De La Mennais Brothers: Making Jesus Christ better known and loved by young people

During today's Provincial Council meeting in Ploërmel (with Assistant General Bro. Vincent Ssekate - Uganda) we had a time of prayer before the tomb of our Founder, Fr. Jean-Marie De La Mennais. Rather chilly in the Mother House chapel, but the Spirit's fire and the passion for serving young people that filled our Founder's heart still fill ours today.

Today is Vocation Sunday. May we each hear the voice of God in our hearts, calling us to follow him in a way that is unique to each individual: our personal path to “life in all its fullness”. And may the Lord grant to religious orders and dioceses fresh vocations to the religious life and the priesthood, so that we might continue to make Jesus Christ "better known and loved" (Jean-Marie De La Mennais).

The final day of our four day preliminary Chapter meetings in Ploërmel, Brothers and lay people together. Photo 1 = me and the 2 Corentins, 2 of our young adult youth movement leaders, providing musical accompaniment to a time of prayer. Four days of smiles, laughter, fellowship, productive small group and plenary discussions. I think we all left energised and renewed by the multitude of ideas and potential projects that we came up with for taking our work with young people forward as a Mennaisian Family.   

Weds. Feb. 13th was the second day of the first part of our Provincial Chapter, held at our Mother House in Ploërmel and involving 21 De La Mennais Brothers + 21 lay people, fired up by the desire to serve young people, “making Jesus Christ better known and better loved”,  inspired by the charism of our founders, Fr. Jean-Marie De La Mennais + Fr. Gabriel Deshayes. Delegates attended  a Mass for the young people of our “Foi et Prière” (“Faith and Prayer”) youth movement who happened to also be in Ploërmel.    One of our French Brothers (Frère Pierre Orain) has written a new hymn to mark our religious order’s bicentenary, in a style suitable for use at youth events. Here’s an extract of the hymn being sung at the end of Mass.                           

For Vocations Sunday: A Day in the Life of a Religious Brother (me!), filmed two years ago.

Here’s a clip that I’ve been a bit slow to publicise… It was commissioned by the lovely folk at the National Catholic Office of Vocation for England and Wales (Fr. Christopher Jamison osb and Sr. Cathy Jones) to be released online in time for Vocations Sunday in April as part of a set of different resources celebrating Consecrated Life, as this is the Year of Consecrated Life. Click here for the page where all these resources can be found. It shows different aspects of my life in community and work with young people.

… at our Mother House in Ploërmel, Brittany. A chance for us to share experiences, offer each other support and plan for the future. We are very much "living joyfully" and haven't given up the fight.

On Saturday I spent the day in London at Heythrop College with my good friend Bro.  Ben Foy  (De La Salle) discussing the celebration of the Year of Consecrated Life, religious life as Brothers/brothers to all, vocation ministry, safeguarding ministry, our shared spiritual heritage, etc...  We've been coming together for such sharing and discussion for about 15 yrs. now, in the past together with Bro. Michael Newman (St. John of God) who is now working in Africa. I always find our time together stimulating, encouraging and empowering. It gives me renewed confidence that it is worth persevering in my life as a consecrated Brother, that we Brothers STILL have an important role to play in the life of the Church, especially in our ministry with young people. These encounters give me hope and give me the courage to keep fighting the good fight. Bro. Ben Foy in front of Heythrop College, London.

As a member of a group of religious Sisters, Brothers and religious Priests here in the north of England who are keen to foster a deeper culture of vocation within the Church, especially among young people, I've put up a Facebook Page  (Vocations Network North West UK) for us to share with others all the initiatives that are going on in our part of the country such as "come and see" days, vocations events, Samuel discernment groups, etc... We have a major event coming up in Liverpool on March 22nd: Although it doesn't say on the poster (oops!) we are aiming this day at 16-30 yr. olds, approximately. There are lots of religious Sisters, Brothers and Priests in our area who are keen to share with others  their passion for Christ, for his message and for their ministry and community life. They are indeed Living Joyfully the calling they have received from God in the manner described by Pope Francis in his encyclical "Evangelii Gaudium".  Hopefull...

We are now just over a week into our Session. From right to left, Bro. Ewald (Haiti), Bro. Guy (Canada), Bro. Emmanuel (Togo) + Bro. Alain (France). Bro. Arturo (Argentina) Our activities have included: - talks given by Bro Merino (Spain - Assistant Superior General), Bro. Jean Pétillon (France - former Assistant, co-responsible for Ongoing Formation) and Bro. Guillermo Davilla (Uruguay - co-responsible for Ongoing Formation). - small group discussion/sharing - personal study Topics for these 3 activities include: our religious consecration, our congregation's charism and identity, Mary as a model for religious life, the spirituality (+ writings) of our Founder, Fr. Jean-Marie De La Mennais, our 3 religious vows (poverty, chastity and obedience), Vita Consecrata (Pope John-Paul II), a return to our sources of inspiration (Bible, Rule of Life, Vatican II, the Fathers of the Church, culture)... In a future article I will summarise some of the important points for me pers...

I arrived at St. Malo, Brittany, on the morning of the 15th having taken the overnight ferry from Portsmouth (the ferry as opposed to the Southampton - Rennes flight as I had my bike with me). One of the Brothers from our St. Malo community met me and took me back to his community for breakfast and lunch, after which a visiting Brother from Rennes drove me to our Mother House in Ploërmel in readiness to begin that evening our 5-week study session for Brothers aged between 35 and 50. There are 23 of us in the group, plus 2 Brothers leading the session and 2 Brothers doing the translating. The nations represented include France, Spain, Uganda, Tanzania, Congo, Togo, Indonesia, Haiti, Canada, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile and England. There is a relaxed, fraternal atmosphere here that is typical of all the international Brothers events I've ever been to. Tomorrow, we visit a place I know well, St. Malo, the birthplace of our Founder, Jean-Marie De La Mennais. For many of the Brothers ...

Last Fri. (June 18th) I travelled up to Leeds for a day's meetings, sharing + fraternity with 12 Brothers from other congregations in Britain + Ireland on the topic of "Sharing Our Prophetic Vision". I am on the 3 Brother working party (a De La Salle Brother, a John Of God Brother and me) that organised the day and in the afternoon I gave a presentation (+ led a discussion) on "Internet + Evangelisation". This day followed on conveniently from a more high-profile conference in London 2 days earlier for those involved in vocations ministry from both female and male religious congregations and institutes, entitled "Surveying The Catholic Future". I always find it inspiring and encouraging to meet with Brothers from other congregations (+ of course my own too) who still have that fire for God in their belly, who haven't given up hope in terms of our collective future and who, no matter what their age, lay down their lives for God and his people ea...

Every year on November 26th, our schools and Brothers communities worldwide celebrate the life of our congregation's founder, Jean-Marie De La Mennais, a dynamic, influential Breton (Brittany, N.W. France) priest of the 19th century who founded our congregation in 1819 together with another Breton priest, Gabriel Deshayes. Jean-Marie De La Mennais died on December 26th, 1860. But due to that date's proximity to Christmas, the celebration of the anniversary of his death was moved to November 26th instead. In many cases, this day will be preceded in our schools by a week of celebratory activities of one kind or another (Masses, school trips, activity days, sports events, etc...). In our case here in Southampton we had a Founder's Mass, but decided to postpone the Founder's Week activities until the summer term, because of the proximity of the winter exams (including mock GCSEs and some actual GCSE modules). This time next year, we'll be marking a year of celeb...

A couple of months ago, I was invited to a weekend meeting in Bilbao for "younger" Brothers from Spain, France and England. The aims = - to get to know each other better with a view to increased international collaboration in organising/participating in youth events with pupils from our respective schools - to start planning/sharing ideas about future youth events in 2010 + 2011, 2010 being the 150th anniversary of the death of our co-Founder, Father Jean-Marie De La Mennais and 2011 being the year of the next World Youth Day to be held this time in Madrid. It was great to get to know my Spanish brethren in particular. I already knew the French ones involved very well. Our Spanish Province is very dynamic and full of life, like the Spanish Brothers themselves, as we had seen at the youth gathering we'd held in Liverpool for groups from Spain + France just before last Christmas. The future events which we discussed included: - March 27th-29th, 2010 = a youth gathering/trai...

One of the great things about being a member of an apostolic religious congregations is that you get the chance to meet, study with, live with in community people from different backgrounds, cultures, etc... and though like in any form of life where people are thrown together in a situation, personalities may sometimes clash, there is on the whole such good will, generosity and friendship that you come to feel part of one very large family... Well, that is at least my experience. During my training to be a Brother in the 1990s, I was blessed with the chance to spend 5 years in France (we, the De La Mennais Brothers were founded in Brittany in 1819 - now in 24 countries). During that time I got to know many French Brothers. Whenever I visited a community, for whatever reason, the warmth of fraternal love with which I was welcomed (whether or not I had met the Brothers before or not) would bowl me over. I still go to France for various reasons a few times a year and it is always a joy to...