The Battle of Washtenaw County.

Today is the Memorial of St. Robert Bellarmine, at once a Jesuit, a Cardinal and a Doctor of the Church. On this date last year, the new novices of Loyola House took a tour of Detroit and spent an evening with our brothers in the Jesuit community at the University of Detroit Mercy. This year, Bellarmine's memorial was celebrated with much less fanfare here at the novitiate. The only really noteworthy thing I did today was attend a University of Michigan football game in Ann Arbor with my classmates Drew Marquard and Eric Styles. U-M beat cross-county opponent Eastern Michigan 55-0 - for details, click here. We all went into the game expecting U-M to win big, but I was nonetheless a bit surprised by Eastern Michigan's failure to score a single point in any quarter of the game. Hoping to beat post-game traffic, my companions and I left after the third quarter. We then made a quick stop at Jesuit-run St. Mary Student Parish a few blocks from Michigan Stadium and had an enjoyable chat there with Associate Pastor Dennis Glasgow. Though we cooled our heels at St. Mary's for the better part of an hour, we still managed to avoid the worst of the post-game traffic and made it back to the novitiate for dinner. Hopefully Cardinal Bellarmine - who, by his own choice, spent his last days in humble quarters in a Jesuit novitiate - appreciates the fact that a trio of novices chose to mark this day in honor of him by attending a college football game. As I see it, making a pilgrimage to college town Ann Arbor was as good a way as any to mark this scholarly saint's memorial. We had a lot of fun, and hopefully we did old Robert proud. AMDG.