Warriors, yet sheep

A Seminarian’s Perspective on Brotherhood

When I was in high school, the football team sort of ran our school for the duration of their season, at least from a social standpoint. Everything revolved around the football team, their schedule, and their wins and losses. I didn’t play football, but I always admired the brotherhood they had. One year, their theme was, “As iron sharpens iron,” taken from Proverbs 27. Through this verse, they were painting the image of warriors in my mind. They were warriors whose common goal of victory was best achieved when they kept each other sharp by challenging one another until the time came where they must stand unyieldingly together. That is how I always viewed brotherhood.

When I went to college, I had male peers who were helping form me for the first time. I grew significantly through their help, and I thought I had community life pretty-well figured out when I transferred to Conception. I still had that same “as iron sharpens iron” mentality I formed in high school. I saw my brothers as men by whose side I would grow into the warrior Christ needs in the world and help them to do the same.

When I sat down to pray and reflect on my experience with community life and formation, the first thing that came to mind was Christ’s words in Matthew 10:16. Jesus says to the Apostles, “Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves.” There is a gentleness in this image that is a stark contrast to the image formed in my mind by the verse in Proverbs. There is a tension in the two that in my experience perfectly captures what it means to me to be formed by the men with whom I live.

There is a brokenness in the world; it manifests itself in all of us. This should come as no surprise to someone who professes belief in original sin and its effects, but my first solution as a hopeful priest was to become a warrior to combat this brokenness. So far my time in seminary has taught me that, although there are times the Church needs priests to stand up as warriors before an enemy, more often than not, it needs priests to love people in their brokenness. I have learned this every day, having both the pleasure and the pain of sharing every aspect of my daily routine with the same group of men. Some days are easy, some are hard, but when you live in close contact with people you will, without a doubt, encounter their brokenness. And this means that they, no matter how hard you try to hide it, are going to experience yours. They are going to experience it because they are going to be hurt by it, and they can respond with sword drawn or with the gentleness of a sheep.

My time in seminary has taught me that if we are going to stand unyieldingly, God-willing, one day together as priests, we must know when to be sheep and when to be warriors. Life in a community must strengthen, and it must soften. It must sharpen, and it must smooth the edges. My time at Conception Seminary College has changed my perspective. When someone I live with hurts me, rather than seeing him as an adversary, I’m learning to see him as my brother who shares in the same brokenness as I and who needs my love to overcome it, just as I need his. 

Liam Murphy, Diocese of Grand Island
Community Council President