Courtesy of Rachael Tremblay - Friar Peter Tremblay, OFM Conv. (left) assists at Mass with Bishop Edward M. Grosz (right) after being ordained a transitional deacon for the Conventual Franciscan order on Nov. 12, 2011, at his alma mater St. Francis High School.
Orchard Park-born Peter Tremblay marks the third transitional deacon from St. Francis High School to be ordained this year. The 30-year-old, who currently serves the Hartford Archdiocese as a Conventual Franciscan friar, received his holy orders from Bishop Edward M. Grosz on Nov. 12, 2011.
Friar Peter points to three sources that led him to discovering his vocation, his twin brother, his school and a tragedy he suffered as a teenager.
The Tremblay family consisted of five boys and devout parents. Friar Peter recalls how they made a habit of gathering nightly around a coffee table with their parent’s wedding candle to pray the rosary.
“That was a powerful symbol for me,” he said. “The center of our faith was their commitment as a married couple taking their sacrament seriously. As a result everything else in my life fell into place in regards to faith. I wouldn’t be where I am today without the faith of my parents and the support of my family.”
The decision to join the Conventual Franciscan Order came at the age of 16 during a very frightening period of his life. Due to a birth defect in his heart, Friar Peter underwent five open heart surgeries as a teenager.
“It was in the experience of pain and suffering that my faith took on a new dimension and none of that would be possible if I hadn’t come from a very, very good, strong faithful Catholic family,” he said. “It seems like one of those things where as the family has eroded in our culture, so has holiness and vocations and all the ways of life in our Church. It’s the experience of being blessed and knowing God was a very close part of my life even when things were difficult, and also being blessed with a family that was supportive and holy.”
A family friend, Father Joseph Benicewicz, OFM Conv., would visit and notice that Peter’s twin brother, Matthew, hadn’t accepted his brother’s condition.
“I wasn’t in denial,” Matthew Tremblay said. “I truly knew in my heart and in my faith that God had a bigger plan for Peter, that God would pull Peter through this surgery successfully because He had a lot more to do with him. So I did not worry at all that he would not make it through the surgery.”
It was actually Matthew who helped Peter discover his vocation. While still in high school, the two made plans for college. Matthew learned of a pre-theology program at his college of choice, the Franciscan University of Steubenville, and told his brother.
“He didn’t know what major he should go for. He didn’t know where he should go,” Matthew said. “Once he learned more about this pre-theology program, I gave him that information and told him it would be really good for him, thinking that he’s discerning. I think that was really the push for him to decide what he wanted to do and what he felt called to do.”
Friar Peter admits his twin brother became a strong influence in his life.
“He was one of the big reasons why everything I experienced in regards to my vocation worked out the way that it did. I can remember him, unprompted, saying, ‘You should become a priest.’ And later on, ‘You should probably join the friars.’ He handed me the flyer for the discernment program at the Franciscan University of Stuebenville.”
Matthew is now happily married and the father to three young boys. He and his wife have discussed him joining the permanent diaconate when their sons are older.
As a student at St. Francis High School in Athol Springs, Friar Peter had what he calls an incredible experience with the friars who directed the school. The campus ministry program challenged its students to take their faith seriously and to excel at everything from their duties to their faith as true Renaissance men.
“Four years of that, combined with the fact that I found the friars to be incredibly down to earth, incredibly community oriented and really good, wonderful, holy men,” he said. “There was a seed planted and they inspired me. Because I accepted the challenge that they gave to everyone, and as my faith grew and I began my own personal prayer life and my relationship with God, I kind of felt God calling. It always seemed the friars from St. Francis seemed like home to me. There was something incredibly comfortable, but also inspiring about who they were and their community.”
Joining a religious order is a different experience than the route to diocesan priesthood. The formation process for religious life begins with candidacy. Candidates live, pray and take part in the community in every way possible. It gives someone who is brand new to community life the opportunity to be a part of the friars without being committed. One can take part for a year then leave.
During the second year, religious life officially begins. The novitiate year, as it is known, is geared toward a very in-depth program of prayer, work and study. Candidates pray the office, perform corporal works of mercy and manual labor together, along with daily study of Franciscan saints, and the writings of St. Francis and St. Clare.
“It’s basically a religious boot camp,” Friar Peter said.
A year and a day later, candidates have the option to take simple vows for a period of time, which can be renewed. Friar Peter took simple vows for three years then renewed for a fourth.
“It’s another period where you can live the life fully while knowing that at the end of the period, if need be, you let your vows expire and chose another path of holiness,” he said.
During this time, people who feel called to priesthood will begin seminary studies and other opportunities to prepare them for ministry. “It’s always in the context of growing in a deeper understanding of what it means to be a friar. We really think of it as, our vocation is to be friars and our work, for some of us, is to be priests. We are very much religious first,” Friar Peter said.
After an August priestly ordination he will continue to serve at St. Paul Parish in Kensington, Conn., where he currently works, assisting the pastor. In religious life, priests go where the need is, which could take him anywhere, Africa or back to his hometown.
“I prayed about that endlessly because so many of my friends are diocesan priests, seminarians or transitional deacons right now,” he said, adding he went to high school with Deacon Seán Paul Fleming and Deacon Jeff Nowak. “That was kind of constituant of their vocation, the ministry to parish life. My understanding of the vocation is, I am first and foremost called in prayer and our understanding of our way of life, first and foremost called to religious life – living in community, being brothers to one another, and at least, as Francis understood it, we’re kind of the guys who can go any where and do anything and serve the Church in any way the Church needs us.”
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