If you’ve watched documentaries on American Public Television called Glidepath to Recovery, Mary—Icon to Woman, and The Fifth Gospel, you’ve seen the work of Brother Joseph Esparza. His position as Executive Director for Family Theater Productions in Hollywood is just one of many roles he has filled as a Brother of Holy Cross.

Since joining the Congregation in 1972, Brother Joe has worked as a high school teacher, a director of religious education, pastoral administrator, catechetical consultant, and a producer for three Catholic Television of San Antonio programs. In 1999 he joined Holy Cross Family Ministries and moved to Hollywood—a move he couldn’t have imagined when he was growing up.

“Most people assume I am Mexican,” he says, “ but my family was in San Antonio before it was part of Texas, so we consider ourselves Tejano [native Texans].”

Brother Joe went to a high school seminary from ninth grade into the tenth, but left in 1967 and enrolled in Holy Cross High School in San Antonio. The school brought him into contact with Brothers, who guided him through the change in his life.

“It was a difficult transition [from the seminary],” he recalls, “but the Brothers were wonderful. I got very close to several of them, particularly Brother William Nick. In 1970 I came to Saint Edward’s University, but in my sophomore year I had a kind of great awakening. I needed to commit my life to some kind of ministry and thought the world of the Brothers, so I decided to try that life. I had tried and left other things, but this one stuck.

“It wasn’t always very definite,” he observes. “It was like, ‘wait and see’ for many years until I made final vows. Since then, it’s been a continual renewal of my commitment.”

During his sophomore year at Saint Edward’s he decided to join the Brothers as a candidate. After making his novitiate in Bennington, Vermont, he finished his degree in chemistry and mathematics at Saint Edward’s.

“High school teaching was not my niche,” he says, remembering his first assignments, “but facilitating adult faith education was a good fit. There is always a small group of people in a parish who seek to deepen their faith. They become ministers and leaders of the laity, if they are properly shepherded. Over about a year or two several became deacons or catechists, and some of the women went for certification in lay ministry. That changed the life of the parish.”

The program Brother Joe started in San Antonio—Catholic Adult Faith Enrichment, or CAFÉ—continues through the Father Peyton* Family Institute in North Easton, Massachusetts. When Holy Cross Family Ministries moved east in 2000, he took over educational programs at the Institute. To enable Catholic adults to study topics of Church doctrine in more depth, he also created FACT, the Formation of Adults in Catholic Tradition program, in 2002.

He lives with four Holy Cross priests at St. Mary’s Parish in nearby Taunton, but says, “It is rare that we are all there. Two work in the parish, another is minister/chaplain at a local hospital and conducts a jail ministry. Father John Phalen, the director of Holy Cross Family Ministries, is globetrotting. He gave a retreat in India and has visited the Philippines, Ireland, and East Africa just in the last month.”

Brothers like Joseph Esparza experience many professional opportunities, but the connective fiber through all of their work is a life lived in community. What would Brother Joe say if a young man felt he might have a vocation?

“Come follow us,” suggests Brother Joe. “Be with us and try to become friends with the men—not in a programmed sense of spiritual formation, but in the real sense of trying to live with people who are not perfect.

“One of most valuable experiences of my formation,” he continues, “was the second year, when we lived with the guys in St. Joseph Hall at Saint Edward’s University. Brothers are fallible people, but wonderful—and they can be good friends in the Lord and in Holy Cross. I’ve always found it easy to talk with the older guys. The experience of their strength has kept me in the Congregation.”

*Father Patrick Peyton CSC, a media pioneer, is now a candidate for sainthood.