My life as a brother (National Religious Brothers Day)
Editor’s note: May 1 is National Religious Brothers Day. Jersey Catholic asked Brother Tim Smyth, CFC to write about his life as a brother. Brother Smyth, C.F.C., does the critical ministry of promoting vocations for the Christian Brothers in North America. He also serves on the vocation committee for the Archdiocese of Newark and other national vocation and religious committees.
I was asked to write an article about what it means to be a brother, so rather than telling you what a brother is, I’m going to try to tell you what it’s like for me to be a brother.
First a little personal background. I was born and raised in Chicago. When I was coming close to graduation from a Catholic grammar school run by sisters, my parents gave me the opportunity to choose where I wanted to go to high school. There were a number of all-boys Catholic schools from which I could have chosen. I chose Brother Rice High School, named after the Founder of the Congregation of Christian Brothers, Edmund Rice. It was at Brother Rice where I first met a brother.
As a high school student, my impression of brothers was that of men who were good teachers, prayerful, and enjoyed being with each other. Although they wore habits in the classroom, like all sisters did, they wore “regular” clothes after school out on the softball field, or at a football game, very unlike sisters. As a high school student that was significant to me – it humanized them for me.
Fast forward – soon after graduation from Brother Rice, I entered into the Congregation of Christian Brothers. I met young men my age who had similar experiences of brothers in schools across North America. We all wanted to be just like them – good teachers, prayerful, and enjoying each others’ company.
During my early years in studies, I met even more brothers who fit my impression of “brother.” Some of them taught our college courses, others lived with us in our formation houses. This expanding experience encouraged me even more to want to become like them. I wanted to become a good teacher, a prayerful person, a member of a joyful community, so I began to work at all three.
As Religious Brothers we profess the Vows of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience, at first as Annual Vows, then, when appropriate, Perpetual Vows.
As a congregation, our principal ministry is in education. However, when we study the life of our founder, Edmund Rice, we learn that he was involved in any number of ministries. He responded to the needs of his time. With that in our history, as a congregation we are willing to respond to emergent needs, utilizing the gifts, and skills of our brothers. For eight years of my life I was involved in parish ministry in rural western Kentucky. I drew upon my years of teaching and my knowledge of Church and Liturgy to serve that community that was so far from the mainstream of the urban Church that I was so used to.
As Religious Brothers, community is significant for us. Our Constitutions state: “Brotherhood in community is a principal source of our companionship and a privileged context for our personal growth.”
As a brother I have lived in 17 different communities; I have lived with many different brothers. In each community I have had the same experience – a group of men working at developing their professional, their spiritual, and their personal lives. As a young brother, I really appreciated living with older brothers who could offer advice in all three of these areas. Not necessarily all from the same brother, but collectively the brothers in community provided me with a rich pool of resources that provided me with a context for my growth.
From my earliest days in Catholic schools, I have been encouraged to be a person of prayer. I wish I could thank all those sisters, brothers, and priests who have been models of prayer for me throughout my life. It has been in prayer that I have discovered our loving God. The more I discovered my brothers as men of prayer, the more I felt myself drawn into my own desire to pray, to “spend” time with God in the person of Jesus. As those two disciples on their way to Emmaus, every once in a while I feel rewarded in my prayer and I feel that “burning” within that assures me that have become one of those prayerful men who I admired as a young man in high school.
To find out more about the Congregation of Christian Brothers, visit ERCBNA.org
