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Mark Edward Winterbottom, OSFS
BROTHER, ANNUAL VOWS
Age 25
Hometown Wilmington, Delaware
Family My mother, Peggy, and my step-father, Jack both live in Wilmington.
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How long have you considered a religious vocation?
When I was growing up, I wanted more than anything to be a chef and run my own restaurant or bakery. My parents nurtured that desire by sending me to independent culinary workshops and classes on Philadelphia and New York. During my junior or senior year in high school, at Salesianum, the first secondary school founded and operated by the Oblates in the United States, I started to give strong consideration to a vocation to the diocesian priesthood. I even met with the vocation director for the diocese, who gave me a great deal of encouragement. But, in my senior year, I attended the Oblate Awareness Retreat after being strongly encouraged by the Oblates at Salesianum. After the weekend experience was over, there was no doubt in my mind that if I had a religious vocation, it was to be an Oblate of St. Francis de Sales.
Most of my college years were spent exploring my vocation, yet finding excuses not to give it a try. In my senior year, I took the chance and called Fr. James Yeakel, OSFS, the vocation director for the Wilmington/Philadelphia Province at the time. All that seems so long ago. Following novitiate and my first profession of vows, I continued to discern that I was definitely called to be an Oblate, but I was not truly called to the ministerial priesthood. After several months of discerning with my formators, spiritual director, and a number of mentors, I renewed my vows as a religious brother. Now that I am in my second year as a professed Oblate, I can truly say that I would not pick any other place to be than right where I am today. As St. Francis de Sales reminds us, "We bloom where we are planted."
What do you like most about the Church?
We benefit from a rich spiritual and theological tradition that continually calls us into communion. This draw to communion has shaped the Church's ecumenical outreach, preferential option for the poor, and social morality, all of which are buttressed by Scripture. However, this mission is not without its distractions and hurdles. In the second chapter of Galatians, St. Paul supplies the reader with a prime example of the traps to which we Christians can often succumb. Here, he confronts the apostle Peter for his failure of courage and the hypocritical behavior born from it. Paul speaks to the need to proclaim the truth of the gospel by the living out of our Christian faith. This requires that we radically embrace the examples of Jesus' own life-a life riddled with occasions where he purposefully challenges the Law for the sake of salvific love, where he eats with the socially unclean despite the social ramifications it has on his own person. In the same manner, we are called to a similar action in our contemporary social milieu. In a time when we as a community debate over who is afforded the rights of receiving Communion and who is socially unclean by virtue of their politics, their sexual orientation, or their perspectives on reproductive rights, we find ourselves in need of Paul's confrontation. When our present day apostles declare that they will refuse Communion to persons based on the aforementioned social "stigmas," we once again experience the hypocrisy of himself whose courage was found wanting. Are we not all, regardless of our particular social proclivities, called to the one table? What I like most about the Church is our struggle towards communion.
What was you biggest surprise in entering the Religious Life?
I was surprised by the valuable friendships that I have formed with people who are quite opposite of myself. These friendships are one of my most valuable treasures.
What is your favorite book and why?
This is a very difficult question, being that I am not particularly good at narrowing down books. I love Shakespeare, and my favorite of his works is "Titus Andronicus," because it is truly an awesome and twisted look at one slice of the human condition.
Favorite movie and why?
"Romero." San Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Romero has always been a hero of mine.
What do you do in your free time?
Any free time I have is split between working on my thesis and hanging out with friends.
What kind of music do you listen to?
Jazz, Blues, Country, Rock, Classical, Gospel, etc. I'll listen to mostly anything.
Mark is an Oblate brother-in-formation, which means he has professed the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience with the Oblates as a Religious Brother. He will renew these vows every year until he professes them perpetually at the end of his formation. Presently, he is in pursuit of a Master of Arts degree in Theology at the Washington Theological Union.
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