By Father Seraphim Wirth, fbp

Easter Joy brings renewal
The Joy of Easter encourages us to follow Jesus out of the tomb, to walk in His footsteps and with each step allow Him to recreate us for His purpose and glory. The resurrection should challenge us to renew our life and to be centered on being re-created for doing the will of Jesus in the world. The motivation for this newsletter is to give readers and Religious Life discerners a glimpse into the life of the Franciscan Brothers of Peace that you would normally not see.

Some Background
To be in Religious life and the Priesthood, living a balanced life is important to be able to authentically bring Christ to others. For the Franciscan Brothers of Peace, we encourage each Brother to develop a recreational activity in their life that helps renew them to be better witnesses of Jesus to the world.

The activity should lead us closer to God and to learn to see Him at work in our life when we participate in the activity. We will give you a glimpse into the recreational activities of some of the Brothers. Our hope is that you will notice how your own time for recreation can help you to be re-created and renewed to bring Christ more effectively into the world.

A dialog with a young discerner
On a particular Sunday an altar server came up to me in the sacristy as I was preparing for mass and asked me some questions. The dialogue went something like this…

Server: Father Seraphim, what do people in Religious Life and priests do all day? Do you really pray all day? Are you in church all the time?

Fr. Seraphim: What a great question! Something great about Religious Life is that our life is a balance between prayer, ministry, friary chores and recreation. All of it together leads us to happiness and closeness with Jesus.

Server: Hmm, then what do you like to do for fun? Can you watch a movie or go on a trip or something?

Fr. Seraphim: All of the brothers have fun things they like to do. Our prayer is the first priority and it can be fun. It gives us our strength for everything else. For other fun activities many of the Brothers have interesting hobbies. I like Kayak fishing, Brother Paschal is learning an instrument, Brother Didacus likes to ride horses, Brother Pio likes to ride his bike.

Server: Really? I had no idea you guys did all that!

Fr. Seraphim: Yes, it’s true. Great questions. Maybe God is calling you to Religious Life. It’s really a wonderful life with good days and difficult days — but with the help of Jesus we continue to do His work in the world and our ‘fun’ activities can help to renew us to do our best for Jesus.