SVD Brothers at the RBC assembly—back row from left, Brothers Andre Hotchkiss, Ray Albers, Mike Decker, Bernie Spitzley, George Haegele, Pat Hogan, Brian McLauchlin; kneeling, Brothers Paul Hoang and Don Champagne.

Divine Word Missionary Br. Bernard (Bernie) Spitzley, son of Mrs. Mary Spitzley and the late Leon Spitzley from Westphalia, Michigan, received the 2005 Call to Brotherhood Award for Presence from the Religious Brothers Conference. Br. Bernie received the award for his many years of work as a religious Brother who stands with the powerless, the dispossessed, the broken and the alienated. The award states that: “By his very presence [the recipient] brings life, hope and rebirth. Br. Bernie began his work as Social Development Director in Morant Bay, St. Thomas, Jamaica six years ago. Instrumental in serving the poor of St. Thomas, he has done an outstanding job in coordinating and building more than 1,000 houses. As Parish Administrator for Food Distribution, he registers and coordinates the distribution of goods to more than 15,000 people. He has also established three centers for distribution of clothes to the very poor in St. Thomas. He also initiated the Nehemiah Project, which helps groups of farmers raise chickens, pigs and goats.”

Accepting the award in Denver, Colorado, on August 7 at the annual assembly of the Religious Brothers Conference, Br. Bernie thanked the Conference for establishing the award because, “It has been my belief that the Brother’s vocation is not fully understood or appreciated.”

He continued, “I realize that as a Missionary Brother, my ministry of evangelization, of social development is not a one way street, where everything is done by the missionary for the people. It is not a ministry in which the people are merely recipients of the gifts brought by the missionary. It is a ministry wherein I am called into dialogue with people. Dialogue underlies the fact that the Spirit is at work in the evangelized as well as in the evangelizers. Mission is a two-way exchange of gifts between the missionary and the people with whom we work.”

“Therefore, as a missionary Brother, I approach my ministry with humility and respect. I have learned to receive and to give, to be evangelized and to evangelize, to listen and to speak, to walk with the people and respect the pace of the people walking, to be changed and to change, to be formed and to form, to be converted and to invite conversion. I have come to know that mission is first and foremost God’s mission and that the principal agent of mission is God’s Spirit. As a Brother, therefore, I am called to collaborate with that Spirit in helping unfold God’s ongoing dialogue with humanity.”