Criteria

Sometimes a person will ask; what kind of person do you have to be to join a religious order like the Marist Fathers?

The answer is quiet simple, but I will put it two ways

The person you are, provided that:

• You really do want to serve God as a priest in a community.
• You really do want to know Jesus Christ more intimately and to follow him.
• You do realise that this is going to involve your whole life.
• You have good health and stamina.
• You have common sense, a balanced sexuality and a general outlook,
• You have the capacity to learn from others, to grow, adapt and change,
• You have sufficient academic ability to follow studies for the priesthood.

Joining Religious Life or the Priesthood means that you enter a leadership role in the Church. In doing so there are certain qualities needed by those who take up leadership roles in the Church.

• A capacity to be interdependent and to work with others
• An inner authority
• An ability to manage conflict
• Where the mission is central and not ones own needs
• A capacity for intimacy – for healthy, fruitful and close relationships
• A responsibility for mentoring/guiding others, to lead others to deeper questions about life!

Reflection

The desire to ‘make a difference’.

A friend of ours was walking down a deserted Mexican beach at sunset. As he walked along, he began to see another man in the distance. As he grew nearer, he noticed that the local native kept leaning down, picking something up and throwing it out into the water. Time and again he kept hurling things out into the ocean. As our friend approached even closer, he noticed that the man was picking up starfish that had been washed up on the beach and one at a time, he was throwing them back into the water. Our friend was puzzled.

He approached the man and said, “Good evening, friend. I was wondering what you are doing”. “I’m throwing these starfish back into the ocean. You see, it’s low tide right now and all of these starfish have been washed up onto the shore. If I don’t throw them back into the sea, they’ll die up here from lack of oxygen”. “I understand”’ my friend replied, “but there must be thousands of starfish on this beach. You can’t possibly get to all of them. There are simply too many. And don’t you realise this is probably happening on hundreds of beaches all up and down this coast? Can’t you see that you can’t possibly make a difference?”. The local native smiled, bent down and picked up yet another starfish, and as he threw it back into the sea, he replied, “Made a difference to that one!”

Do you want to make a difference?

Read about our entrance process