Initially, I started walking to keep my fitness up. While exercising, I would pray, but eventually I began to have unique encounters. The neighborhood is very diverse, and many of these neighbors have expressed negative feelings towards the Catholic Church. You never know how you’re going to react to situations that eventually have become a ministry, being a brother to all.

Here are three experiences in line with our charisms as Franciscan Brothers of Peace:

1. Cultivate Prayer Among the People

The first story is about meeting a young man. We basically started talking right away, and he asked some basic questions about what our brothers were about. He asked about the habit and what we do day to day. I explained the first thing is we have prayer four times a day and that our prayer is from the Old Testament Psalms and New Testament Scripture, The Liturgy of the Hours. He replied, “Well, I’m Jewish, but I used to love to pray with the psalms. It has been such a long time since then. I really feel I should get back to it. You kind of gave me an idea.” I asked him if he had a copy of the psalms and he told me he didn’t, so I ran home and found the copy that I had and brought it back to him. He was very happy with that.

Another encounter that I had was with a woman and her husband. The woman had no religious background, and her husband grew up as a Roman Catholic. One time, he noticed the Franciscan Crown Rosary hanging from the left side of my habit. He told me that it reminded him of his childhood and that his mom was very religious. After dinner, the family always prayed the Rosary, and he said that from the time he was a kid until the time he went to college, that was a custom in his family. He had been away from the Church and any kind of prayer so he said something like, “Oh, maybe I kinda miss it.” I responded, “Well, would you like a rosary?” “Yeah, but I’m gonna need to know how to say it.” “Don’t worry—Brother D has your back,” I assured him.

2. Be Ambassadors and Missionaries of Christ’s Peace and Mercy

I’ve found a good way to break the ice with people. A lot of our neighbors have dogs. Either I run into them while I’m doing my walking or if I’m sitting in front of our friary. The best way to make encounters with their owners is to fuss over the dogs (and I really do love dogs!). I give them doggy treats and come to find too that a lot of the owners I encounter have no religion.They don’t know anything about the Catholic Church but the thing that I find funny is that they say, “Oh we know who Saint Francis is,” and they share a little bit about what they know. Most of the time it’s that he’s a patron saint of animals and that their relatives have a birdbath with Saint Francis on it. So now, besides doggy treats, I give out Saint Francis medals for the dogs’ collars—something that has been taken very well. After all, what is dog spelled backwards? God is definitely working through that relationship with the simple act of admiring their dog.

3. Be a Prophetic Witness Whether it is Popular or Not

The best story I can think of is of an older couple, the wife being very sick with Parkinson’s disease. It took a long time for them to start talking with me. When we did start talking, the questions they asked were, “What are you all about? What do you do?” I told them about our Food Shelf Ministry that we’ve been doing for several years out of the friary, helping out mothers with diapers and various other distributions; Pro-Life advocacy while working with immigrants, and the list goes on and on. The first thing he said to me was, “I never realized all that was going on.” So, a few months go by and not too long ago he saw me and he said, “Wait. I have something to give you.”This is not a well-to-do couple. Their home is very simple and needs a lot of work. The man came out, and his wife came to the stairs and said, “We want to give you this.” It was a check for $200. He said, “We want this to go towards helping people.” The seeds have been planted, and now the growth is taking place.

There are countless stories, especially about people bringing fresh vegetables and/or canned goods with the pandemic going on. I have found that people are so generous. It’s all about knowing what we actually are doing. Listening to people sharing their problems is also one of the most fruitful adventures of my walking. I recite several rosaries, and when I pray those rosaries, I pray for the neighborhood; I pray for the people I will encounter, I pray for the Holy Spirit to speak through me should a discussion get heated or if somebody brings something up with a question, so that I may be able to answer them appropriately.

I also carry a little pocket catechism, holy water, and my constant sacramental that I’ve been using for years. I call it my calling card—which is either a crucifix, or a rosary, or whatever I happen to have in my pocket. Each encounter is a reminder that God may use me and each of us as a moment by moment instrument of God’s loving peace and reconciliation.

Brother Dominic Michael is with the Franciscan Brothers of Peace in Saint Paul, Minnesota.  This article originally appeared in their newsletter – Volume 34, 3rd Edition