I originally felt inspired to join a Franciscan community when I was 21. I was about to be Confirmed as a Roman Catholic, and had chosen Saint Francis of Assisi as my Confirmation Saint meaning my name was going to be ‘Michael Stephen FRANCIS Kenny.’ While ‘Francis’ wouldn’t be my legal name it was meant to be included in how I thought of myself. In many ways it was. I asked about being confirmed when I started my second year of my degree at St Andrews, in September 2005. I had just come back from my summer in America where I had worked on a summer camp as part of the ‘Camp America’ exchange programme. During this time I had experienced being in the Presence of God for the first time. It was this entirely unexpected religious experience, which brought me back to church for the first time since I was 13. It also led me to inquire about being Confirmed, as I sensed this represented an adult commitment to the Faith. 

As my Confirmation was approaching I appear to have thrown myself fully into the religious activities offered to students at St Andrews University. I had started going to Mass most days, I was going to a RCIA class once a week, and was attending a weekly talk on the Christian faith at the ‘Cath-Soc’ group. Alongside this I was also attending a Tuesday night prayer group, and a daily Rosary group. It was during this quite intensive undergraduate experience of Christian living that I experienced a strong desire to become a (lay) Franciscan brother. I remember vividly where I was when this happened, I was walking towards Canmore, the Roman Catholic University Chaplaincy in St Andrews University. I was on the street walking, and I sensed this ‘call’. The moment could be summed up as a desire of the heart.

It is this moment of being ‘called’ that I have been discerning since I was 21.

When I was 22 I met with a ‘vocations animator’ from a Roman Catholic Franciscan community for coffee in Liverpool during the Christmas holidays. I enjoyed the conversation, but had some reservations. I then told a few of my friends about what I’d been thinking about and they made a dramatic intervention. I was told, “You’re far too young to be joining a religious community!” and “You don’t know anything about real life!” On reflection I could see my friends had a point. When I announced I was going to spend the summer with a breakaway Roman Catholic community based on a small island my friends made another intervention and suggested I went to Taize, and so I spent the summer there! I had some wise friends in those days who I tended to listen to. 

I enjoyed spending the summer in Taize as a helper. I enjoyed the times of prayer. I vividly remember seeing one of the young German brothers stand up to make his vows in front of around 5,000 young people. Something about it really appealed to me! I thought, “Yes, I want to be a brother too!” Watching another young man step out on his journey towards being a brother spoke to me, and gave me confidence that I wasn’t going crazy wanting to explore this calling. 

Jesuit Volunteer Community

After graduating in Theological Studies I moved to Liverpool to spend a year as a full time intern with the Jesuit Volunteer Community. This involved living with 2 German volunteers and an Indonesian volunteer in a house. We all had voluntary placements, I spent 2 days a week in a Fresh Expression Methodist church where I made bread with homeless people and 3 days a week at Asylum Link Merseyside where I taught English and befriended asylum seekers. I enjoyed these placements, and grew in confidence. At first I wasn’t sure how to interact with the people, but by the end of the year I learnt I was quite good at chatting with people!

Chaplaincy Assistant

During this year I disconnected myself totally from the Catholic Church and attended an Elim Pentecostal church. The Jesuit placements and internship were only funded for a year, and so I needed to get a job. I got a job as the Chaplaincy Assistant at Liverpool Hope University. I was employed by the Church of England, in a Roman Catholic-Anglican chaplaincy. I enjoyed this job, which was also funded for one year. I enjoyed going to morning and evening prayer with a mixed group of Roman Catholics and Protestants. The morning prayer was Roman Catholic and the evening prayer was Anglican.

During this year I worked with 2 Roman Catholic lay chaplains from Ireland and an English CofE vicar. My main job was to chat with the students and staff in the chaplaincy and to help run the prayer times. It was during this year that I helped set-up a weekly evening Eucharistic service. The plan had been for me to learn how to have a Liturgical role, as I had no experience, as I’d never been allowed to do anything like this before. However quite quickly I found a lot of the students were wanting to help run the Liturgy, so I didn’t gain any experience myself. However by the end of the year I felt increasingly drawn to pursue a life of prayer. I started to Google religious communities and explored their websites trying to find the ‘right one’.

Masters Social Work course

Okay, so my job was coming to an end! What was I going to do now? I thought about doing a Phd in Marian visions, which is a genuine interest of mine but instead found myself doing a fully-funded MA in Social Work at Liverpool Hope. This meant I could continue to attend morning and evening prayer each day. I received this all as a sign. It showed the Providence of God in my life; my rent and living costs had been covered for the next 2 years and I was able to attend church twice a day 5 days a week! I burst out laughing when I got the news because I was so happy!

During this time I found my Chaplaincy community were my church community. I found I really needed daily prayer in my life. I also enjoyed saying the Divine Office on the bus or during my lunch break on my social work placements. I found the prayer times were absolutely essential in helping me cope with the social work placements, which at times were quite challenging.

And then all of a sudden it too was coming to an end!

Hilfield Friary

What was I going to do now? I took a moment and felt called to live in a Christian community that had prayer at the centre. Google took me to the Hilfield community, a lay community attached to an Anglican religious community in Dorset. I went to visit them for a week, and found myself moving in the week after my Masters thesis had been handed in, it was now August 2012. I lived in the friary for 9 months. Overall I didn’t enjoy the rural aspect, nor the manual labour part of the life – which are quite prominent parts of life in Hilfield! I also realized I didn’t want to live in a lay community, I wanted to live in a religious community; and so I left and moved into L’arche. I was a L’arche assistant for around 3 years.

L’arche Assistant

My first L’arche community had Roman Catholic ‘core members’ who I used to take to Mass. I found myself becoming a daily Mass goer quite quickly when I moved into L’arche. I used to have 4 hours off a day, and used to go to the Mass at the Jesuit run University chaplaincy which was relatively near to where I was living. I also made a few friends there, and so used to chat over coffee and then go back to my L’arche community. It was during this time that I felt my desire to pursue a religious vocation re-emerge. Living in a (practising) Roman Catholic community helped me to rediscover my love of Catholic culture and Catholic devotionalism.

I later moved from Manchester to Liverpool to become a ‘live-out’ L’arche assistant meaning I lived nearby the L’arche community I worked in but didn’t live in the L’arche house on a full time basis. I found this enabled me to sleep properly! I continued being a quasi-daily Mass goer in my time in Liverpool. I used to attend Mass at the Cathedral.

L’arche assistants live and work in Christian communities with adults with disabilities. I enjoyed this way of living. It was during my initial few months of my time in Manchester L’arche that I felt drawn to pursue a contemplative vocation. This initially surprised me, but I found myself visiting a Trappist community. Over the next 18 months I visited this community around 5 times; as an Inquirer. I was interviewed each of the times I visited about my sense of vocation. Something about the life really appealed to me. And yet for whatever reason it was the moment they invited me to leave my job to move in with them, that I knew it was the wrong thing to be doing. And so I put this idea down. It was like putting a stone down I’d been carrying for a long time. This moment of realization felt like a massive loss. What was I going to do now?

I carried on with my duties as a L’arche assistant and with my daily Mass attendance. I was also doing the Divine Office, and saying the Rosary and Divine Mercy chaplet while living in a house share in Liverpool. This set-up wasn’t sustainable. I knew I was being called to move on, but I couldn’t ‘see’ where. Maybe I just needed to stop with all this ‘silly-business’ and commit myself to my reality? ‘Maybe I should buy a small flat in Liverpool and get a better paying job?’ I thought to myself. I was now 30 and people thought I was becoming a bit of a loser working in a low paid job living in a rough part of Liverpool in a house share! But I knew the LORD was with me. It was so obvious. His Presence was so palpable. I knew I was on the right track, even if no one else did. And then one day, out of nowhere I was helping one of the ‘core members’, the disabled adults I supported, put on their shoes and he laughed. I looked up at him sat in his wheelchair and for a moment saw Jesus look at me through his eyes and I heard, “You are now ready,” in my head. 

After all this searching and looking, after all this trying to find but never succeeding I was the one who had been found. I was the one who had been sought after. It was a moment which showed me I was on the right track, I was being called to find the Presence of the LORD in the poor; in the rejected, in the marginalised and the isolated. These were to be my people. 

I also knew at that moment that my time in L’arche had come to a dramatic and unexpected end. I knew I couldn’t stay a L’arche assistant anymore. I felt called to pursue the religious life; to step out and to explore with a new degree of seriousness and commitment.

I moved into an Anglican monastery for 5 months as a live-in non-monk. Anglicans call this being an ‘Alongider’. I then applied to join the Anglican Communion and moved in with the Anglican Franciscans as a Postulant.

During my time in Manchester L’arche I met with a Jesuit for an hour once a month for 6 months to help me see where the LORD was leading me. He told me I was being called to renew the Franciscan movement, I laughed and said, ‘No, that’s not it at all’. He didn’t think I had a calling to pursue a contemplative vocation. When I lived in Liverpool as a L’arche assistant I used to meet with a Catholic priest every 6 weeks to talk about my sense of vocation. He also didn’t think I had a vocation to contemplative life, but for whatever reason I had to explore this ‘feeling’ and sense of calling until I worked out it wasn’t right. My Jesuit spiritual director got me to start writing a journal. This was in 2013, since that time I’ve found it very helpful to write down my religious experiences, and sense of calling. I now have a small suitcase of spiritual journals, that I sometimes read through to see where this journey has taken me from, to sense where it is taking me to.