Vocare - to call

It will soon be 2012

2011-12-27T15:16:00.000-08:00

I haven't written in this space for quite a long time. "I'm busy" is too easy of an excuse, but that's been the case. We've been preparing for months to move Seabury Western Theological Seminary from its long time home in Evanston IL to 8765 W Higgins Rd. in Chicago. Our new "home" is in the headquarters building of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Thus far, they have been great neighbors. Prior to the move, they were willing to help with whatever extra space we needed for board meetings or classes. Now that we are officially "in" the building, we've found that they are always wiling to help. There is still work to be done in the chapel and classroom, but we're working there (other than now while we're on Christmas break). Vocational interest is good in BSG, and we've got a couple of prospects in the vocations pipeline. I always emphasize taking one's time while seeking a vocation, especially in a religious community. A Facebook post today by my BSG bro Karekin in San Francisco is timely:

Be patient. Be patient. Don't be in such a hurry. When you are impatient it only makes you worry. Remember. Remember, that God is patient too. Think of all the times that God has had to wait for you.

It's still Christmas. New Year's Eve is this Saturday. So Merry Christmas to all !

Of Work

2011-10-26T12:49:00.000-07:00

This is what we believe about work in BSG:

Of work as an apostolate

Work, being our share in creation and partnership with God in that creation, can be sanctified. All labor is equal in glory, honor and importance and the work of a brother should bear these qualities. Keeping in mind that all talents are gifts of the Holy Spirit, the work of all brothers must be to the greater glory of God. Work is an oblation to God, as is service to our fellow man. We must therefore give the best that we can offer.

I had not had a terribly good day at work Tuesday. I turned back to Psalm 116, which we had done at Morning Prayer on Monday. I specifically went to verses 12 and 16, which repeat with this: I will fulfill my vows to the Lord* in the presence of all his people. That pretty much sums it up. As it reads above, "Work is an oblation to God."

It's always good to keep things in perspective.

A call to Religious Life and Medicine

2011-09-09T18:21:00.000-07:00

Today is the feast day of Ciaran of Clonmacnoise. Saint Ciarán of Clonmacnoise was one of the early Irish monastic saints and Irish bishop. He is sometimes called Ciarán the Younger to distinguish him from Saint Ciaran of Saighir. He was one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland. I know this because of my BSG Brother, Ciaran Anthony DellaFera of Cambridge, Mass. Ciaran is a medical student at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He went into medicine after a successful career as an engineer at IBM.

While giving thanks for Ciaran of Clonmacnoise today, I also give thanks for my Br. Ciaran Anthony. I sent him a story about a doctor in Chicago who also happens to be a Franciscan Friar. Br. Daniel Sulmasy is Clinton-Kilbride Professor of Medicine and Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School. You can read about him at this URL http://www.hnp.org/who/journey_view.cfm?id=64

We have several brothers in the community who are Registered Nurses, nursing assistants, a Doctor of Pharmacy, but Ciaran Anthony will be our first M.D.

A call as a medical professional and a call as a brother.Thanks be to God for all of them, especially Ciaran Anthony on this his "name" day.

Thankfulness

2011-08-24T11:44:00.000-07:00

From the Irish Jesuits website, Sacred Space..."Thankfulness is a wonderful gift. It arises in people’s hearts when they can look back and see how their lives have been enriched, by parents, or children, a spouse or faithful friend, or other good people. Thankfulness may be delayed, indeed, and can only come after much darkness and struggle, when sunbeams and rays of light have shone through - when, despite what has been painful and difficult, I can now see those sunbeams, in the eyes of kind friends who have stood by me, or in the little everyday things which are good and uplifting. As a result, often my prayer can be simply a mood and feeling of gratitude and praise. I simply want to be in that thankful space. ‘I thank you, Lord, with all my heart’, the psalmist says, ‘you have heard the words of my mouth … I thank you for your faithfulness and love / which excel all we ever knew of you. / On the day I called, you answered; / you increased the strength of my soul’ (Psalm 138). How good these words are! And even if my mood is not thankful just now, perhaps in repeating these lines, or those in the rest of Psalm 138, the gift of thankfulness will rise in my heart."
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About an hour ago, I prayed the Office of Noonday. Although it's "Noonday" in the BCP, I prefer to call it "Midday Prayer," since it doesn't always happen at noon. I highly commend this prayer office for busy people, so that they can take a break in their busy work schedules, and offer thanks to God. A person can easily go to our website at www.gregorians.org, go to the dropdown box and find "The Rule," and then "the Daily Office" around noon and find Noon Prayer. Towards the end, there is time to offer free intercessions. Not a day goes by that I don't use this time to offer thanks. I always include thanks for my community of brothers, frequently by name.

To showcase that we are in fact a community of brothers, regardless of whether we are lay or ordained, is a photo from our recent Convocation. Brothers James Patrick and Blane Frederik are shown at their First Profession of Vows. You will note they have the same exact cross and habit. James Patrick happens to be a lay brother, and Blane Frederik a priest brother. But in the end - brothers just as we all are.

Of Vows / Florence Nightingale

2011-08-11T16:35:00.000-07:00

From Psalm 61: 8 So will I always sing the praise of your Name, * and day by day I will fulfill my vows.

How nice that on the 11th day of each month at Evening Prayer, Gregorian Friars are able to pray this verse of Psalm 61. What a nice reminder. My Brother Karekin in San Francisco wrote about vows and I posted his comments earlier this month. It's a serious undertaking for Religious, regardless of whether one is in a traditional community or a contemporary community. As explained earlier today, the Canons differentiate the modes.

Tomorrow's calendar commemorates Florence Nightingale, nurse and social reformer. Several of my BSG brothers are in healthcare, serving either as Registered Nurses, Licensed Practical Nurses or Certified Nursing Assistants. One of my brothers is a Doctor of Pharmacy and one of my brothers is in medical school. As we remember Florence Nightingale tomorrow, I'll certainly be remembering all health care professionals, but especially my confreres, who have a tough job and treat it as they should - as a Vocation. Here's an icon written by Br Tobias Haller (NY) of Florence Nightingale.

Religious Life in the Church

2011-08-11T16:05:00.000-07:00

Br Thomas Mark Liotta, the community's Administrator and Minister Provincial of Province II, shared the newsletter of Province II of the Episcopal Church with the community today. Part of an article on Religious Life in the province was about the Brotherhood of St. Gregory and the Sisters of St. Gregory.

From Thomas Mark Liotta, Brotherhood of Saint Gregory, Minister Provincial, Province II comes the following information:

"Within the Episcopal Church there are two canons that differentiate the modes of religious life. There are the traditional communities which largely live in community and have a common purse and take the traditional three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Then there are the Christian Communities, some of whom live together in community and some are dispersed. Some take the traditional three vows but interpreted somewhat differently. Some have a common purse, others do not. The Episcopal Church website lists them but does not differentiate them from traditional communities and the Christian Communities.

"The Brotherhood [of St. Gregory] is now 42 years old. For our 40th anniversary one of our brothers authored a book, "In Love and Service Bound: The first forty years of the Brotherhood of Saint Gregory" by Karekin Madteos Yarian, BSG.and the website for the book is: http://gregorians.org/publications/ilsb_book.php "

You may even have met one of the brothers, since they do not live and work in a closed community. Visit their website at http://gregorians.org/ to "meet" the brothers and find out more.

The Sisterhood of St. Gregory

The Sisters of St. Gregory is a canonically recognized community of women in the Episcopal Church who have been called together by God to live the vowed life in a diversity of styles and spiritualities in the world. They live intentionally dispersed, coming together twice a year for convocation, retreat, business, fellowship and worship.

The formation of a Companion Sisterhood to provide a similar form of life for women was among the major undertakings of the Brotherhood of St. Gregory. Authorized in 1987, the Sisterhood had a rough road for a number of years. In 2001, the Sisters became an independent Order known as the Sisters of St. Gregory (SSG).

20th Anniversary of Vows

2011-08-03T08:42:00.000-07:00

My Brother Karekin in San Francisco writes, "A vow is not a promise. A promise is between two individuals, and can be broken, and often is, with impunity and a mere apology to the offended party. A vow, on the other hand, usually has two defining characteristics. First, it invokes God as either party or witness, and second it involves a public proclamation, inviting the public's support in helping the parties to uphold the vow once made. Vows are not to be broken but every effort must be expended to make the necessary adjustments to one's needs or desires to ensure that the vow can be carried out. For all vows - ordination, marriage, baptismal, religious profession - life must be made to accommodate them, not the other way around. All of one's life must be structured to support these vows once made. If a vow is to be set aside - unlike a promise, all parties must be in agreement about the laying aside. In religious vows, these are made to God. No human power, not even the Church, has the authority to lay them aside on God's behalf. The moral of the story: don't make a vow you aren't prepared to keep."

Karekin shared this with the community on August 1, but I'm going to consider it a gift for the 20th anniversary of my vows today. On Aug. 3, 1991, at Graymoor, home of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement at Garrison, NY, I professed 1st vows in the Brotherhood of St. Gregory with my friend and Brother Maurice John Grove, then of Mexico, NY and now of Hinunangan Southern Leyte in the Philippines. On July 27, we celebrated our 15th anniversary of Life Vows with our Brother Richard John Lorino, who had been 1st professed in January, 1991 but became our "classmate" for life vows.

Our Rule says "It is the obligation of each brother to pray the offices on a daily basis." In the past 20 years, there have been very few "misses" of a daily rota of Morning Prayer, Noonday Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Compline. If my basic math skills are correct, that means for about 7,304 (leap years included) days, I have prayed the offices some 29,216 times ! And for that I give thanks to God.

On this anniversary, I give thanks to God, to our Minister General and Founder Richard Thomas Biernacki for his vision and leadership; and to my brothers, especially those in Province V: Our Minister Provincial Br Nathanael Deward, and Brothers Gordon John, Joseph Basil, William Henry, Will and Francis Jonathan. And finally in memory of my first Minister Provincial, the late Br. Thomas Joseph Ross of Cincinnati.

I must also offer my thanks to the Episcopal Church of the Atonement in Chicago, where the community was first welcomed by the late rector, the Very Rev. Dean Paxton Rice, and continues to be welcomed and supported by the current rector, the Rev. John David van Dooren; and to St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Chicago, with great support from the former rector, the Very Rev. James H. Dunkerley, and the current rector, the Very Rev. Sarah Fisher.

+Soli Deo Gloria+

What Religious Life offers the Church

2011-07-28T13:43:00.000-07:00

An outstanding "guest" blog on Religious Life by my brother and friend Karekin Madteos of San Francisco.

We seem to be in a place today where there is a great deal of renewed interest in religious life in the Church. These periods seem to wax and wane as the years go by, but the interest seems to peak when time are troubled and folks are looking for spiritual communities that offer a renewed sense of purpose and spiritual fulfillment.

Having just returned from the Brotherhood's Chapter and Convocation, where we admitted three new postulants, clothed a novice, and had two first and two life professions, I was struck by the sentiment - look at what we offer the church! In this case, here were a group of men seeking spiritual companionship, and willing to undertake the promise of a community in which to nurture that journey - in some cases for the balance of their natural lives.

The church hungers for community - real, authentic, sustaining community. Too often, the church holds up the parish as the logical place where that is supposed to happen. And too often, it doesn't - leaving people hungry. In the case of clergy, seminaries try to foster community by providing a semi-monastic experience of prayer and worship. But these communities are, by their very nature, temporary. As such, they do not work except to create a hunger for this type of spiritual nurture only to create disappointment when the newly graduated enter the world of parish life to find that there is no comparable sense of community available to them there.

Parish clergy spend too much time trying to recreate that experience in the parish only to be disappointed when the expected sense of community and commitment doesn't materialize. We often hear from ordained folks coming to discern a religious vocation that they are hoping to find what they thought they were getting when becoming ordained.

Community in religious life is informed and shaped by the Rule and vows. Being bound to follow a Rule of Life naturally fosters a sense of common purpose among members of the community that informs every aspect of our lives. Parish communities cannot, by there very nature, do this. We come to the table with individual agendas, worship in common, and then return to those same agendas when we leave. Aside from the assertion of our Baptismal Covenant as a common Rule of Life, there is nothing to necessarily foster a sense of putting aside those parts of our lives that may be at odds with it. In religious life, however, this is the purpose of vows. The great evangelical counsels of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience are intended to accomplish this.

Poverty is the great equalizer of power. Whether it asks us to relinquish personal possessions, or to live in simplicity, or to dedicate the fruit of our labor to the Church, it is less about possession than it is about power. The common pursuit of Poverty as an informing proposition in our lives is intended to reset the power dynamics of a community to equality rather than hierarchy.

Chastity is about relinquishing our desire to possess or control those with whom we are in relationship. It is about gracious restraint, individual value and integrity, and accountability for one anothers personal and spiritual growth and discernment of gifts for use in service. Chastity is an invitation to love rather than a barrier to it.

Obedience is about the relinquishment of personal agendas - not by letting them go completely, but by relegating them to lesser importance than the needs of the community as a whole. Without Obedience, a true spiritual community will fail. Obedience is about listening for needs, and being willing to meet them for the sake of others.

Is it any wonder that without a Rule and vows, true community can seem transient? The model of the parish is wonderful for so much goodness. But it cannot bear under the weight of expectations that it can provide true and lasting community for those who seek it. Parishes are about convenient community. As long as it is close by, the hours of worship are convenient to our busy lives, and the expectations on our time, talent, and treasure do not often exceed our own comfort levels - then it is fine.

Religious orders such as my own take great pleasure in offering a vision of community to the world. We offer a place where the true nature of community, with all of its joys and all of its messiness, can prove sustainable, nourishing and holy. It is the school where we, as individual members, learn what community truly looks like and then take and model it for others.

Our founder is fond of saying that "everyone who comes to us - changes us." Isn't that a vision!? Too many "communities" in the world are formed by a process of selection - where members are chosen based on their reinforcement of who we are, what we like (or don't like), and where our comfort zones are. We choose people, speaking rather obviously in generalizations, who are like we are or who at the very least don't necessarily challenge who we are. Religious life is not like this. When a new person comes to us, the dynamics of the community shift to accommodate this new presence. We do not mold them to be like us, but rather let ourselves flow around them, inviting them to bring their authentic personhood in all of its integrity. We provide them with a framework - by Rule and vows - to discern their gifts and to use them in the world with quietness, patience, humility, charity, courage and prayer. And it is only in authentic community where those gifts are learned.

This, for me, is what religious life offers the Church.

Karekin

Anniversary of Life Profession

2011-07-27T12:23:00.000-07:00

The Church remembers William Reed Huntington on the calendar today. As noted by James Kiefer in his hagiography of Huntington, "although never a bishop, had more influence on the Episcopal Church than most bishops. He was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1838, the son of a physician, studied at Harvard, and was ordained a priest in 1862. In each of the thirteen General Conventions (held every three years, in years that have a remainder of 2 when divided by 3) of the Episcopal Church that met between 1870 and his death, he was a member, and indeed the most prominent member, of the House of Deputies. In 1871 he moved for the restoration of the ancient Order of Deaconesses, which was finally officially authorized in 1889. His parish became a center for the training of deaconesses. Huntington's was the chief voice calling for a revision of the Book of Common Prayer (completed in 1892), and his the greatest single influence on the process of revision."

Today also marks the 15th anniversary of my Life Profession of Vows in BSG, taken at the Society of the Atonement (Graymoor) Friary in New York on July 27, 1996. Yes, there have been stumbles along the way, but I have never regretted making the decision to apply to this community and to be in this form of religious life. There have been a lot of changes through the years, but I am proud to call my confreres my brother, regardless of whether they are lay or ordained.One thing I'm very proud of is that all of our brothers are known as Brother - Not "Father," or "Deacon," but Brother. And for this I give thanks to God.

My brothers Richard John and Maurice John were life professed with me. Rick is the Director of Pastoral Care at White Plains (NY) Hospital. Maurice claims to be retired, but stays busy running a hotel in the Philippines. My brother Karekin Madteos in San Francisco also observes his 15th anniversary in vows today, and his 10th year of Life Profession tomorrow. Congratulations, brother !

+Soli Deo Gloria+

A new blog on vocations to religious life

2011-07-26T17:02:00.000-07:00

My name is Ron Fox. I'm the Director of Vocations for the Brotherhood of St. Gregory, a community of the Episcopal Church. Unlike traditional orders, we are an intentionally dispersed community, with brothers living coast to coast, and in the Philippines, New Zealand, and Australia. Most of our brothers are lay brothers, but we do have priests and deacons in the community as well. Our Minister General and Founder is Richard Thomas Biernacki, who began the community on Holy Cross Day in 1969. Today, we're most likely the largest community in the Episcopal Church with 48 members. This blog was hosted previously at Tumblr, but due to unfortunate hacking of the blog, with many risque comments that were not mine, I decided to close that blog and start anew here. I made my final decision after learning that a social network writer for Reuters was also leaving due to many problems.

The Brotherhood of St. Gregory had a great Convocation and General Chapter in New York that ended this past Saturday. Congratulations to our new postulants, Harold, Eric and Larry; to our new novice Richard Edward; to our newly professed Blane Frederik and James Patrick; and our newly life professed Ron (Fender) and Enoch John.

Our community was blessed in having the Superior of the Order of the Holy Cross, Robert Sevensky, with us for Evening Prayer and admission and reception services on Friday.

Congratulations also to new Ministers Provincial Thomas Mark and Thomas Lawrence. They are replacing Richard John and Aelred Bernard, respectively. We also have a new cellarer, Richard. In a monastery, the cellarer is the person responsible for maintaining the supply of food and drink. In an intentionally dispersed community such as ours, the cellarer handles drinks and snacks during convocation. He takes over from Robert James.

Several of the brothers were able to make it through the heat at St. Mary the Virgin on Sunday, where we were warmly greeted by the Rector, Stephen Gerth.

I checked out a group Sunday evening on the upper East side of New York called Lifeline, an organization that “seeks to help people attain a God-centered recovery from addictions.” I’ve been involved in the past in what used to be the diocesan commission on alcoholism (no longer in existence) and I think this could become a new ministry. We’ll see what the Holy Spirit might have in mind. When I arrived, imagine my surprise when my friend Tom, the coordinator of the group, told me he wanted me to be the guest speaker. All went well.

Meanwhile, interest is high in BSG. I hope to be having three and possibly four candidates for interview for entrance as postulants next summer.

The URL for BSG is www.gregorians.org Please visit it to learn more about us.