Before I became the St. Augustine Missionary, or anything professional, I was a college student, preparing myself for the "real world" of business, clocking in, and pay checks. I spent my 4 standard college years in St. Augustine at Flagler College, a small, Liberal Arts school of roughly 2,400 students and more ghost stories than…well anywhere else that I’ve been. After that, I spent some time in parish youth ministry in Deland, FL and Land O’Lakes, FL. I then worked at a bank for a year in Tallahassee. So being able to come back to St. Augustine has been a great homecoming experience for me. The 3 weeks of FRATERNUS Missionary training that started at the end of July was a bit like a time warp, filled with running into old friends. In the 1st week, I ran into 2 former roommates. One, Caleb, was working at the cafe inside the fancy hotel across the street from where training was going on, which was also where every missionary at training would get their free internet. We hugged, reminisced about winning Flagler’s Battle of the Bands, and enjoyed your general "what are you doing now" conversation.

The other former roommate, Dan, turned out to live in the same apartment building as I am, and is actually directly next door to me! Crazy, I know. I came to know this information one day after training when i heard a knock on my door. I opened it to see Dan standing before me in khaki cargo shorts, with his shirt off. He was standing in his usual relaxed pose, with his hip leaning out to one side and his shoulders leaning the other way(kind of like a cool anime character). I then heard his deep, buttery voice give me that familiar, "Hello there." I was instantly feeling comfortable in my new home.

Getting ready for the recruitment rush has been intense. This is St. Augustine’s first year with FRATERNUS, so we’ve been busy trying to go to schools, talk to boys about FRATERNUS, and recruit Captains. My old contacts from when I was a Flagler College student are becoming extremely useful. I’m talking to friends involved in other ministries about going to lunches with them at the public schools. The leaders of the Christian clubs at Flagler are trying to hook me up with possible captains that are involved in their ministries. Actually knowing where the schools are already is a huge help as well!

Having 4 years of St. Augustine living under my belt has also helped me to have a great few weeks with my newly-wed wife since I know where everything is, and where all of the "good places" are. We’ve had a fantastic time together already, and are getting more and more involved at the Cathedral and the city.

I feel completely at home in St. Augustine, and I’ve only been a registered parishioner for a week!

God is so awesome!!

Praised be Jesus Christ… now and forever! After several months of prayer and many conversations, Bishop David Choby has given his blessing to FRATERNUS and invited the program to be implemented in the Diocese of Nashville this fall. Herein begins the national launch of this much-needed formation program for young men.

I’ve known Tommy Van Horn, FRATERNUS Director of Program, for nearly two years now. We met on a silent retreat at Covecrest, Life Teen’s summer camp in Tiger, GA. You may be asking yourself how we met in the midst of several days of silence, and I think Tommy and I are still asking that same question today. Needless to say, it was easy to stay in touch because of our joint desire to bring about opportunities for young men to grow in their love for the Lord Jesus Christ and develop lifestyles of regular prayer and heroic virtue. Between summer missionary work and regular involvement in parish youth ministries since college, there are few apostolates that bring me greater joy than that of helping boys become men of chastity, integrity, and discipleship.

It is an exciting time for FRATERNUS and an exciting time for the city of Nashville. There are many families who have expressed a deep-rooted interest in the program, and it will be natural to begin taking steps for an October kick-off. Just last week, six high school guys, two recent college grads, and I woke up at 6:30 AM on a Saturday morning for Mass, a holy hour, and epic chocolate chip pancakes followed by an intense wiffle ball game. This occurred only hours before my meeting with Bishop Choby, during which he gave his official blessing to the program.

The Holy Spirit has already been moving powerfully in Music City, USA. Please pray for us as we make preparations for our first FRAT night. Between now and then, we are training captains, recruiting brothers, and raising money to make FRATERNUS possible in the great city of Nashville, TN.

Glory to the Sacred Heart of Jesus… glory to the Immaculate Heart of Mary!

For anyone who hasn’t already, read “Crazeal,” my blog last week. It’s relevant to what I’ll say today and it makes my boss LOL. I’ll wait.

“We need to be wholly integrated to become holy.” This message came this tuesday from Fr. Chris, similar to what Fr. Will said last week. (if you still haven’t read what Fr. Will said last week, ahem…Mom, read it now).

Bradley (it’s the name he prefers) spoke on this in his blog, to cleanse ourselves from the inside out. I won’t beat a dead ostrich. New approach. Fr. Chris spoke on the constant need for balance. We can’t feel self-satisfied at the end of the day if we helped an Old Lady across the street but we neglected to pray. Nor can we pray for an hour then run over the same Old Lady in our vehicles as we leave church. Sidenote: The time when I can think I’m most likely to get in a car accident is in the parking lot ten minutes after mass. Possibly because everyone is so excited to “Go forth and love and serve the Lord” that they peel out. I’m sure that is for most people, not all though. I love getting off topic.

We need both. Faith and Works. God doesn’t ask one or the other from us, He wants ALL of us. Some days, I can feel God gently encourage me to be more active, to call this person, to prank call Tommy. Sometimes (this one more often than not) He’ll encourage me to BE. To stop fidgeting in my holy hour. To break up my day and sit down with someone, cell phone off, and ask “How are you doing. Really, how are you?” As I sit at my desk and stare at St. Francis (he’ll win the staring contest, he always does), his ministry reminds me of what I need to be doing. All he ever wanted was to go to the ends of the earth to preach, but sometimes God grounded him so that he could serve in a different way. How many times have I asked God to send me there, to do this, to do that. God is God, I am not.

This applies to other areas of life as well. I was in the best shape of my life when I stuck to my workout regime, keeping everything in balance with an exact ratio. For every two pushups, eat an Oreo (three pushups to a double stuff). My workout only ever suffered when I focused on just the pushups. This is the workout Tommy follows when training for the Copper Man. Have you seen Tommy lately? If you’ve ever seen a FRATERNUS pamphlet, then you’ve seen Tommy. All jokes aside, call Tommy.

Ugh, self-help books. Smile more, then you’ll have friends. No you won’t. What self-help book out there focuses on the inside and out? The entire person? Faith and works? Hint: Crush studied it daily for FOUR years in the seminary. The Bibleoteca. I’m pretty sure that means Bible in Spanish.

You need to have the heart a monk and the zeal of a missionary.

God Bless

KWess

Did anyone notice?

My normal day for blogging is Monday.  It’s now Wednesday and my blog is not up.  For those who work with me this may be a shock because I am very careful with my time.  Well, I hope that communicated how busy we are here at head quarters.  And it gives me chance to say two things that are very true for me right now:

1- I am really loaded down with the kickoff season upon us and…

2- I love it.

Work is not bad.  As my providentially pertinent meditation I read this morning: "We have to love our work and do it well, because it is a command we have received from our Father.  Everyday work is the ordinary means to develop one’s personality, to support one’s family and oneself, and to contribute to enterprises of apostolate and formation.  …It is at the same time material for our prayer, because work is also one of the highest human values,  means by whereby each individual contributes to the progress of society, and above all because it is a way to holiness."

All for the most Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Enough said.

As Crush has already shared, school is back in session.  For Good Shepherd, this means the daily Mass crowd has thinned slightly as the teens are trading in daily missals for Algebra 2 and Biology textbooks.  While it has been nice to have a little extra arm room at Mass, I wish the teens could have been there to hear today’s Gospel reading.  In fact, I think I’ll just share it with everyone.*

Matthew 23:23-26

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You pay tithes of mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier things of the law: judgment and mercy and fidelity. (But) these you should have done, without neglecting the others.  Blind guides, who strain out the gnat and swallow the camel!  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You cleanse the outside of cup and dish, but inside they are full of plunder and self-indulgence.  Blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may be clean.”

Jesus sure had a knack for tactfully appealing to his opposition, the scribes and Pharisees.  He gets right to the heart of the matter - their outward appearance of holiness and piety are merely a facade masking their inner filth.  They have become so enamored with their image that they’ve been blinded to what’s most important, working on their heart.

This is a danger that we encounter today as well, living in such an image-conscious society.  Just as in Jesus’ time, everything is centered on appearances.  Here in lies the trap that leads us down the path of the scribes and Pharisees, trying to separate our actions of godliness and charity from our interior life.  Conversely, these actions should spring forth from the wellspring of love and faith in Christ that dwells within our hearts.  It’s a gentle reminder that the Church gives us today to focus on cleansing ourselves from the inside out.

B-Rad

*Check out the new FRATERNUS website!  Of the many improvements is a link to the Daily Mass Readings.

Hat tip to anyone who posts in the comments what my title is a reference to!

References aside, my title refers to the reality of the annual august hustle and bustle.  But what I really want to talk about is HAWC.  I know, I know, I’ve talked about it before, and for you FRATERNUS veterans out there bear with me as I explain it again for the folks.

HAWC (Honest, Available, Willing, Chaste) groups are weekly discipleship groups, made up of select senior high brothers, led by the missionary.  As I’ve said in this space before, HAWC is my favorite part of FRATERNUS.  We get together once a week to hang out, discuss what’s going on in our lives, and try to become better followers of Jesus.  Our conversations are nothing short of….awesome (couldn’t think of a better word, feel free to suggest alternatives).

So as school begins and FRAT Kickoffs happen and new HAWC groups form, I am now beginning to meet again with the one HAWC group from last year.  I love these guys — they’ve got gusto.

Case in point.  Last week, I needed a couple of them to come on over and talk into the microphone about how awesome FRATERNUS is for a video we’re creating (breaking news)!  So I only told two of the seven that we had last year.  Well, as is typical for our HAWC brothers, once word got out that a couple of them were getting together for the first HAWC event of the year, they all wanted in.  I only invited two because, really, that was all I needed, plus a couple of them would have had to make a decently long drive, and I didn’t want them to come all the way out here if the only thing planned was to talk into a microphone.

Should have known better.

About an hour before we were scheduled to meet, I got three phone calls from the other HAWC brothers who got wind of what was going on.  ”Can I come too?” was the question.  Of course!  When they began to arrive, even the ones I hadn’t spoken to (and therefore assumed weren’t coming) had hitched rides with the others, and within minutes every one of them was present.  That tells me a couple of things.

1. These guys are awesome
2. They love HAWC

So there we were, for the first time since June, all together as a HAWC group for an impromptu conversation.  It was made even better since it was kind of a last hurrah for one of our brothers who graduated, was Knighted, and will be moving on to bigger and better things this fall.

It was a great shot in the arm for me, as I look forward to reconnecting with that group this year, and it gives me great hope for the new HAWC group(s) that will start to form next month.

–
so I kind of feel bad that my name doesn’t really lend itself to that whole dash thing that everyone seems to be doing on this blog (K-Wess, B-Rad, L-Rellie, T-$)  I must have missed that page in the employee handbook…but then, who can beat what I’ve got:

Crush

These are the day’s that surfers dream of. Warm water, light offshore winds ( a wind that blows from the land to the sea), the buoy is ticking  11′ @ 17 seconds and the surf at the beach is pumping at 6′ - 8′ easy with occasional 10 foot sets. 

Yes, I am talking about Florida. Saint Augustine Beach. I know that was a bunch of meteorology / surfer jargon that is foreign on blogs like this, but there is a connect.  Trust me.

I can not begin to tell you the sensation I had as I stroked to the outside sandbar from the beach. My arms were tingling from the 300m paddle, adrenaline was running through my body and I could not help but make weird / giddy noises.  It was beautiful and surreal. Giant swells were rolling in and exploding on the sandbar. The first wave I dropped in on was healthy. I stroked with all I had and jumped to my feet. I felt like I was dropping down the face of the wave forever. It was eight feet on the face, easily. I looked up and the wave began to bowl over my right shoulder. I made it out and five seconds later I was flying (literally) over the top of the wave. As I paddled back out to the lineup (the place where you wait to catch the next wave), my heart was filled with an overwhelming sense of gratitude.

I began to think of how everything came together to make the perfect waves. The right storm, right local wind, tide, sandbars and swell direction. It was one of those simple moments of, “Thanks God.” 

Just wanted to share that with you all.

I am off to bed, I want to catch it early for round two in the morning! Over and out.

FRATERNUS!

::T$

“You need to have the heart of monks, and the zeal of missionaries.” I heard this in a recent homily with Fr. Will and it knocked the rocks out of my socks.

First things first. All those in FRATERNUS put their interior life first, understanding that an hour in prayer every morning is of greater importance than an hour of updating calendars, checking emails, and prank calling Tommy. We start our day praying for the brothers in FRATERNUS, our benefactors, and discernment. Our time is finite, how can we advance the Kingdom today?

Next is our role as missionaries. We all have zeal, a great energy in pursuit of a cause, that radiates from our interior life and is apparent in our actions. It is this zeal that inspired Brad to leave New Jersey to come to Tallahassee and serve as a missionary. That and he was living in New Jersey. Andrew had/has this zeal and it was made obvious as he chose to move to St. Augustine to work full-time as a FRATERNUS missionary. It is this very zeal that inspired Justin to leave the relative security of a sales job to step out of the boat and found FRATERNUS.

I have crazy zeal too. I have crazeal. If you say that fast enough it sounds like a skin disorder, possibly caused by allergies to the sun. It’s true, you can be allergic to the sun. I’m rapidly getting off topic. I responded to the call God placed in my heart, not one of this being my last resort for gainful employment or out of some lame reason, but for the utmost belief in the mission of FRATERNUS.

Got zeal?

KWess

*I’m not sucking up to my boss here to try and get a “raise.” I know better than that. If I asked Jason for a raise, he would reply “Go fundraise it.”

Man, I’m so excited now every time I check the blog…two new posts every day!

In fact, I got so excited that I had to throw another one up here (and to post up a sweet pic of the summer Ranch!

Well, for starters, my name is Andrew Tierney and I’m the new St. Augustine Missionary! I volunteered at the Tallahassee Chapter last year and absolutely fell in love with what FRATERNUS is doing. The way FRATENUS offers young men the opportunity to see and understand who and what they are designed to be in this world is aimed directly at a man’s heart, and the response has been resounding.

After seeing FRATERNUS in action, I knew it was something that I needed to fully commit to right now. Hence, I am the first and only missionary in St. Augustine.

Adding to that excitement, I JUST got married this past Saturday to a beautiful woman named Sara! We were married on August 15th, the feast day of the Assumption of Mary, at the Co-Cathedral of St. Thomas Moore in Tallahassee. The day was everything we wanted it to be. My bride was beyond beautiful, mothers and grandmothers were crying hysterically, and people loved the bridal party’s shoes: sky blue Converse Chuck Taylors. To say the least, we had many memorable moments. One in particular I’d like to share with you, our altar server (Sara’s 13 year-old brother) accidentally took a relaxing sit in the Bishop’s seat during the Eucharistic prayer! Once he realized where he was sitting, his face became snow white and looked absolutely petrified. With all the great memories combined, the entire day was everything we wanted it to be.

The time spent after the wedding has been mostly spent travelling & packing in a car, and viewing and tagging wedding pictures on Facebook. But now that the new Mrs. Tierney and I are back in St. Augustine, it’s time to get to work, and I couldn’t be more excited about that. There are so many things for me to do. Meeting with the Commander and Captains is obviously vital, while also going to the schools and meeting teenage guys on their lunch hour and during games. I seriously have too many people to meet and call, but that’s so good! The busier I am, the less trouble I can get into. By constantly striving to do something, no matter how trivial, if it is for good, then I am striving for holiness and sanctity in those moments. Pushing men to live saintly lives is precisely what FRATERNUS is focused on, and as a missionary, I need to be pursuing that lifestyle with my wife.

FRATERNUS!!!!

P.S. Yes, I’m the AndrewT who has commented on almost every single blog on here.