As a Brother of Holy Cross, Michael Winslow has worked primarily in education, but in a variety of roles—from teaching to creating liturgies and leading retreats, developing a high school peer ministry program, and bringing student groups to Holy Cross Parish in Guadalupe, Nuevo Leon, Mexico. Currently he is helping to launch a Collegiate Program with students from Our Lady of the Lake College in San Antonio. These young men can share meals, prayer, household duties, and day-to-day life in residence with Brothers of Holy Cross.

The experience will answer questions, he feels, that crop up for every young man who might feel drawn to religious life.

“Is it a good fit?” Brother Michael asks, chuckling. “It’s like a pair of shoes—you just need to go and spend time in a community, and see if you feel comfortable.”

Brother Michael’s beginnings at Holy Cross were a little rocky.

“I had initially thought about the Peace Corps,” he recalls. “Religious life seemed similar, in terms of giving service and being with people, but Holy Cross offered a spiritual dimension, which the Peace Corps didn’t have.

“When I first contacted Holy Cross,” he continues, “Brother Martin Wilson met me in Denver, where I lived. He was energized about his life and ministry, and the choice seemed right. Then I came to Austin and couldn’t breathe for two days [because of the heat]! The newness of actually living in a community led me to ask, ‘Is this really what I want? ’”

Like other Brothers, he used his time in the Novitiate to work through his doubts, then went on to teach in St. Patrick’s parish in San Antonio.

“I was a fourth-grade teacher in a parish that was one-third Anglo, one-third African-American, and one-third Mexican-American,” he remembers. “I’ve felt my calling all along is to work with ethnically diverse people and those who are economically deprived, and I found it very life-giving to work in this setting. ”

After two years, he chose not to renew his vows, which he now sees as “the best thing” that could have happened to him. He continued to work in education, lived alone, and dated. Yet after four years, he started a conversation with the Brothers about returning to the Congregation. The missing dimension was his life in community, and his Brothers welcomed him back.

Brother Michael had finished a master’s degree in education and counseling during his absence. When he returned to the Congregation he put his new skills to work, teaching Church History and Social Justice and developing high school ministry programs.

Subsequently Brother Michael earned a Master’s in Applied Theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and in 1983-84 he began assisting with the candidate formation program. After this experience, and a stint working with post-novitiate formation, he took a position as campus minister at San Antonio Community College.

“I really enjoyed that,” he says. “When students expressed a desire to become Catholic, that was a booster for my own faith journey! Some of the students have powerful conversion stories that are full of God ’s grace, and those conversations are grace moments for me.”

In 1996 Brother Michael spent a year helping to set up the Vincent Pieau Residence, the Austin home of elderly members of the South-West Province. He subsequently helped Brother Larry Atkinson develop the Collegiate Program at Saint Edward’s University—the model for the program he and Brother Donald Blauvelt have designed at the Brothers’ residence in San Antonio.

His work in campus ministry continues, and he especially enjoys taking groups of students to Holy Cross Parish in Guadalupe, near Monterrey, Mexico.

“For many students, this trip changes their lives,” Brother Michael observes. “To share the faith of the people in another culture and on a very personal level—that experience touches them and their faith. It opens up a whole new world, a lived experience of Christ. They discover another part of their faith, and I feel so privileged to share in that. ”