21: Aspiring to Be a Novice

I was only "Brother Sean" for a red hair over four years, so while priests and religious who give their whole lives to similar missions may be smug to my perspective, it really comes down to this: you can kick the boy out of the monastery, but you can't kick the monastery out of the boy. Who I am is forever changed because of those four years, and more succinctly, because of who I chose to become in all the years since.

March 31, 1994

Dear Brother George Edward,

     Throughout the past nine months, I have had the opportunity of forming many friendships; friendships with my Brothers, friendship with God, and friendship with myself.  I am very grateful for the blessings that I have received and for the opportunity to grow more fully in the life of Jesus Christ.  Though I have had some stumbling blocks along the way, I have learned to see them as stepping stones on the sometimes bumpy path of religious life.

     I have a strong dedication to our Blessed Mother and my faith in God has only grown stronger since I made my aspirancy promises in July of 1993.  I see and understand the importance of community living, and my experiences in community have reassured me that I am loved by God and loved by my Brothers in fraternal charity.

     As I begin my novitiate year, I hope to continue my formation in the Society of Mary as I seek not to be perfect but to be perfected through God's infinite love and protection, and through the continued support of my Brothers in the faith.  With this said, I formally request entrance into the novitiate.

Sincerely Yours in Christ Jesus,
Brother Sean Patrick Brennan, S.M.

Reading old letters I wrote to my family and friends in those years, I see far too much artificiality and hyper-religiosity, but not here. Here I see only a sincere desire to grow and learn as a Marianist Brother.

Brother George E. Endres and me in 1993 at the occasion of my Aspirancy Promises.
(George is much taller than me, but I was standing on a higher platform.)

Provincial Leadership and History:

George Edward Endres was our Provincial and also the President of the high school (the two are sometimes the same person, but don't need to be). While my fellow young brothers and I answered to a Novice Master, an Assistant Novice Master, and a Prefect, we had three other superiors within the community as well.

The Provincial is the head of the entire province, and the Assistant Provincial is his assistant, customarily one priest and one brother in no required rank order. We also had a Director, whose job is to lead the individual community. In our province, we had two communities, one located at Chaminade High School where I lived, and one located at Kellenberg High School, the school I graduated from.

It's important to note that there are two provinces in the United States. The first is the Province of the United States, which covers almost the entirety of the nation, and the second is the Province of Meribah, where I was, which exists only on Long Island. The Meribah Province broke off from the rest of the country in 1976. The brothers explained to me once I learned of this that the order proper was becoming too liberal (my words, not theirs), that they stopped enforcing the use of the habit and were going in a direction counter to their beliefs.

It was my inclination then that I was privileged to be among a group of men who cared more than any other Marianists in the world about tradition and community. Today though? Well, now I see them for who they really are: a fringe group of hyper-conservative men who have thankfully softened slightly from their hard-line past, and who have done amazing work regardless of how my personal history with them forever colors my opinions.

Their motto in Latin speaks to their strictness, however. Servire Quam Sentire is translated on Wikipedia as meaning "serve with feeling", but Fr. Philip Eichner, the province's founder and first provincial, and Fr. Francis Keenan, its second provincial and my Novice Master, explained it instead as meaning "service, not feelings".

If that unnerves you a little, good. It should. In fact, though my Latin is shaky at best, as I look through various sources, it seems "quam" translates to "rather than" and not "with" as it seems to be shared in some sites online. I leave it to smarter people than I to look into this if you so choose, but regardless, the darker translation is certainly what the province's founders taught me.


Aspiring to be a Novice:

We all start off in elementary school, escalate into middle school and then high school, but even then, once we finally get "high", we're called freshmen. One more year and we're sophomores, wise fools. One more year after that and we're juniors. Then, for one brief year of our educational life, we're called seniors. After that, if we go to college, we're freshmen again and repeat, but even if we get all the way through college, we're still only called undergrads. I can say I have a college degree, but some will see it as "only an undergraduate degree".

In the monastery, we began as aspirants. Near the end of our aspirancy year, we applied for admission into the novitiate. It was explained to us that we must formally request permission to enter the novitiate from our provincial, which is the letter I shared at the start of this post. Once I entered the novitiate, I spent one year from 1994 to 1995 preparing to make vows. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, but--spoiler alert--those are only called temporary vows. You don't make permanent vows for several more years.

As it is, three different men who joined before us, one still in the novitiate and the other two already teaching at Chaminade, subsequently left the order rather than make their permanent vows. Suffice to say, each step of this process is sacred, and is well protected by the leadership of the province and order and by the institutional timeline itself.

It was Thursday, March 31st, 1994 when I wrote and submitted that letter to my provincial: Holy Thursday that year. I wouldn't receive an answer right away, but I did continue my discernment in the days to come, which is where my journey takes us next.


Coming Up Next: Candles in the Dark