Ten Years of Religious Life

Ten years ago today, at the parish church of St. Philip Neri on Jane St. in Toronto, I and six other men were invested in the Capuchin Franciscan habit and began our canonical religious life. All seven of us are still in the Order today.

I'm grateful for all of it, the joys and the trials, the opportunities and the renunciations.

I've been praying over this in gratitude as a way to try to enter well into my current transition into guardian of the fraternity where I live. I realize that there are a lot of round numbers rolling around in my life around now. This is my fortieth year on this earth. Soon I will have been baptized for half of that life. Just more than half of my baptized life I have spent with the Capuchins, and just over half of that I have been blogging here.

There have been both trials and joys in abundance. But most of all there is the Lord, who is untiring in the way he tries to give me the grace of these consecrations each day. I have hardly made a beginning of living even a token response to such a gift, but who cares? Before the goodness of God and the salvation we have in Jesus Christ, my sins and my love both are tedious and boring.

Praised be Jesus Christ. That's all there is to say.