The Fourth Day

Yesterday, World Day for Consecrated Life and Super Bowl Sunday, was also the launching into the Fourth Day of the 38 new young Lay Marists who completed the three-day Marist Youth Encounter Christ Program in Esopus, New York. It was amazing to see how this eager-from-the-start group grew in their understanding of themselves, their relationship to Jesus, and their call to be Marists, and how readily accepted their commission to live all they learned on the "Fourth Day" of their Encounter, which is every day for the rest of their lives. They were on fire!
During his Fourth Day talk, the Rector of the Encounter, Irving Burbano, told of his shock at seeing an almost empty Church when he went to his usual Mass in his home parish during the Christmas Break. He spoke to his parish priest about the absence of young people, and even of the regular elderly women who used to come to that Mass. It was now an empty desert. Irving agreed to come work in the parish as a youth minister when he graduates from College. I told him that his experience reminded me of St. Marcellin's encounter with the dying Jean Baptiste Montagne, the young lad who had no concept of God, and who thus inspired St. Marcellin to begin the Marist Brothers, and that the present situation with youth demands as radical a move as Champagnat made. "We need Brothers!" he used to say. I challenged Irving to consider such a radical step in his life. He was taken aback, but said he had thought of it from time to time. Perhaps this incident will be a turning point for him.
Two of the Encounterites lost a ping-pong match and as a result had to put on the Marist Habit, and give forty years of their lives as "brothers", which was part of the light-hearted wager of their game. Rather than seeing it as a "punishment", they wore it with pride, and took on the demeanor of happy and dedicated brothers, and honestly, they looked like I did as a young brother a half a century ago. I asked them to consider wearing it permanently, and they did not resist, but seemed open to the possibility. Prayer, discernment, encouragement, and above all, God's call, are needed.
Nevertheless, everyone who left Esopus, has the tools and the incentive, in whatever state of life he or she are called, to add the Marist Mission of making Jesus known and loved to their agenda. Let us keep them and each other in our prayers.
Bro. Rene