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Brother Laughlin opens the afternoon session on men's fellowship by sharing insights on the challenges and opportunities associated with it. He discusses the importance of deepening one's relationship with God, discerning God's calling in one's life, and gathering with like-minded men. He also mentions the bishops' document called "Called and Gifted for the Third Millennium," which highlights the four calls of every Christian: holiness, community, ministry, and Christian maturity. Brother Laughlin emphasizes the need for active spirituality and ministry in various aspects of life, including the workplace. He also talks about the importance of faithfulness and the effectiveness of fellowship groups. Our afternoon session focuses on men's fellowship. Brother Laughlin opens this session with insights into the challenges and opportunities associated with such fellowship. Gentlemen, let's welcome Brother Laughlin Sofield. Thank you, thank you. Good afternoon, can you hear me okay, good. You probably heard the story of the pastor got up into the pulpit and said there's something wrong with this mic and the congregation answered and also with you. I've been sitting here listening and being impressed and edified all morning. When Father Berger was up here and told us that story of the DRE who said to him take the statue, carry the statue, it reminded me of a story that I heard recently before we get into the serious stuff. The story was in Watertown, New York and the sisters were telling me that they had a children's mass at the parish and all the children from the parish school were at the mass and one little boy. The mass had been going on a little bit long and the homily was certainly a little bit too long for the small children and the sister sitting in the back row happened to notice a little boy, first grader, sitting in the front pew who had gotten very bored, turned around and began talking to everybody behind him. The sister looked at him and she went like this and he looked back at her and he went and she looked at him and she went and he looked at her and he went and they said the sister got so frustrated she said to the little girl sitting next to her, you go tell him to sit down and stop talking so obediently the little girl walked out, walked up the side aisle, walked past the front pew, walked into the sanctuary and whispered into the ear of the priest, the sister said, sit down and stop talking and because he had gone to a Catholic school he said yes sister and he did what he was told. When I was first asked to do this, this is what they told me, that it is how do we bring the faith and the fellowship to the workplace and they told me that in the morning we would be talking about that and in the afternoon the whole goal would be, as the day, to stimulate Catholic men to testify to their faith in Jesus Christ in the workplace. In the afternoon you will see in a little bit a typical, maybe not typical, but a fellowship meeting and what they want to do in this afternoon is to focus on the purpose and the efficacy of men's fellowship meeting format. Why did you come today? Think about it for a moment. Why did you come to this today? I would guess, and that's all it is, is a guess, I would guess it might be one or all of three reasons. First you came because you have a hunger to deepen your own relationship with God and you saw today as an opportunity to do that. Secondly, you want to find out and you want to discover where and how is God calling you to discern how and where God is calling you to be a Catholic male and to bring God's message to wherever you live your life every day. And third, I believe you came because you wanted to gather with like-minded men, men who think like you do and feel like you do and have the spirituality that you do because in meeting with them you will begin to get a sense and be able to grow in your own relationship with God. The theme, as you can see on this shirt that they gave me last night, is to answer the call. What are you called to? Have you ever thought about that? What am I as a Catholic male called to? And I'd like to suggest the bishops of the United States have answered that question. They wrote a beautiful document called Called and Gifted for the Third Millennium and if you've never seen it, I would strongly advise you to get a copy of it because it says that every Christian has four calls. First there is a call to holiness, but it's interesting when the bishops talk about holiness they make it very clear that they're not just talking about saying prayers, they talk about a lived spirituality, an active spirituality. If my relationship with God doesn't move me to reach out to others, then I'm probably not a spiritual man. We'll look more at that later. By the way, that term, an active spirituality, was used by Pope John Paul II a number of times in his pastorals. The bishops, when they talk about spirituality, they talk about it, they equate it with the living of the Beatitudes, how you live your life. The second call of every Christian is a call to community and that's why these fellowship groups are so important. The bishops say that we are called not just to live in our own little isolation, but to gather with other like-minded people and they tell us that these communities must be as concerned about people outside as they are with building relationships here. The third call of every Christian is the one that I want to focus on particularly today. Every Christian is called to ministry and to mission. Ministry is not a choice for the Christian. Ministry is our obligation, our privilege, and our responsibility as baptized persons. Every single one of us. I'm a brother and I had a brother whose name was Malachi, who was a brother in our community. He died six years ago. In my family, as I say, my brother was a brother and I'm a brother. My mother used to say to people, I have three sons and two of them are brothers. My brother had bypass surgery twice and the first time he had it, the doctor and I said to my mother and I, you know why this man is always tired? Two of his arteries are 100% blocked and one of them is 90% blocked. This is a man who's working on about 10% of his total capacity and that's why he's always tired. You know why we have a tired church? Because we're not even using 10% of the gift that God has placed there. Every single member of your parish is a gifted and called person. Think about that for a moment because when the bishops talk about ministry, I didn't give you the fourth, did I? I'll give you that in a moment. When the bishops talk about ministry, it's very interesting, they do not begin ministry by what you do in the church. The bishops begin the discussion of ministry by what you do in your home and in your workplace and in your neighborhood. When I heard Gus call the various ministries, and I told him I was going to do this, when I heard him say, who's in the liturgical ministries and who's in this ministry? And I sat there waiting and saying, if he doesn't say it, I'm going to say it. How many of you are called to ministry in your own families, as fathers and as parents? How many of you are called to ministry where you go every day to work, to transform the workplace, to bring Christ and Christ's values into every aspect of where you go and work every day? That's what our bishops told us. And the fourth call, they said, of every Christian is a call to Christian maturity, that we must grow up and we must be more mature if we are going to really have an effect as Catholic men. There's a little section on the area where they talk about the call to Christian maturity, and it says we're not called to success, we're called to faithfulness. We don't have to be right all the time, and if you heard people tell the stories this morning, you heard how they failed. And yet they picked themselves up. By the way, they stole that from Mother Teresa and didn't give her credit. That's her quote. We're not called to success, we're called to faithfulness, that we will make mistakes, we will do wrong, we will be sinful. And yet we'll pick ourselves up and we'll move on. I have to be careful as I move through this, because when I start talking, I get carried away as you'll see. And recently, I was thinking about a talk I was supposed to give. I was shaving, and I cut my neck. And I walked into the community room where I live, and I said to one of my confreres, I was just thinking about a talk I was supposed to give while I was shaving, and I cut my neck. And he gave me some very good advice. He said, next time, think about your neck and cut your talk. I want to cover three things, tell you where I'm going, I'm going to cover three things. I'm going to talk about a statement that Pope John Paul II gave to the bishops of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and then a follow-up study I did after that. I want to share with you my beliefs, and I want you to think about yours. And as I came today, I said, what is it that within me that I believe that will affect what I say to these people? And then the third is because we're looking at the issue of fellowship groups. What transforms these groups? What will make them the most effective? So that's all I want to do, those three things. I just told you what I was going to do, right? Did you ever hear the story, I can't see your faces because I can't see if you look serious or what. Did you ever hear the story of Oliver Wendell Holmes, a great American jurist, but he also had a reputation for perhaps being one of the most absent-minded people that ever existed. And that one day he got on a train, the train pulled out of Union Station, and he went into his compartment and he took off his jacket and he hung it up and he opened up his briefcase, pulled out a legal brief he was working on. And they said anytime he worked on anything, he was so unaware of anything around him. At this moment, the conductor was walking up and down shouting, tickets, tickets, and Mr. Holmes didn't hear him. Finally the conductor opened the door, shouted, tickets. Mr. Holmes began searching and he couldn't find it. The conductor looked at him and he smiled and he said, Mr. Holmes, I know who you are and we all know your reputation. Don't worry about it. When you get where you're going, take the ticket, stick it in an envelope, send it to the company. We understand. They claim at that moment that Mr. Holmes stood up to his full stature and said, my good man, I don't think you understand the severity of the situation. The question is not whether or not I have a ticket. The question is, where am I going? Father Ken made me promise I would use some humor today because it's the afternoon and we have to keep you a little bit awake. I did a little research project and I interviewed the oldest retired archbishops in our country. I interviewed six of them. The oldest was 95 years of age, Archbishop Garrity from Newark. And when we met after we did the interviews and we had a meeting, here I figured I've got a 95 year old man. I can't run sessions for more than a half hour. Three or two hour sessions and he never stopped. He's the energizer bunny. I called up, when we began the research, I called up Archbishop Hannon and I said, Archbishop Hannon, can I interview you? He said, Locke, of course. He said, but we just have to find a time when I'm free. 93 years of age, he said, I'm making three movies and I'm also still running my television program. The dynamism and the pastoral sensitivity of these men overwhelmed me, but why did I interview them? I interviewed them because when Pope John Paul II, one of his last, what's called odd limine visits, when he meets with a group of bishops from a particular area, this is what he said to the bishops of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The date is up there, 9-11-04. He said, I've been listening to you bishops in the United States and you have a crisis. He said, you are losing your credibility, you must change your structures and your governance. They're not working. He said they work for good order, but they are not working to bring about the gospel. He then told the bishops. And this is the key one. That we have to find a way to involve the laity at every level in the church. And when I met with the bishops and I interviewed all six of them and I said to them and I gave them this whole thing, the talks, only three pages, look it up and you'll get it on Google. When I asked each of the six I interviewed, what is the most pressing need in the church today? Everyone said, and most of them with great passion, we have to find a way to involve the laity in more meaningful ways. We will never become the church that God wants us to be. Until we get serious about the role of the laity, as Archbishop Garrity said, we're still playing games with the laity. We tell you, he said, that you have responsibility, but we don't give you the authority. The pope told the bishops. That we have to recapture the vision of the Second Vatican Council, that's why I picked these men to interview, they were the leaders of our church right after the Second Vatican Council and to hear them talk about it with the passion that they have. And to acknowledge the good that has happened. And also to admit how far we still have to go. The pope told the bishops that they had to become more collaborative. That they had to work together, we have to work together. This is what he said to the bishops. But could I suggest that this is what he is saying to each one of us? That this is what we have to begin to do as individuals in the church. Before I get off the bishops, I was working in Canada. And one of the bishops told me that he had just gone out to give a talk in the parish and he said, the man who introduced me said, you know, I'm not going to talk to you, I'm not going to talk to you, he said. The man who introduced me said, do you realize how fortunate we are to have this man, the bishop, with us? He said, you know what it takes to become a bishop? There are three requirements, you probably know this. First, he must be the holiest of all the priests and he must prove his holiness every day by the way he lives his life. Second requirement is he must be the most intelligent. And again, he must prove that through his preaching and his teaching. And he said, the man then said, and the third requirement is he must be of Irish extraction. But then the bishop told me that the man who introduced him said, but in our case, the church saw fit to waive the first two requirements. I want to share with you about five beliefs that I have. And the first belief is the one that each one of you know, because you're here today. There is a hunger among, that's my New York accent, excuse me, there is a hunger among men for spirituality. Your presence today proves that. But every place I go with every group that I work, what I continually see is that men are struggling to find a spirituality that fits them. It fits them as men and it fits them for whatever they're going through in life right now. To listen and be edified this morning by each one of the speakers and to listen to their own personal journey, their search for spirituality and sometimes how it went in strange ways. You have a spirituality that fits you for who you are right now, for whatever you're going through. I remember one time sitting with a man and we were talking about spirituality at dinner and he had Parkinson's disease and all during the meal he would fork would fall on the table. I could see the frustration in his face. And at one point he picked the fork up with his hand shaking. He said, here's my God. He said, when I find God there. If I found God. I believe that that's why you come to the fellowship. To find your God. And I believe that when you come together and with your shares, I'm going to speak about in a moment with one another. You will find God, that's one of my beliefs. But let me ask you a question, because you've been sitting passively. What's one belief that you have in terms of what you believe that brought you here today? What's one belief you have? Think about it for a moment, OK? Just think I'm only going to give you a minute, turn to someone sitting there. Just I can't see all your faces, but I can see people down here going like this. When I said turn to someone sitting near you. And I can read your mind, if you're going to do that again, you're thinking one me next time I'm sitting next to somebody else. Just for a moment or two. Share, what do you believe is your beliefs that brought you today? What is it you believe? Come on, turn. You can talk. Come on, let me hear you. Go ahead. What do you believe? What is it that belief that you have that brought you here today? Go ahead. That's enough. I only have a few minutes, so I'd love to get you talking more. I would love to get you talking more, but the time is limited. Just watching you talk. One of the places I had to go twice in the last six months is I had to go to work in Hawaii. You told me they were compassionate. Have you heard the story of the woman in Hawaii, loved God so much, God appeared to her. God said, I will give you whatever you want. She said, God, I live in Honolulu. My children live in Los Angeles. She said, God, would you build a bridge from Los Angeles? It's a Honolulu. God said, you realize how long that would take, how much that would cost, how that money could be used to feed the poor. He says, is there anything else you would like? She said, yes, I've always wanted to understand men, especially my husband. And God said, you want that bridge to be one lane or two? My second belief. My first belief is that there is a hunger among men for spirituality. My second belief is that you will only grow in relationship. You will grow in terms of one another. You will grow as a person. One of my mentors, I had two of them, are both Jesuit psychiatrists. And one of them used to work with monks over in the Camaldolese monks in France. I said to him one day, Jim, how mature are they? They live in their little huts and they never communicate and they never talk to one another. I said, how how mature are they? And he said, they're as mature as the day they entered. You do not grow in isolation. You need one another. When I was meeting at Notre Dame with the archbishops, one of the archbishops I fell in love with, his name is Hurley. We were talking about changing structures and he said, no, that's the wrong question. And I just want to think what you do in your fellowships. He said, if we would talk to one another and if we would listen to one another and if we would dialogue, we would build trust. And if we build trust, we would develop relationships. And he said, if we developed relationships, we probably wouldn't have to worry about structures. When you build these relationships, it's never an end in itself. Did you hear Coach Kelly this morning, what he tells the young men on his football team, you are to be other centered. When you build the relationships in this community, all Christian communities exist to be in mission and you must go out. My third belief is that you have to be in touch with who is your Jesus, because if I were to ask each one of you, you have a different vision, a different purpose. Have you held any signs up? I can't see him. I have one minute left. OK. I didn't see the others. I apologize. Who is your Jesus? I'd like to suggest to you that there are two qualities that John the Paul said about Jesus. He was compassionate. Excuse me. He healed and he forgave. Could I suggest that if you want to be like Jesus, you have to be healing and compassion and forgiving. Jesus said he looked upon the crowds and he had compassion on them. I believe that that's what's needed by you as men to be men who model forgiveness. And to be men who show compassion. To be men who model forgiveness. And to be men who show compassion to the people you work with every day. There are five things that transform community. One is to share faith. When I say sharing faith, I don't mean saying the same prayers. I mean to sit with one another and say, where have I experienced Godness last week? The second thing that is important, if you're going to have successful groups, is that the members of the groups have to be filled with life. Because you have to show people what it's like to belong to a group of Christian men that you become filled with life. If you walk away from these meetings and you feel burned out, just think about it. What's the witness you're giving? We had a superior general in our community one time. Somebody said, do you have many men in your community suffering from burnout? He said, no, our problem is ignition. The third thing you must do in these groups, I believe, is you must become disciples of forgiveness to one another. Because we live in a world in which there is a lot of violence. And people need you to model for them what it means to be a disciple of forgiveness. We'll hurt one another in relationships, you know that. You know it from your family, you know it from your friends, you know it from your family. But what we need in the world today are men who model for us what it means to forgive. Fourth thing, there's just two. Fourth thing is I would hope that at some point in the midst of these gifts, you identify the gifts of each person. Each one of you is a gift to one another. Each one of you is a gift to one another. Each one of you is a gift to one another. Each one of you is a gift to one another. You identify the gifts of each person. Each one of you is a gift to a person. And I don't mean just, oh, I can count money or I can do this. I mean you have the gifts of compassion, of love, of gentleness. And sometimes we don't know what our gifts are. I remember working with a group one time and I said to one of the men, what are your gifts? He said, I have no gifts. And everybody else said, you have the gift of joy. The moment you walk into a room, your joy infects the rest of us. It lights us up. And he said, I never thought about that as a gift. I thought it was a smile at stop signs. So sometimes the gifts are just so much a part of us. Everybody else can see it and we can't. And the last thing I would like to suggest to you is that when you leave these meetings, you go out to be the body of Christ for others. One time when I was working in the Holy Land, the Holy Land is Ireland. I just presume people knew that, okay? And I met Cardinal O'Fee, the primate of all of Ireland. Cardinal O'Fee had gone to the Senate on the laity. He stood up in front of all of the bishops and he gave his intervention. It was probably the shortest one he ever gave. He said, Patty O'Shea was a man who went to church. He never missed a Sunday. But when he died, he went to hell for what he did on Monday. And then he sat down. Is the message clear? That you are called to go out and to be the body of Christ for others. I'll end with a prayer. It's a prayer of St. Teresa. Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on the world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world. You are his eyes and his hands and his feet. And we together, the community, the fellowship, we are his body. Amen. Amen.
