Video: “It’s Really Amazing” — Alumnus Brother on Vocation, Religious Life

On December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Br. Edward Seeley (’16) entered the novitiate for the Canons Regular of the Immaculate Conception, a religious order with a small but rapidly growing North American community located just miles from the College’s California campus.

Before joining the Canons as a postulant earlier this year, Br. Edward was a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. “During that time I discerned the need to grow together with other people to help me grow closer to Christ,” he says, “to really support me in my vocation, to help call me out when I’m not doing enough, but also to help pick me up when I fall down.”

This summer, the Canons published the above video profiling Br. Edward. “During college we read St. Augustine’s Confessions and the City of God, and in that I saw the working of God’s providence, first on a personal level in the Confessions and then on the level of salvation history in the City of God,” he says, explaining why St. Augustine is his favorite saint. “He’s wonderful at describing the experience of grace — the experience of a hardened sinner being converted, but also just the regular workings, how we see God working interiorly, more interiorly than we even understand. And so learning how to develop that, to listen to it, and then to work on it, is something that he taught me, I think, very well.”

One of six new postulants for the Canons Regular, Br. Edward now continues his discernment of a priestly vocation. “It’s wonderful,” he says. “It’s really amazing to be able to give yourself fully and entirely to God, and then to the people on His behalf.”