Viatorian Community
Spring 2006
Volume 11, No. 2
Provincial’s Perspective remember it well. It was the invitation that changed my life. In 1969, a group of classmates and I from Griffin High School were returning from spending time with ten mentally disabled adults. They lived together in a home on the north side of Fr.Thomas R. von Behren, Springfield, Illinois – my CSV, Provincial hometown. Every month several of us “Key-Clubbers” would visit them. We would play cards, eat pizza, and laugh until tears were streaming down our faces. There we were, every month, volunteering our time, visiting our special friends – always under the watchful, loving eye of our moderator, Fr. Gerry Leahy, CSV.
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Fr. Leahy never learned how to drive. I think he was secretly scared to get behind the wheel. In any event, this fact meant that I would be “his” driver to and from the various events that we attended as members of the Key Club. One night, upon returning home from our time on the Northside, Fr. Leahy turned to me, got that serious look on his face, and asked, “Have you considered joining the Viatorians?” I didn’t flinch. It had been a question I had looked forward to for a long, long time. It did not take long for me to respond. “Yes,” I responded enthusiastically. I had been thinking about it for over two years, and I was waiting to be invited. This quarterly issue of Viator focuses on “Vocation” and the call to serve Christ’s church through service and prayer. Vocation, today, continues to mean what it has always meant, namely, “to call” – to extend an invitation to someone to enter into ministry and service. Vocation will be presented through the Viatorian perspective.
I hope that you are able to capture the spirit of our call and the commitment we have as Viatorians. As you know, while the call remains the same, the invitation to become a Viatorian is now extended to men and women. As lay and religious, we join in the mission of Jesus Christ as presented to us by our founder, Fr. Louis Querbes. People are still called to be Viatorian – and that call is rooted in our baptismal commitment to “come and follow Christ”. The Viatorians continue to call men and women, on a personal level, to share our mission, our community, and our spirituality. The call is personal and then becomes communal. It is by a personal invitation from one Viatorian to another, to come and experience, come and share, come and help create the Viatorian Community anew. It is in sharing that experience with other Viatorians that transforms the experience from personal to communal. These are exciting times. While indeed we are experiencing a “vocation crisis” within our vowed membership, we are experiencing “vocation growth” within association. Whether vowed or associate, I believe that the invitation to be “Viatorian” is found first within the stirring of the Holy Spirit and then experienced on a personal level – with a Fr. Leahy risking to ask, to invite, to journey with someone who is called. Let us not be afraid to invite, to mentor, and to share our life with others. Let us be the Fr. Leahy of yesterday to those we encounter today.