The following story first appeared in the Autumn 1999 issue of Glenmary Challenge.  
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Father Bruce Brylinski
A Glenmary Vocation Story
By Karen Hurley

Father Bruce Brylinski, painting in his living-room studio, struggles to capture insights into the spiritual life with paint on canvas.

An artist, a clown, a puppeteer, a writer. These are descriptions Father Bruce Brylinski welcomes for himself. They also name the ways he is expanding the very notion of what it means to be a missioner today. “Putting the arts at the service of evangelization” is his goal.

At age 44, Father Bruce is one of the newest members of Glenmary—if not one of the youngest. When he entered in 1989, he was already a priest of the Diocese of Pittsburgh. He took his final Glenmary Oath in 1995.

For the past six years, he has been the pastor of the Glenmary mission in Carter County, Kentucky. He has also served as sacramental minister to the Glenmary mission in neighboring Lewis County.

But this fall he is beginning something new—for him and for Glenmary. For the next two years his weekdays will be spent in Huntington, West Virginia, at Marshall University pursuing a master of arts in painting. On weekends he will return to Carter and Lewis counties to continue to provide sacramental ministry. A lay pastoral coordinator, Sister Maria Goretti Browne, OP, took over his non-sacramental duties in Carter County in August.

How will studying painting enhance his ministry?

“I want to be able to better use my art as a way of articulating the spiritual life—my own and others,” he says. The program will improve his technical skills and his ability to communicate the concepts he tries to put on canvas.

When people ask him what his more abstract works mean, he tosses this question back: “What do you see?” And the “spiritual conversation” is off and running.

As a newly ordained priest in a Pittsburgh parish, Father Bruce was already looking around for an alternative setting to better respond to his priestly and artistic calls. That is when he began to notice and read Glenmary Challenge.

He got the sense that Glenmary was different. Of his mission trip with Brother Terry O’Rourke, he remembers how much time they spent talking about the people in the various missions—and the way Glenmary meets people where they are and builds from there.

Father Bruce heard Glenmary saying, “The people come first; meet their needs.” This was the attitude and approach he was looking for. He could imagine what being a priest-artist might mean in this community of missionaries.

And so, at age 34, six years after being ordained, he entered Glenmary.

To be a Glenmary missioner is more than just being a pastor, Father Bruce points out. “A pastor shepherds his parish, but a missioner is always moving beyond to share good news with outsiders.”

So how has he moved beyond the role of traditional pastor? He points to his work “on the ridge” as a good example. There he worked with Eastern Kentucky people of various—and no—faith traditions—to build an outdoor labyrinth (see back cover). It is based on the one painted on the floor of the Cathedral of Chartres. The practice of walking the labyrinth, an ancient spiritual practice finding new life today, resonated with people in his Appalachian county who were not drawn to attend the Catholic Church.

He has also been offering free art classes to children at a recently opened community center. Father Bruce believes that art is an important way to help kids develop “great life habits. Art allows you to mess around and play,” he explains, “until the exact right thing comes along to say what you want to say.”

And it also teaches you how to deal with mistakes. “In the midst of a mistake,” he points out, “an artist has to come up with another response—something far different from what had originally been imagined.”

This is also the way it is with the spiritual life, he adds. “It, like art, is not logical, but a certain discipline is required.”

What keeps him in Glenmary now?

“The reign of God!” he replies without hesitation. “I see and feel God working through me to make Jesus alive—whether that is through building labyrinths, or doing sacramental ministry, or being an artist, clown, puppeteer or writer.”

He talks poignantly about relationships developed with the non-parishioners he met in weekly clogging classes in Carter County. (He likes Polish dancing too!) And he treasures the conversations on religion that occurred on the way to and from clogging.

Then he answers the question about staying from another angle: “Basically, I stay because I love Church, I love celebrating Eucharist and I am called to be an artist. Glenmary is a place that allows—and encourages—me to do it all: be an artist and a priest and a missioner.”

What from his experience might be helpful in attracting new members to Glenmary?

“My own sense is that worry should not hold us back. Our being faithful will invite others—but it will be different, which is not necessarily bad.”

“We are living in a messy time. But my instincts as an artist are not to abandon the mess. “

So does he worry about the future of the Glenmary Home Missioners?

“Not really,” he says, eyes twinkling. “I love the mess!”

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