Br Joseph Geiger

It was a bit of an act of faith, heading out to Sacred Heart Apostolic School for the first time. I had never been to school away from home before, and I had never even visited Sacred Heart, I had only heard about it from Legionaries I had known. As the car turned into the driveway, I saw past the trees what looked like a monastery, not a school, and I thought “what am I getting myself into?” Now, ten years later, I believe I have the answer. When I turned into that driveway, I was beginning the best time of my life.

I didn’t find any monks that first day at Sacred Heart, but I did find an amazing group of young men, excited about their faith, proud to be Catholic, with whom I would have the grace to spend the next years of my high school. Four of us who arrived at Sacred Heart together that day would profess our religious vows in the Legion of Christ, and now, ten years after first walking through those doors, are preparing to go to Rome in August, together with the rest of our seminary class, to begin our studies of philosophy in preparation for the priesthood.

It was in those years at Sacred Heart that God invited me to be his Legionary, and I owe in a large part my ability to say “yes” to those who lived that time with me. The beautiful thing about the Sacred Heart community is that it is Christ who brought us together, and it is Christ who unites us. That is why being a member of the community goes beyond just being a group of friends, a group of guys who go to school together, to being, in a very real sense, brothers. Between brothers there is no need to try to keep up a certain image, to try to fit in with this or that group. There may be differences, but the unity of brotherhood goes deeper, and as the years went by we were able to support each other, in our strength and in our weakness, and help build each other up to be who we should be.

Since then, following the Legionary vocation – from being part of the first Cincinnati Holy Week Mission to helping with camps at River Ridge, from a difficult first year of novitiate to a second year filled with God’s grace, from intense prayer to equally intense tractor repairs – has been an amazing journey, one which will be continued in the next few months in Rome.

To follow the Legionary vocation can take some faith, some trust in God. It can feel like a step into the unknown. But God does not disappoint, God repays one-hundred fold the trust we place in Him. My years in the Legion have truly transformed my life, and brought me closer to God, closer to my family, and closer to the men beside me whom I am now proud to call brothers. My prayer is that many young men may come to have this same experience that I have had, to have their lives touched by the love of Christ.