I sometimes look back to that September 1987 when I joined
the Capuchins. Like most young people I loved music then and to this day, I
associate some songs with the time I joined the order. “Where the Streets have No Name,” by U2 would
be one for example. Other artists charting that year would have been MAARS,
George Michael and Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Mel and Kim, and even
actor Bruce Willis had a hit. I’ve just
done a Google search and I note that in the UK, Rick Astley was No.1 in the U.K.
charts with “Never gonna give you up” in the week I joined the Order. Around
the same time in the U.S. Michael Jackson had released his single “I just can’t
stop loving you.”
Now, as a 45 year old, it is almost impossible to get into
the head of that 18 year old Bryan Shortall. I hear the ads on the radio, “Dear
30-year-old me…” And I wonder what I’d say to that lad if I could go back and
talk to him. But he wasn’t for talking
to. He was full of it, and full of the habit, and full of the sandals, and the
friary, and the sense of community even though he didn’t really know what it
meant.
He was sacred and emotional the day he joined. He missed his
family, and his friends, and his girlfriends, and his breakdancing, and his dee-jaying.
He didn’t miss school though, that was one good thing. He hadn’t a clue. He was
going from sharing a room with his two brothers in suburban Dublin, with
posters of the Beastie Boys on the wall, to sharing a religious house in the
country with other men and pictures of the Pope and the General Minister of the
Order. The question he and the others
who joined got asked a lot was “Have you settled in?” He used to hate being
asked that question. What does ‘settled in’ feel like? And what’s the time line
for settling in? He brought a selection of his LP records and it didn’t feel
the same playing them in the sitting room of the Friary. The older lads didn’t
wear white socks and they liked Dylan, and Jim Croce, and Neil Young, One of
them couldn’t even say L.L. Cool J’s name properly. Things were never going to be the same. Not
bad though, just different.
Over the years, I went back to the books but it wasn’t like
school. This time I had a choice in what I learned and I enjoyed this. I began
to grow up and learn what it is to be in religious life and I began to learn
about the vows I had taken temporarily and would one day take for life. I
learned more and more about St. Francis of Assisi and his influence on the
world of his time and how his powerful message is still relevant in our world
today. So relevant that our present Pope has taken his name.
Most importantly, I found myself growing in my relationship
with Jesus Christ. Not in an over-the-top holy-joe way. There were never
apparitions or claps of thunder and even though I kind of knew that this
vocation was from Jesus Christ at the beginning, it is only as I go on I know
it is. I know it deep down – it’s the driving force. Like a couple who fall in
love, it’s a vocation. They work on their relationship; they have their highs,
and lows, and their joys and sorrows. For a religious, it’s a similar dynamic,
but perhaps our way of life is little understood in today’s world I would
argue.
How does our society make sense of the vocation to religious
life today? What makes one thousand women and men religious, including myself,
gather with the Archbishop of Dublin at a ceremony to begin the Year of
Consecrated Life? What language is there
to explain why I still want to be a religious? I believe it is in me, and I
can’t walk away. At the beginning and over the years, there weren’t any guns
put to my head and I wasn’t forced to join. And I’m not being forced to stay.
As the friars used to say to us, the friary is not a prison. The only reason
why I’m still here is that I can’t go. I’m trying to find English language to
explain it and I struggle, It’s like I had no choice and I still have no
choice.
And how do we as religious put language on why we still want
to be in this religious life? Or quite frankly how do we make the religious
life attractive to people who may be discerning a way of life? I look around at
meetings with other religious, and especially where there are younger religious
and I don’t need to be convinced they believe, I can see it in their eyes, and
the eyes are the mirror of the soul. St. Francis of Assisi once said, “Preach
the Gospel, and if necessary, use words.” With God’s help, during this Year of
Consecrated Life, we religious will help people to know who we are and witness
to Jesus Christ by our example primarily.