On a business trip, Edmund Rice was in the company of a friar, (a priest
belonging to a religious order)
and invited him to share a meal and a room in an inn. Edmund awoke in the early
hours of the morning and found the
friar praying in a mood of simple peace and joy. So impressed was Edmund with
the quiet holiness and simplicity of
this monk that he seriously thought of entering a monastery and becoming a monk!
An important influence at the time was a conversation he had with a lady from
Waterford whom he
told about his intention to become a monk and live the rest of his life in a
monastery.
This rather practical lady brushed aside Edmund's notion of becoming a monk.
“Well, Mr. Rice,
you are thinking of locking yourself away in a monastery? Will you leave all
these poor boys roaming on the
streets uncared for? Can't you do something for them?”
We must not forget that Edmund at this time was about 31 years old.
His personal assets and property were worth about twenty five thousand pounds,
which by today's
standards would make him a millionaire! Yet, Edmund decided to sell all that he
owned.
FROM ARUNDEL PLACE TO NEW STREET
The “something” that was missing from his life began to crystallize.
He decided to leave the business he had inherited and built for nearly 20 years.
He was giving up his life of luxury,
his beautiful house, and his high position in society. Heavy-heartedly, he also
made a choice to
leave his handicapped daughter to the care of his step-sister. He had, at this
stage, no real knowledge
of where this would all lead. He took the risk and left it all in the hands of
God.
His friends called it an act of “mad folly”.
Edmund purchased a large stable in the New Street area of Waterford.
He had the ground floor transformed into three classrooms and the space over the
classrooms he made into three crude bedrooms.
These actions were to many, incomprehensible. Here was a businessman with no
formal training setting himself
up as a teacher of Waterford's most scruffy, poverty-stricken and undisciplined
boys. Edmund himself may have
had his doubts but he put a serene faith in God that the future would bear fruit
for those whom he loved most - the poor.
There were only six pupils on the first day, but it was a start.
The boys who came were rough, hardened and uncouth, owing to by years of living
on the streets.
Call it cajoling, enticement or his own magnetism, but it wasn't long before the
three classrooms were filled.
Voluntary workers came forward to help him but soon left when they found it a
Herculean task just trying to control
the unruly mob, let alone teach them! To add to this, his neighbours complained
of the disturbance and resented
the presence of the riff-raff in the respectable neighbourhood and suggested
that the boys would be “happier in their ignorance”.
Soon, as if in answer to Edmund's prayers, two young men, Thomas Grosvenor and
Patrick Finn offered themselves to Edmund,
not merely to help in teaching but also to join Edmund in the religious
congregation they knew he wished to
establish for the education of the poor.
And so it was that Edmund, Thomas and Patrick took up residence above the stable
school
and thus began the very first community of Christian Brothers.