When I was in high school with the Society of Mary, one of the brothers came
up to me one day at the end of the year while I was writing an exam.
I had completely forgotten about religious life, the priesthood. I was going
out with girls to movies, gatherings, and stuff like that. I was about 16,
and this brother tapped me on the shoulder while I was writing this exam and
said, "Have you ever thought of becoming a Marianist?"
I looked up at him and said, "I am writing an exam and you ask me this
question now?" And he said, "Think about it."
I couldn't get the question out of my mind from that day on. Somebody had
asked me. Someone whom I respected, someone whom I looked up to, and who,
for me at that moment, was the presence of Christ.
Sometimes we ask ourselves, "Why doesn't
God speak louder?" What more could I have expected? We are the ones to whom
God speaks. We look around the table and say: "Not from her, not from him."
I'm sorry, but that just might be where it will come from. We have to be
open to the working of the Spirit in all our lives, and recognize that
someone may say something one day that we didn't expect.
We may want to get rid of it, but ponder it, listen to it carefully. It may
be pointing out something in our lives that is not right, or something to
which we are called. It is the whole question of listening...To me, that day
was a sign that God was going to use His means and not those that I thought
He should be using: visions, apparitions. That would be nice, but that
doesn't happen too often. I was called by one of the brothers I admire.
God's word was passing through him to me, and since that day I have been
much more attentive to what anybody has to say to me or about me.
-an excerpt from Archbishop Roussin's testimony printed in the BC Catholic, April 2005
