

Angels, I read, belong to nine different orders. Seraphs are the highest; they are aflame with love for God, and stand closer to him than the others. Seraphs love God…. The seraphs are born of a stream of fire issuing from under God’s throne. They are, according to Dionysius the Areopagite, “all wings,” having, as Isaiah notes, six wings apiece, two of which they fold over their eyes. Moving perpetually toward God they perpetually praise him, crying “Holy, Holy, Holy…. But according to some rabbinic writings, they can sing only the first “Holy” before the intensity of their love ignites them and dissolves them again, perpetually, into flames. (Holy the Firm)

May we all be marked by beauty, ignited by faith, and dissolved by love for all those whom our God loves.

What are “comps”?

“Comps” is short for “comprehensive exams.” These are basically final exams for graduate school, except they take place at the end of all your coursework and pretty much can be on anything you’ve studied in all your classes and anything on your reading list.

At Saint John’s University, there are several kinds of graduate degrees offered, and not all of them require comps at the end of study.

Degrees that require comps:

• Master of Arts in Theology
• Master of Arts in Liturgical Studies

Degrees that do not require comps but have other completion requirements:

• Master of Divinity
• Master of Arts in Pastoral Ministry
• Master of Arts in Liturgical Music

The Nitty Gritty on the Comps Process

For my degree (MA, Theology), the comprehensive exams entailed the following:

Topics
Write four topics in your major (mine was liturgy) and two topics in your minor (mine was systematics). (For the Liturgical Studies degree, you write five topics on liturgy.) Sumbit these by email to the academic advisor who gives them to your comps board (made up of three faculty members in your areas of study; you don't get to choose your board). I had to submit these by noon on the Wednesday before I was scheduled to write my exam papers (more on this below). All communication with your board from this point is done through the academic advisor who is not a member of the board. This topics step is critical; people have failed even here.

Papers
If your board accepts your topics, then on the following Monday morning, they send you three questions based on your topics (two in your major, one in your minor). From Monday when you get your questions to noon on Friday, you write three five-page essays--12-point font, regular margins, no footnotes, cite within the text, include a “works cited” page--addressing the questions from your board. You are free to write whenever and wherever you like and to consult notes, books, the library, friends, the Internet, tea leaves, whatever you need to finish these papers by Friday. This is harder than it seems.

By noon on Friday, you submit an electronic copy and three hardcopy sets of your papers to your board. Then you wait, drink heavily, and resist the urge to get on a plane and go home. The academic advisor contacts you over the weekend to let you know if you've passed the written portion of your exams. If you have, then you are scheduled for the oral portion of the exam the following week.

Orals
The oral exam is a one-hour conversation with your comps board. Mine took place around the table in the Dean's office, just me and the three professors. The first fifteen to twenty minutes consists of questions from each board member on your exam papers. In my exam, there were several questions like, "You said this on page x of this paper; tell me more about that;" or, "You cited Augustine's Confessions in this paper; what did he say about x?" You should bring your own clean copy of your papers so you can follow the board's references.

Then the rest of the exam is mostly on topics from your reading list and any other topics that flow from the conversation. Now I had heard that questions on the reading lists aren't usually specific. But I learned, don't believe everything you hear. The first question I received in this portion of the exam was something like, "In Vorgrimler's Sacramental Theology, do you recall this name: _______, and what did he say about the fundamental sacrament?" I kid you not! I didn't recall the name (it was very obscure, and I can't recall it now), but I could figure out the response from the context of the conversation. I had several more questions like that: "In this book, in the chapter on such and such, what did the author say about this topic?" So read your reading list! And at least scan the books you've read a while ago.

After what I thought was the longest hour in history, the conversation became more personal and pastoral. The questions addressed some current issues in the Church, for example, charismatic language in liturgies with youth, and how I would respond to someone who took a certain stance on the issue. The last question (of the longest hour in the world!) was, "what is one thing that I have experienced at Saint John's that will influence my theological and ministerial work?"

Then it's time to leave the room and wait in the lobby while the board deliberates. After a few minutes, one of the board invites you back into the room, and if you're lucky, all the board stand and congratulate you and shake your hand. While you're recovering from the shock, everyone sits down again, and each board member says a few things about what impressed them about your exam and other very gracious words. Then you thank them profusely and try not to look so dazed. After you leave the exam room, you fill out some information forms for your diploma. Then you celebrate like crazy!

Writing Topics

Step one of the comps process is writing topics. For my degree, I had to write four topics in liturgy and two in systematics.

Topics are short paragraphs that present an issue and state an arguable thesis (my definition). The comps guidelines for Saint John’s says that these topics are not questions—they are topics—and that “a topic does not contain either questions or imperative verbs.” It says further that “a good comprehensive topic is synthetic. It requires that the student integrate a number of different sources from the reading list.”

Here are some things that helped me during this step.

1.
Gather all the papers you’ve written for grad school and divide them up into two piles: papers on topics that you liked writing about and did well on, and those that you didn’t enjoy or do well on. Take your “good” pile and read through each paper. As you read, list books from your reading list that might address, refute, or give additional insight to that paper.

2.
After you’ve read through all your good papers and made reading list notes, brainstorm general topics that interest you or that you feel you can speak on easily. Keep these very general topic headers, such as, “theology of time” or “grace.” Set this list aside.

3.
Now read through your “bad” papers. You might be surprised at what ideas might come to you as you read. You might have completely different insights than when you had written that paper. Make note of any new topics that might excite you now after reading this set of papers. Again, keep these topic headers general.

4.
Now you have a list of general topic headers. Take each topic and brainstorm different ways to discuss the topic. Don’t try to be systematic; just bullet point issues, questions, controversies, anything that excites you about this topic. Be creative. List ways this topic is addressed or affects other theological disciplines. A helpful exercise for me was to look at my entire reading list and just ask myself if each book said something about this particular topic that might be useful in a paper (indexes are a great help). If it did, I put a Post-It tag on that page and made a one-line note on my bullet points with a reference to the author and page number.

5.
Look through your general topic headers and their accompanying bullet points. Cross out the topic headers and lists that seem weak and those that you had to struggle with to list issues. Circle the topic headers and lists that really stand out for you and make you excited (if you’re going to do all this work, you may as well be excited about it!). Hang on to your crossed-out topics and any you didn’t circle. These might come in handy later.

6.
Now it’s time to flesh out each of your circled topics. Take each topic and just start writing on it. Make a general statement about the topic. Something that might help at this point is to find a quote from your one of your reading list books that speaks about the topic. Keep the quote short—one sentence. This quote might help you decide on a particular “take” or way to explore the topic. State particular issues or controversies about the topic, and give a brief example or two. Lastly, give an outline of the topic that includes an arguable thesis.

7.
Next, list books from your reading list that might be possible references for each topic. Present these as bulleted lists for each topic.

8.
Finally, read through each of your topic paragraphs. Though your comps boards can ask you about almost anything, you do have some control over the content of your papers and oral exam through these topics. So make sure that everything you mention in your topics are things you would be ready to write and talk about. Don’t try to be too broad in your topics (something I did which made writing 5-page essays on a broad topic difficult), but make sure that you are able to use several different reading list books as references for each topic.

Click here to see the topics I submitted.
Click here to see the questions I received from my comps board based on my topics.

My Topics

The following are the six topics that I submitted.

1) Liturgy – theology of the body
“What is most spiritual always takes place in the most corporeal” (Chauvet, The Sacraments: The Word of God at the Mercy of the Body, xii). We see this statement enfleshed in the Church’s rites of initiation into the Body of Christ as well as in the rites that accompany the lifeless body of a Christian to the grave. Yet in the celebration of the Eucharist, the corporeal has often capitulated to the cerebral especially in the practices surrounding the Body and Blood of Christ in Holy Communion. This topic explores the theology of the body expressed in the rites of initiation, Christian burial, and Eucharist.

Possible resources for addressing this topic:

• Chauvet, The Sacraments
• Fiorenza, Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives
• Johnson, Rites of Christian Initiation
• Lathrop, Holy People: A Liturgical Ecclesiology
• Mitchell, Cult and Controversy: The Worship of the Eucharist Outside Mass
• Rutherford, The Death of a Christian: The Rite of Funerals
• Vorgrimler, Sacramental Theology

2) Liturgy – theology of word
In the Incarnation, the Divine Word was joined to the matter of human life so that God’s free self-communication could be heard, understood, and received, making the life of Jesus the sacramentum Dei. Thus, the word of God spoken by human tongues at every sacramental event “effects what it says [and] brings what it announces” (Vorgrimler, Sacramental Theology, 77). The word event in a sacrament is not limited to the sacramental formula alone but includes the proclamation, preaching, prayer, petition, and even the post-sacramental mystagogy. For this reason, all the words we use in liturgy bear a symbolic weight. This topic explores the implications of a contemporary sacramental theology of word for those who preach and those who teach catechumens.

Possible resources for addressing this topic:

• Chauvet, The Sacraments
• Emminghaus, The Eucharist: Essence, Form, Celebration
• Flannery, ed., Vatican Council II: Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents
• Johnson, Rites of Christian Initiation
• Lathrop, Holy People: A Liturgical Ecclesiology
• Ramshaw, Reviving Sacred Speech
• Vorgrimler, Sacramental Theology

3) Liturgy – anamnesis and the Eucharistic controversies
“Christianity is lived under the regime of memorial, not of anniversary or mime” (Chauvet, The Sacraments: The Word of God at the Mercy of the Body, 158). In every Christian celebration, what is memorialized is the saving work of God through the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection, a past event made present and effective today by the Holy Spirit. Yet this memorial is not an intellectual exercise or a dramatic re-enactment; it is symbolic in the deepest sense of the word. It is this anamnetic participation in the sacramental symbols through the epicletic prayer of the Church that not only engages us with the past but proleptically carries us into the future glory promised by the Paschal Mystery. Thus any movement from a symbolical to an allegorical interpretation of the sacraments, or from an anamnetic to a dramatic participation, raises soteriological concerns. These concerns were part of the ninth- and eleventh-century debates regarding the real presence of Christ in the Eucharistic elements.

Possible resources for addressing this topic:

• Chauvet, The Sacraments
• Emminghaus, The Eucharist: Essence, Form, Celebration
• Kasper, Jesus the Christ
• LaVerdiere, The Eucharist in the New Testament and Early Church
• Lathrop, Holy People: A Liturgical Ecclesiology
• Mitchell, Cult and Controversy: The Worship of the Eucharist Outside Mass
• Ramshaw, Reviving Sacred Speech
• Taft, Beyond East and West: Problems in Liturgical Understanding
• Vorgrimler, Sacramental Theology

4) Liturgy – Mary
Devotion to the Virgin Mary holds a prominent place in the Church’s liturgical life. Her name is proclaimed at the heart of every Eucharist, her song becomes our hymn of praise to mark the end of every day, and her presence orders the central feasts of the liturgical calendar. In fact, many of the feasts of the Lord are paralleled by feasts of Mary, implying that what happens to Christ happens to Mary. She is “a wholly unique member of the Church…occupying a place in the Church which is the highest after Christ and also closest to us” (Lumen Gentium, 53-4). Thus examining what the Church prays and believes about the Mother of God reveals something of what it believes about itself.

Possible resources for addressing this topic:

• Adam, The Liturgical Year
• Chupungco, ed., Liturgical Time and Space
• Flannery, ed., Vatican Council II: Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents
• LaVerdiere, The Eucharist in the New Testament and Early Church
• Ramshaw, Reviving Sacred Speech
• Taft, Beyond East and West: Problems in Liturgical Understanding

5) Systematics – theologies of grace
“When God’s word and God’s glory (shekinah) are present to human beings, they do not ‘represent’ an absent God; instead, they present the manner in which God is most intimately present within the human person” (Vorgrimler, Sacramental Theology, 7). This intimate presence can simply be called “grace.” Yet the language of grace and how the Church understands God’s intimate relationship with humanity has changed throughout the years. Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Rahner offered different perspectives that were influenced by the background theories of their respective times. This topic examines how these various conceptions of grace have influenced the Church’s ethical and liturgical praxis.

Possible resources for addressing this topic:

• Chauvet, The Sacraments
• Fiorenza, Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives
• Gula, Reason Informed by Faith
• Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation
• Haight, The Experience and Language of Grace
• Mahoney, The Making of Moral Theology
• Vorgrimler, Sacramental Theology

6) Systematics – Christology
Through the gift of the Spirit, the Church is the ongoing incarnation of Christ on earth that continues Christ’s work of unifying all creation into the final qahal / ekklesia—“convoked gathering”—in the embrace of God. However, the Church itself is not Christ, for it is “at once holy and always in need of purification (Lumen Gentium, 48). Yet, through this imperfect instrument, Christ speaks and acts in the world. Thus, as are Christ and the Church bound together by the Spirit, so too are Christology and ecclesiology inseparable. This topic explores that relationship, both its insights and its dangers.

Possible resources for addressing this topic:

• Chauvet, The Sacraments
• Fiorenza, Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives
• Flannery, ed., Vatican Council II: Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents
• Kasper, Jesus the Christ
• Lathrop, Holy People: A Liturgical Ecclesiology
• Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith
• Vorgrimler, Sacramental Theology

My Questions

From the six topics that I submitted, I received three questions (two in liturgy, one in systematics). As you'll see, two of the questions I received were basically my topics as I submitted them. One question was a bit more creative and challenged me to explore other issues that I had not considered in my topics.

Because the papers that I would write were limited to only five pages for each question, I had some concern about writing a cohesive five-page essay on Question #2. I was able to communicate with my board through the academic advisor to receive clarification on what was expected for Question #2. The board allowed me to write two shorter essays (2.5 pages each) to address each part of Question #2.

Major Area: Liturgy

Question #1
“Christianity is lived under the regime of memorial, not of anniversary or mime” (Chauvet, The Sacraments: The Word of God at the Mercy of the Body, 158). In every Christian celebration, what is memorialized is the saving work of God through the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection, a past event made present and effective today by the Holy Spirit. Yet this memorial is not an intellectual exercise or a dramatic re-enactment; it is symbolic in the deepest sense of the word. Describe how our participation in the sacramental symbols is anamnetic, epicletic, and proleptic. Portray the dangers resulting from allegorical or dramatic understanding of liturgical symbols. Relate the ninth- and eleventh-century Eucharistic controversies to various ways of understanding liturgical symbols.


Question #2
Part One: In your topics, one reads that “[i]n the Incarnation, the Divine Word was joined to the matter of human life.” The Gospel of John reveals that “[i]n the beginning was the Word” (1:1), and the First Letter of John reveals, “concerning the word of life,” that “we have heard,… seen with our eyes,… looked upon and touched with our hands” (1:1-2).

• Is the incarnation a past event? That is, did the incarnation end with the death of Jesus of Nazareth?
• In Trinitarian terms, what of the gift of the incarnation in that sacramentum Dei that “says,” “brings,” and “announces” (Vorgrimler) today?
• In liturgical experience, what is the link between the life of the historical Jesus of Nazareth and the lives of those assembled for the sacraments?

Part Two: One reads in the same topic that “all the words we use in liturgy bear a symbolic weight.” Consider the following phrases of a Sunday Mass:

[Cantor] Please stand. Our opening hymn is on page 273.
[Deacon] A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark.
[Priest] Lord, wash away my iniquity; cleanse me from my sin.
[Priest] This is my body which will be given up for you.
[Eucharistic Minister] The blood of Christ.
[Assembly] Our Father, who art in heaven.
[Assembly] Thanks be to God.

• Do these “words we use in liturgy” — for example, “on,” “book,” “Gospel,” “the,” “to,” “Lord,” “from,” “body,” “you” — bear the same symbolic weight? Why (or why not)?
• How do the baptized and the baptized-and-ordained come to know the value of words in the liturgy?
• Based on your reading and experience, what general sacramental principle(s) about words and symbols of the liturgy can be drawn from what you write?

Minor Area: Systematics

Question #3
“When God’s word and God’s glory (shekinah) are present to human beings, they do not represent’ an absent God; instead, they present the manner in which God is most intimately present within the human person” (Vorgrimler, Sacramental Theology, 7). This intimate presence can simply be called “grace.” Yet the language of grace and how the Church understands God’s intimate relationship with humanity has changed throughout the years. Summarize the major understandings of grace that have shaped the Christian tradition, specifically those of Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Rahner. What are the major similarities and difference among them? Drawing particularly on the work of Gula and Mahoney explain the implications of these various conceptions of grace on the Church’s moral teaching and understanding of a faithful moral life.

Preparing for Orals

To prepare for orals, make sure you read the books on your reading list. It’s a no-brainer. They will ask you about your reading list, whether or not you took a class in the topic, because they want to see if you are able to integrate new information without the aid of a professor or a class.

Put all your books in one pile (it’s a tall pile!). Take the top book and on a small note card (3” x 5”) write down the title and author. Then write down short (short!) answers to these three questions:

• 1) What does the author say? Just pick the highlights. Know the thesis of the book (this is usually stated right at the beginning of the book).
• 2) Why does the author say that? Know how the author argues for the thesis and some of the critical insights presented that support the thesis.
• 3) Why is this book important? Have an opinion about how this book influences your own thought, ministry, and understanding. Know how this book has influenced Catholic thought. Once you can answer these three questions about that book, put that in a “done” pile, and start on the next book in your tall pile.

I intentionally used 3x5 cards because you need to “know how to gut a book” as one of the SJU profs told me. That is, be able to state the heart of the book. Don’t get bogged down by details. Write a summary of the book in your own words that fit on a 3x5 card.

Academic book reviews were helpful to me to get a sense of the overall structure of a book. You can find a book review on almost any academic book by doing a search through academic journals. (You can do all this online – I used SJU’s Academic Search Premier.)

Review your class notes on any topics that you submitted. Mark useful points with Post-It notes.

As you read through your books, mark with Post-It notes any quotes that might be useful for your papers. I used small quarter-inch Post-Its in different colors. In hindsight, I should have used one color for quotes that would be useful for paper topic #1, another color for quotes for paper topic #2, etc.

Practice speaking theologically outloud with other people, both fellow students and complete outsiders to academia. I happened to meet someone who knew nothing about the Catholic Church. He asked me many questions about the Church and I found myself summarizing for him, in my own words, much of the basic theological points that I had learned over the years.

Here's something that helped me one night when I was channel surfing. Watch EWTN! They often have commentators that give explanations about theological concepts or liturgical practices, and (at least for me) I would often disagree with their reasoning. As I listened to one commentator, I found myself giving my own running commentary, providing my own historical, theological, and liturgical arguments based on my study.

Finally, do some serious reflecting about what you have learned from your study--not the detail, fact stuff, but the deeper transformation that (hopefully) has taken place in you. What in your graduate school experience has transformed you and how? How will you use what you have learned to make your ministerial work more effective? Let's face it. Even if you're not planning to do any pastoral ministry in a Church, school, or diocese after your degree, you will be "ministering" and influencing the Church whenever you speak or write about your faith. Your diploma confers "rights and responsibilities." How will you use your "responsibility" as a person steeped in faith, formed by reason, and studied in the correlation between our experience of God and daily human life to make the presence of God clearer in our world today?

Oral Exam Pointers

I’m a liturgy person, so ritual is a big deal to me. The oral exams process really is one big ritual, like the first day of school, the first day at work, the important job interview. So treat the process with respect. Dress well as if you will be doing important work—because you are! Get there early. Stay calm; it helps no one if you panic.

Carry yourself throughout the whole hour with dignity and grace. Sit up straight and don’t fidget (sounds like elementary school!). Make good eye contact. Give firm handshakes.

Treat your board with respect. Practice calling each of your board members by their formal title and last name.

Practice humility. Remember that this is not a dialogue between equals. You are still the student trying to show that you have mastered the material to those who are the experts. Say what you know, and gracefully claim what you do not know. I was given a question to which I had no clue about the answer, so I simply said that I did not know. I was complimented later by the board for “doing what most other students could not—say ‘I don’t know’ and just move on.” Don’t try to fake answers you don’t know.

The corollary to the previous point is: do try to build upon what you do know. Give examples; point out historical highlights about the issue in question; tell what you remember from your reading about the issue.

Avoid making broad statements without nuancing your responses. If you cannot find just the right word, say so. It is important to show that you can articulate the fine points and the gray areas of theology and liturgy and incorporate contradictory ideas.

Make sure that you answer the question. Don’t get lost in tangential material until you’ve answered the question.

Lead the board into the next question. Once you’ve answered the question, say how it is related to another topic that you want to discuss.

I’ve been told to keep talking until you are stopped. But don’t ramble. Stop when the board stops you or when it is clear that you have answered the question to their approval.

It’s cliché, but your board really is on your side. They do want you to do well and they will prompt you as much as they can to get to the answers they are looking for.

Finally, the last piece of advice given to me before I went into the exam room was, "Whatever you do, don't cry."