The trials of a novice

For Brother Christopher Silva, his year of novitiate was a “difficult year of discernment.” But at the Liturgy of the Profession, he finally felt overwhelming peace.

When Capuchin Franciscan Brother Christopher Silva walked down the center aisle of Old Mission Santa Inés on July 14 with fellow Brother Ernesto Sanchez, he still harbored doubts about professing temporary vows of poverty, chastity and obedience to God.

It had been a difficult year of discernment for the 24-year-old, self-described “Air Force brat.” He was born at March Air Force Base near Riverside and raised on Edwards Air Force Base in the high desert, where his father, Chris, served as a Master Sergeant and mother, Rebecca, works in the retail store on base.

When he’s asked what it was like to be part of the first new international class at the San Lorenzo novitiate nearly 10 miles from the old mission founded in 1804, Brother Silva can’t quite stifle a chuckle. “You want to know my perspective inside the novitiate, or now that I’m out of it?” he quips.

The Paraclete High School and Cal State University at Fresno graduate breaks up before explaining. Like the other novices from the North American Pacific Capuchin Conference as well as the Province of Great Britain, he went through an almost year-long postulancy plus a pre-novitiate, getting-to-know-each-other experience in Victoria, Kansas, for two months before coming to San Lorenzo. The former Western American Province seminary and retreat center occupies about 400 acres in the Santa Inés Valley, amidst gently rolling golden hills dotted with dark green oaks.

“When you’re in it, it’s kind of a pressure tank,” says Brother Silva. “There’s so many things going on. So it can be very stressful at times. I mean, you’re living with 21 guys, and they’re your brothers and you get to know them as brothers. But you get on each other’s nerves. It’s a real family environment.

“So there was just getting used to living in community with men ranging in age from 20 to 48, and from all over the United States plus England, Guam and Africa. You have to deal on a day-to-day basis with people who not only had different life experiences, but also were at different stages of their lives. I mean, it was challenging.”

‘Dealing with yourself’
Another stress came from the formation team itself, the four religious who guided the novices: Father Frank Grinko, Province of St. Conrad, Denver; Father Bobby Barbato, Province of Our Lady of the Angels, California; Father Gerard O’Dempsey, Province of the Assumption, Australia; and Brother Jerry Johnson, Province of St. Joseph, Detroit.

The class of novices at San Lorenzo started out with 22 men in July 2011, winding up with 18 finishing the novitiate and professing temporary vows like Brothers Silva and Sanchez in their home provinces. At times, the Air Force brat felt like he was under a microscope, constantly being watched and evaluated by members of the formation team, although he also realized they were there chiefly to support him, not judge him.

“But for me, I guess, the big thing is you’re dealing with yourself a lot,” he points out. “A lot of it is frustration on what you can’t change, or even if you’re starting to change but you know you’re going back and asking, ‘Well, have I really grown all that much?’ And it took me all year, because all year I struggled with, ‘I’m not growing. I’m not going anywhere with this. What am I doing? I’m not going anywhere.’”

Although he was encouraged to “just hang in there another month” by both the vocation director who recruited him, Father Peter Banks, and his spiritual director, the month turned into another month-long “dark night of the soul” as the 16th century mystic St. John of the Cross so aptly phrased it. And the 40 days of Lent, the traditional Christian period for penance, repentance and self-denial, during his novitiate year extended past Holy Week and Easter, where he normally had found so much consolation.

Still Brother Silva stayed and prayed. More and more, he simply sought silent times to listen, although he never actually heard any concrete replies.

“If I did, I’d be more worried, I think,” he observes with another quick laugh. “But it’s sitting there and that whole Psalm 43 of ‘Be still and know that I am God.’ That’s where I finally found comfort this year. It’s that sitting still and just, ‘God, this is bothering me, but it’s yours.’ Just sitting there and realizing that God is God.

“And that for me has been my pathway into contemplative prayer and a moment where I kind of flipped it around saying, “This is all about you; it’s not about me.’ And I have moments where it’s still becomes ‘Me! Me! Me!’ But I have that reference now, where it’s not really about me. It’s about something more than me.”

‘Defined my life’
And with hindsight, Brother Silva’s year as a Capuchin Franciscan novice appears a lot more positive. The pressure tank formed him in ways he never thought possible while going through it.

But he also readily admits there’s still a “fair amount” of doubt in his mind about his radical life choice. All he knows for certain right now is that he’s happier after his experience at San Lorenzo and taking temporary vows than if he hadn’t.

“Looking back on the novitiate, looking back at all the experiences that I had and the experiences I had to actually sit down and pray, looking at all the classes we went through — everything kind of led me to where I am now, where I can actually say I’m really at peace having vowed this life and going on to study at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley to prepare to live this life, God willing, for the rest of my life.

“So in retrospective, the novitiate was probably the best year I’ve had in my life. When I graduated from high school, I said that. When I graduated from Fresno State, I said that, too. But I’m at that point now where I can honestly say the novitiate was the year that has defined my life now where I am at.”

Free to love unconditionally
After the Gospel was read at the special July 14 Mass at Old Mission Santa Inés, the solemn Liturgy of the Profession began. In his homily, Father Matt Elshoff pointed out that this day happened to be the feast day of Blessed (soon to be canonized as Saint) Kateri Tekakwitha, the young Alquoquin Native American woman who converted to Catholicism and died at the age of 24.

“She says, ‘I am no longer my own; I have given myself entirely to Jesus Christ,’” reported the Capuchin Franciscan provincial of Our Lady of the Angels province. “We hear this same desire to be free to love unconditionally in a Francis of Assisi, who says to his father, ‘From now I can freely say, ‘Our Father who art in heaven, not father Peter Bernadone.’”

Looking at the robed candidates, he added, “Today, Ernesto and Christopher, you have come here to ask for that same gift — to be free to love unconditionally. Through vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, you have come here to embody the words of today’s Gospel: ‘Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow Me.’ In this way, you, too, will be free to love unconditionally.”

Brother Christopher Silva doesn’t really remember reading the vow formula to Father Elshoff, who was sitting in a high-back chair in front of the altar area, as he knelt before him. But he does recall placing his hands in the classic prayerful position and how the provincial gently cupped his hands over his own.

The neophyte Capuchin confides, “It was at that moment where a kind of overwhelming peace came over me,” with emotion still notching his voice weeks after. “And I’m like, ‘OK, I can do this.’ Better yet, I was already doing it.”