BROTHERS
JOE AND VINCE, OP
Dominican Brothers
An interview with Br. Joe and Br. Vince:
Br. Joe: All Christians are called to live out the Evangelical Counsels. Everyone’s called to imitate Jesus, who was poor, chaste, and obedient. But for us, it’s making the whole of that an act of worship towards God. Everything we do is consecrated towards making Christ present, same way as a married couple, it’s not merely that they love each other but that their love is an image of Christ’s love for the Church. So our life is worship toward God to call all people to the praise of God who is good and the giver of all good things. That’s not merely at the chapel while we’re at prayer. It’s making everything we do some part of the praise of God in this world whether that’s community or whether it’s office work or manual labor. It’s all dedicated to the glory of God.
What does it mean to be a consecrated person?
How did you know you wanted to be a brother and not a priest?
Br. Vince: Well, fortunately there were brothers in the parish I was at, even though most people didn’t know Dominicans had brothers, and they thought all Dominicans were priests. It was a gift of the Lord that I knew that there were brothers. Having contact with the Dominicans in the parish drew me toward the Dominicans. At that time, the Order had many institutions that needed brothers in the maintenance of a building, so my skills in construction were helpful for that.
Br. Joe: I didn’t want to be a priest. It was a difficult thing to sort out because I did not grow up knowing brothers or seeing any around. The first one that I met, I was intrigued by, but just meeting one person, you don’t get a whole sense of what the life is. Before that, I had gone through several years of changing my mind about what I wanted. I started out in Chemical Engineering, but I figured out I did not like it, so I switched to studying math to be a math teacher, which wasn’t enough. Then I was looking at religious life, and didn’t want to celebrate Mass. The sacraments are wonderful, but I just didn’t want to be the one celebrating them. So, it was a combination of figuring out what I didn’t want and then seeing, this is what I do want, this total commitment to God, but without this element of sacramental ministry. And it wasn’t until seeing it in practice that it became clear to me.
How has the life of a brother changed?
Br. Vince: We had I think eight brothers in my class. But most of them were just out of high school or had had some job work, but I was the eldest of the brothers there. Most were quite young. I had one brother who kind of mentored me. He was only a high school graduate, so at that time, the brothers did more of the manual labor. In our institutions, we needed people to answer the doors, to cook, to do various jobs that need to be done in any institution. My ministries were within maintaining our buildings. I worked at River Forrest in our Theologate there, and then I went to Dubuque, Iowa, and the brother there had gotten permission to go to the missions. The provincial wanted me to go to that building, and it was a huge building. I had to learn the whole building myself. It was a good learning experience. Brothers lived in one part of the building and the priests lived in another. You didn’t interact too much with each other. That was pre-Vatican two, so things did change after that. But I was director of buildings there. And then I moved to Madison where I began taking care of the parish. It is a very stable and good life. But after a while, of course, we did eliminate a lot of our institutions, and that changed things.
Br. Joe: I only know the differences from study, not from experience. I haven’t lived through it at all. Augustan Thompson has a book on the history of the cooperator brother. One of the things I’ve taken from the research of the history of it is that there seems to always be a combination of two factors. One is the needs of the order, and the other is the reality that the brothers come from. Our Order is sanctifying real human beings who come in with real skill sets in their time and their place and their culture. And so what that looked like in pre-revolutionary France verses in the present day are just not the same thing in terms of the people coming. And yet that has to be combined with what the Order needs. So there’s been different eras when brothers were much more internal in their ministry. In other eras, they were out and about in community doing a lot more social work. There’s a wide variety of things, but it’s always for the purpose of the Order bringing real human beings to holiness in some form. The church right now seems to focus a lot more on direct pastoral ministry. People don’t seem to pay as much attention to the real importance of behind the scenes work, but no good mission is ever carried out without that. That need hasn’t vanished, but we focus on different things at different times.
What things have remained the same?
Br. Vince: The brothers at the time said a separate and smaller office than the priests, but we still had the prayer. That’s not the same, but still it was along the same lines. I remember we would be in the hallway up in our brothers section saying the office of the Blessed Mother. Of course we had the rosary. That’s been constant, encouraging everybody to say the rosary. People haven’t changed. They say when you see one Dominican, you’ve seen one Dominican. We are really a varied group of people. We’re encouraged to be individuals, and I don’t think that’s changed.
Br. Joe: One thing I’ve seen is that the brothers share a real love for the mission of the order and that seems to be stable throughout the generations. There’s a love of Christ that brought us here. There’s a love of what we’re doing that keeps us all here. Even though many parts of the life and day to day practices might be different, there is a real sense that we came here to help the preaching of the gospel in the ways that we’re able. And that is a real stability of purpose.
What do you think the brother vocation will look like in the future?
Br. Joe: I don’t know what the vocation will look like in the future. I think the pattern of sense-of-purpose and contribution isn’t going to go away. The difficulty is knowing what our world will look like, what our church will look like. I do think there’s always going to be a place for the brother because there will always be a desire in people for religious life who want to contribute in a different way than priestly ministry. But I think it’s one of the beauties of the church that these things do shift so much because it reminds us that its these people being made holy, it’s this church, it’s these children of God and the fact that we can’t say exactly what it will be like is part of what makes it so wonderful to have vocation in the Catholic Church. That we’re not being forced to be the same. Like Fr. Vincent said, if you’ve met one Dominican, you’ve met one Dominican. It’s part of the beauty of the individuality of human beings. God will work in whatever world that exists in 50 or 100 years to make that church better, and that will be great, whatever it ends up being.
Br. Vince: Society constantly changes, and we’re not supposed to be completely separate from society, or at least we can’t avoid that and so we have to be ready for change. The world is constantly changing, which I’ve been through many changes throughout my life. You can just look at the world now with what’s happening and hopefully we can help bring stability in some way to people’s lives, but you don’t want to be rigid. I think in the past, there was a problem with the fear of change. I was in high school during WWII. I was drafted at the Korean war, so I spent two years in the army in chemical warfare. I’m used to seeing so much violence in the world and I pray that things will settle down eventually. So the brothers in the future, I can almost see that the needs for people doing administration in the order and the need to have certain skills, maybe that’s what it will continue to be.
Br. Joe: And when you entered, it was people to run buildings that we needed, now we’d love to have people to run websites and what we’ll need in 50 years, I have no idea. But we’ll need people to help make everything possible.
What’s your greatest joy as a Dominican Brother?
Br. Joe: That I am a better person than I would’ve been if I hadn’t been here. The life makes us holier. There are lots of little moments when you discover traits in yourself that weren’t there before you entered. Ways that you can help serve the church that you couldn’t have otherwise. The joys are not necessarily the ones I expected but they’re the ways in which we can really do something for the sake of Christ and our community and that can be a joy. Sometimes the joy is that I’ve learned to love people that I might not have been able to otherwise. But at the end of the day, the one joy is Christ. That is the joy of religious life on a regular basis. When all else gets frustrating or annoying, the ability to come back in prayer over and over again to God is the joy that fuels it all.
Br. Vince: Since joining the order, I’ve felt joyful even during the difficult times that we’ve gone through and for me it’s just been a wonderful experience, having experienced life for many years before I entered. I was in my 30s. They say many times people in their 30s look back on life and say, this is not right. So I thank God for finding where I should be. This is where I belonged. So it’s joyful and wonderful.
How old were you when you joined the Order?
Br. Vince: 32
Br. Joe: 24
What advice do you have for men who feel called to the Brother vocation?
Br. Vince: Sometimes people think that living in community is a perfect thing, but it’s a challenge, probably like married life. There are so many people you have to work with. You may want the prayer life and the mission, but if you can’t live in community, then it won’t work.
Br. Joe: Get to know some brothers and develop self-discipline. You won’t find a vocation dedicated to God if you’re not developing a deep love for God that can nourish you through all the ups and the downs. This is something God calls us to, and part of that is just sitting and listening and nurturing that desire for God and trusting that God really will lead you to where he wants you to be. But you know, you have to get to know things in the Order. You can’t just abstractly discern, so getting to know a brother and the different options helps you to see what it really is you are choosing. And then in any vocation, one of the hard things is just developing the discipline to really carry out what Vince said. Community sounds great, but the day to day life of actually choosing to do things you don’t want to do, to obey, to show up for events that other people really enjoy and you don’t like. It takes a lot of training of self to be oriented outwards. And it’s very difficult to live really any vocation, but I can at least say for religious vocations that it’s very difficult to live it if you don’t have some mastery of self.
How does your identity as a Dominican shape your identity as a Brother?
Br. Joe: So I discerned with the missionaries of charity brothers for a little bit because I had a great love for Mother Teresa, I was really drawn to the work that she did and she just from the time I was a kid really inspired me. So I went out and spent a week working with them. And a couple days in, they said I would be absolutely miserable there because I like thinking way too much. So the life dedicated to pursuit of truth really is important to me. I’m not just any type of brother, I’m a brother who’s a part of an Order that loves the study of God and that shapes the work that I do and what I do in my free time and the reading that I enjoy and the type of praying that we do.
Br. Vince: I have enjoyed the intellectual side of the Dominican vocation. We delve into the unknowns and constantly keep learning about new things.