reflection assignment

Moreau’s Vocation Story

Fr. Moreau was born into and raised in a deeply religious Catholic family in post-revolutionary war France. From his youth he felt called to the Catholic priesthood and was encouraged to pursue that vocation by his parish priest. While engaged in seminary studies his superiors noted his intellectual abilities and zeal for pursuing an intense spiritual life. Thus, following his ordination to the priesthood, he was assigned to advanced studies and to a year of intense spiritual formation to prepare him to teach in the seminary.

Due to his intense personality, academic gifts, and zeal, he was a popular professor in the seminary and was often called upon to oversee important projects by his bishop. The needs of the Church at the time were many. After the French Revolution, the educational system in France had been devastated and needed to be rebuilt. In addition, priests needed better training to preach the gospel and to minister to God’s people. As seminary professor he began to dream of founding a group of auxiliary priests to assist in parishes as dynamic preachers. At the same time his bishop asked him to assume responsibility for a group of teachers, the Brothers of St. Joseph, whose founder was ill and could no longer lead them. Thus, a dream began to take shape in his mind: joining the brothers and priests into a community to meet the educational and spiritual needs of the poor in his region of France.

As the community, Holy Cross, named after a neighborhood in Le Mans, began to spread across France, Moreau realized how important women would be to his work and so sought to include religious sisters in his community to serve God’s people. As the work of Holy Cross became known, Moreau received requests from bishops in the New World, the United States and Canada, to send his religious priests, brothers, and sisters to serve God’s people. The pope requested that the Congregation assume responsibility for a challenging mission in Bengal. Even though the community was small and not yet fully recognized in Rome, Moreau’s zeal led him to send members of his community to start educational foundations not only in North America, but in Algiers, Poland, Italy and Bengal.

Throughout his life Moreau gave himself over to an intense living of a spiritual life. His prayer was marked by an emotional intensity and a desire to imitate the life of Jesus Christ. He consistently shared his life with others by entering into spiritual direction. Moreau shared his spiritual life, his struggles and life circumstances with wise priests, who guided him on his spiritual journey. His journey was replete with what might be named, “calls within a call.” Perceiving himself to be called to be a priest, he found himself called to become a seminary professor, an author of spiritual books, and a founder of a religious community. His spiritual direction relationships were an important component of his ongoing discernment of what God was asking of him, his vocation.

As his community grew in number and geographic breadth, Moreau resigned as the head of the Congregation. He had experienced some major disappointments and came to believe that his leadership had become an obstacle to the Congregation’s mission. The Sisters were not permitted to remain as members of the Congregation of Holy Cross and so were separated from it, while remaining in close relationship. Financial challenges impeded the work of the congregation and caused much discord between Moreau and other Holy Cross priests and brothers. Following his resignation, Moreau returned to his ministry of preaching parish missions, the work that embodied his own passion before the call of the world and the Church set him on a path that he claimed was not of his own making. He believed that the Congregation he founded was “not a human work, but God’s very own.”

Purpose: Sharing Moreau’s story is meant to highlight the various intersections in the pursuing of one’s vocation: the confluence of personal qualities, the encouragement of others, the context and needs of the world (church), in particular, and the sharing of one’s life with others as a means of discerning one’s course of action, life’s purpose or vocation.

· Moreau’s personal qualities

· Intense personality

· Intelligent

· Academically curious

· Zealous

· Spiritual

· Committed to Justice

· Moreau’s context: the needs of the world/Church

· Devastated state of education in France in the aftermath of the French Revolution

· Needs of the Church, requests from his superiors

· Challenge of the “New World”