|
Franciscan brother answers call to 'fatherly' love
By Ambria Hammel, ahammel@catholicsun.org
December 18, 2008
SCOTTSDALE — By some accounts, it took Franciscan Father Joe Schwab around 30 years to become a priest.
That includes joining the Santa Barbara province as a Franciscan brother, working at a mission in San Diego, serving as executive director of the Franciscan Renewal Center and, finally, answering the call to the priesthood.
“It’s a vocation within a vocation,” Fr. Schwab said of his second calling.
Fr. Schwab’s newfound role became official Nov. 29 when Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted ordained the Franciscan to the priesthood at St. Mary’s Basilica.
Despite his newfound title, Fr. Schwab will continue to oversee daily operations as executive director of the Franciscan Renewal Center. The major difference is he can now administer the sacraments to members and visitors on retreat.
“I lived my life as a brother very happily,” said Fr. Schwab who took solemn vows as a brother in 1983.
In the last 15 years, however, he had a sense that God was asking something more of him. It was a sense that Fr. Schwab suppressed for awhile.
“Rather than discerning the Spirit in my life, I was saying ‘no’ to where the Spirit was guiding me,” Fr. Schwab admitted after talking with his confessor 15 years ago.
Members and visitors at the Franciscan Renewal Center, better known as the Casa, also talked to him about the priesthood. Then six to eight years ago the subject came up again while talking to a friend who is a priest.
“I really think the Spirit is speaking through the people and you’re not listening very well,” the priest told him bluntly.
Fr. Schwab prayed about his second vocation again, just to be sure.
“Will You please tell me directly in some way because I don’t want this to be about me. I want it to be about Your ministry,” Fr. Schwab prayed.
The following week, the superior of the Franciscan order — who knew nothing of his discernment saga — was visiting and told Fr. Schwab outright he should be a priest.
So with a master’s degree in theological studies already under his belt, Fr. Schwab endured five more semesters of school to earn his master of divinity degree in preparation for the priesthood.
He also spent the last nine months as a transitional deacon assisting in liturgies at both St. Mary’s Basilica and the Franciscan Renewal Center. That gave him the opportunity to hone his homiletic skills.
“I love his homilies. They’re just wonderful. They’re to the point,” said Melinda Berger, who’s been coming to the center for 10 years. “It’ll be wonderful having him be able to preside.”
Berger also called Fr. Schwab “pastoral,” a term Franciscan Brother Jeff Shackleton of the Casa, also used to describe his co-worker and former classmate. The two took a confessions practicum class together at the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley, Calif.
“He’s a very smart man. He has a real good pastoral sense,” Bro. Jeff said, adding that he is easy to talk to and receptive to new ideas.
He attributed that to Fr. Schwab’s life as a brother, which in some ways put him on par with the laity, favoring group decisions over autocracy.
“We talk things out together and tend to make group decisions,” Fr. Schwab said.
This “cooperative ministry,” as Fr. Schwab calls it, is more time-consuming and somewhat less efficient, he said. But it’s also enriching because it gives everyone a voice in what happens at the center.
That’s exactly what Bishop Olmsted challenged Fr. Schwab to do during the ordination.
“Strive to bring the faithful together in one family,” the bishop said in front of a packed crowd from both the basilica and the Casa.
Fr. Schwab has also been uniting active Catholics with those who have fallen away from the Church. He’s worked at the Casa for 10 years and still finds a steady group of Catholics returning to the Church, seeking counseling, healing and faith formation.
“Oftentimes their wounds when they bring them here are very old,” Fr. Schwab said. “They feel that [the Casa] is a safe place to begin that process of healing.”
They quickly become involved at the Casa’s Our Lady of the Angels Conventual Church, which now includes Mass with Fr. Schwab celebrating.
“It’s really about Christ giving Himself to the people through the sacraments,” Fr. Schwab said.
He now joins the majority of brothers — two-thirds — from his province who have sought priestly ordination. Fr. Schwab remains the longest professed brother to join the ranks of the priesthood.
|
