By Peter Bugden
TURNING 80 earlier this year, Christian Brother Brian Grenier knows well at least one of the graces of growing old and he appreciates that grace day by day.
It’s the grace of finding a little more time for prayer.
Br Grenier, who has lived a busy life on many levels – teaching from Gympie to Rome, Grade 3 to university level, studying in Rome and writing a dozen books – is enjoying that grace among a community of other seniors at a retirement complex on Brisbane’s northside.
“I think as people grow older, especially … you find a little more time for prayer and I think it does tend to become more God-centred than self-centred (prayer),” he said.
“You’re quite happy just to be there in the presence.
“I’d say my prayer has become simpler and simpler as time has gone on and I don’t need to tell God what my problems are or what my special needs are; God knows that already.
“And I’d say to God ‘Well, I leave it up to you as to how you respond to those’. I think we become more trusting in God as time goes by.”
It is from that state of peace and acceptance that Br Grenier’s latest book – Attend unto Reading: Reflections for Every Day of the Year – has come.
It’s a book of 365 short reflections covering a wide range of topics.
It partly stems from Br Grenier’s own routine of prayer and reflection, which includes regular Mass attendance.
“I see the Eucharist as central to my own spirituality,” he said.
He also prays the Prayer of the Church morning and evening, and uses Scripture as a source of prayer.
Lectio divina is one of his preferred methods for this.
“The other one, given my own spiritual formation it tends to follow an Ignatian pattern, is to enter into the situation visually and identify perhaps with the scriptural characters. That’s pretty traditional as far as Ignatius goes,” he said.
“That’s been my method of prayer for a long time. I had the opportunity of doing studies in Rome; so I’ve made a fairly comprehensive study of the Scriptures and, as I’ve said in one of my books, you can read them in three ways: academically as a subject for study, contextually as a source of moral and spiritual guidance or reflectively as a resource for prayer.
“I suppose that would apply especially to the psalms which are prayers in themselves.
“And in praying them I try to imagine what Jesus would have meant when he himself prayed precisely this psalm.
“When he prayed to God “Out of the depths I call to you, O God”, what was going through his mind then?
“So I try to pray, in a sense, the way he must have done, and he prayed, I’m sure, out of a felt human need to do so not just because he thought ‘I’d better do something religious’.”
Br Grenier, who is a regular reviewer of books for The Catholic Leader, said “fortunately” some writers whose books he had been reading recently “see it very much that way”.
“But no matter how much you read you’ll always find there are fresh insights to be gained from somebody who’s read the Gospels differently from yourself,” he said.
In keeping with the theme of Pope Francis’ first apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), Br Grenier believes strongly in joy as integral to the expression of our faith.
He has in mind the kind of joy he came across in the Community of Sant’Egidio in Rome when he lived there.
“If somebody asked me what was the most authentic expression of the Christian faith that I have experienced in the world in recent years it would be the Sant’Egidio community which is basically a lay community,” he said.
“Their liturgies are the best that I have experienced, and that includes canonisations and extravaganzas in St Peter’s (Basilica).
“Their Prayers of the Faithful could go on for 20 minutes. I nudged one of them one night there and said ‘We’re going around for the second time’.
“And he said, ‘Well, we’ve come here to pray, so we do.’ There’s no answer to that.
“The thing that struck me about them was not only their practical, persevering dedication to the poor and to migrants and refugees and so on, it was their joy.
“The surest index of the presence of God to me is joy.”
Br Grenier said another aspect that impressed him was that “these people are middle of the road” in their living of the faith.
This touches on another aspect of Church life about which Br Grenier has strong feelings – the divisions that exist in the Church and the need for renewal.
“(Bernard) Lonergan, the Canadian Jesuit philosopher, said that renewal and reform in the Church, which is so necessary, will not come from the extremes. It’ll come from a committed group who can live with tensions, in the middle,” he said.
“And (the Sant’Egidio community) strike me as getting the balance right.
“They’re not given to traditionalism but they preserve the tradition. They’re not looking for every other novelty but they’re open to the new.
“It’s a question of faith and orthodoxy, if you like, that doesn’t devolve into ideology.
“We’ve got to be prepared to dialogue and to listen to people because, as I think Thomas Aquinas himself said, we must respect those who think differently from us as well as those who think the same because we stand to learn from both of them.”
Br Grenier again thinks of joy.
“I’m strong on that question of joy. When they did a word frequency test of Pope Francis’ early addresses, they found two words were repeatedly used – ‘joy’ and ‘mercy’,” he said.
“That’s why I’ve always been happy that the bishops called The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World ‘Gaudiem et Spes’ – ‘joy and hope’.
“That’s what I have for the Church (joy and hope), for all the bickering that goes on.
“I’m horrified by the thought of disunity because Jesus’ wish at the Last Supper ‘that they should all be one’ cannot be achieved if you have disunity in the Church; and I believe the present disunity stems equally from people at both ends of the spectrum and to that extent they’re impeding the mission of Jesus.
“They have a lot of things in common and lack of joy and hope are among them.”
Copies of Br Grenier’s book, Attend Unto Reading: Reflections for Every Day of the Year, are available from The Catholic Leader for $15 (including postage and handling).
