We just celebrated our foundation day. We had the thanksgiving Eucharist this afternoon. It was another year of fruitfulness in the Church and faithfulness to God. We thank the founding people and his contemporary brothers.

Today, in 1817, in La Valla, France, Marcellin Champagnat founded the Institute of Teaching Brothers. He started with two young men, Brothers Jean Marie and Louis.

Marcellin’s inspiration in founding the congregation was rooted in the need of his contemporary time. He became aware of the extreme difficulty of the people especially the young in learning how to read and write, and the urgent need of creating a society to cope with those hardships. Moreover, His experience with the Montagne boy reinforced his desire to teach them in a Christian way of education. His dream, to send the Brothers to all dioceses in the world is now becoming a reality in our contemporary times.

With our theme in today’s commemoration, “Built Wisely, Living Today!” is the realization of our foundation as congregation of teaching Brothers. But indeed, “If the Lord does not build a house, in vain do the builders labour,” A wise man builds his house on the rock, so Champagnat too, our wise Father priest, inspired us to be here today to celebrate with him in thanking God for the graciousness in finding our own giftedness in the institute.

We pray for all the Brothers in the whole Institute, all those who have gone before us, and those who, in many ways, shared their lives as Marists in spirit.

With the spirit of Champagnat and with Mary our Good Mother, our first Superior, let us begin the celebration with joyful hearts and minds.

by Br. Vince, FMS

It was still very early morning when I noticed that it’s almost a year when I changed my room’s appearance. I told myself that something’s going to be changed today. That’s it, something I need to rearrange or change, recreate and play. After the Misa de gallo, I had my breakfast and started cleaning my room and thinking of rearranging my posters.

This is in response to the question, “Is it possible to do mission without dialogue of life?”

My reflections about living a life of being a religious in modern days as a young brother.

“Why don’t you join priesthood rather than just a religious brother? Same, you can’t marry, anyway” Same questions and statements I heard from my own parents and friends when I expressed my desire to join the brotherhood. My family was not ready to understand what religious life means. Even myself, I didn’t really understand the differences of being a lay religious and ordinary layman. It was difficult for me to weigh my intentions since I have always the option to help others as a lay man, same with what lay religious are doing; serving our neighbors in the same way a religious does. Being confronted with the realities of life; poverty, injustice, problems with society in general, I was asked if I was just trying to escape from these, and joining the group of people gathered together inside the intentional communities is one way of running away from these realities. I had the notion of being secured in life inside while enjoying the social structure, but attraction to religious life is more than these.

The earlier belief of security is also confronting young religious like me in general. Maybe this is the reason why we are always send to study more and even outside our seminaries, just like other students do. If before, the young religious were staying in their own cloisters to live the vows, my contemporary time is getting different and more open to change. Somehow there is the gradual change in formation. There are instances in my community to compare the formation between elder brothers and younger brothers when issue of differences and generation gap are raised. As if there is something wrong with the new generation of religious yet at the same time, wrongly understood that there is also something wrong with old formation. Indeed life is getting more difficult as the society changes too fast also. Technology now determine most of the peoples movement and there are difficulty with the Church people to “get in” to it. It seems that its more difficult to live a simple lifestyle just like before the second Vatican Council. Few years back, I was phoned by a nun in a monastery to fix their printer. I was honored to enter in a monastery of nuns, which I’m thinking, no man can ordinarily enter their cloister, I was wrong. Inside their parlor, I saw laptop, desktop and mobile gadgets used for communication. At least, the paradigm I had was getting clearer that spirituality in religious life doesn’t just mean a small life but a very real and challenging life but simple and liberating.