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Reflecti BY SUSAN SALTER REYNOLDS
B ACK T O THE M IS S IO N Rev. Marcel Rainville, SSE, is proud to have grown up in the Edmundites’ original U.S. parish in Swanton, Vermont. He joined the society in 1962 and first studied Spanish in Puerto Rico between his junior and senior years at Saint Michael’s, where he studied philosophy. After graduating in 1967, he went to Venezuela, and returned to campus in 1993. He has lived a life of reflection; each day contains various habits of reflection. “I was raised on a farm,” Fr. Rainville explains, “so I get up early. As priests, we have a daily routine that includes readings from Scripture and classic Church authors, along with prayers, and psalms from the Old Testament. We pray these prayers three or four times a day, some in community, some on our own. They are an anchor for my day.” After morning prayer, he often stays on to do a prayerful reflection, preparing for Mass and other events. He reflects on spiritual writings that may be helpful with faculty, staff, and students he has interaction with. These daily rituals are both focused
and non-focused. Often, the reflections touch on the importance of our baptism as a source of meaning for life. Lately, Fr. Rainville has been dwelling on the question, “What is really essential?” How might he be of better service to the people who come to him for guidance? “I have been thinking how important it is not to be self-centered about my preaching. Who am I doing this for? For myself? No, for others. I’ve tried to be more sincere, more grounded. I ask myself, ‘Is this sermon really touching people’s lives or does it just make me feel good to deliver it?’ One of the concrete consequences of the pandemic,” he says, “has been a seriousness about who I am and what I do. It has made me slow down, brought me back to the idea of mission, and deepened my understanding, not as an intellectual exercise, but an existential one.” He finds that his homilies are less doctrinaire, showing more compassion, for example, for people who are divorced but want to be faithful to the church. His relationship with people in the LGBTQ community has
