What my vocation means to me now is not exactly what it meant at the beginning. At the beginning, joining the Brothers meant a viable way of Christian living that wasn’t just run-of-the-mill, that guaranteed prayer and sacraments, that also offered service to people through the Church, and, finally, gave an escape from adolescent ineptitude within a congenial academic environment. My experience of three years in a Brothers’ high school convinced me that they were men who were happy in their work and convinced of their faith. They found the classroom, the playing field, the school activities---and their own prayerful lifestyle---satisfying and worth committing themselves to. And those Brothers who took the intellectual life seriously were great examples to me.

Some of that meaning has changed in my old age. I no longer suffer from most of my adolescent uncertainties and embarrassments. The uniqueness of the Brothers’ life still appeals to me. But I find more meaning now, I think, in what the chapel has to offer. In my middle age I found rich meaning in my apostolic work as a teacher and in what I call the intellectual life. Early on, I became interested in various academic matters that seemed important to me. One of the earliest and most influential was an expanded notion of perfection. Religious life in those days was often defined as “a state of perfection.” When it became clear to me that “perfection” is just another way of saying “completion” or of fulfilling one’s potentialities, then its importance loomed large. How the religious life, celibate-poor-obedient, could be “perfect” or complete was a challenging paradox. However, it turned out that I saw the defining word “potentialities” as a key to the meaning. We human beings have multiple and conflicting potentialities. We can become firemen, policemen, lawyers, saints and sinners. It is clear that one should, if possible, perfect one’s highest potentialities---in the order of grace, intellect, service, love. The religious life offers that perfection to those with the appropriate potentialities.