The following story first appeared in the Autumn 2001 Glenmary Challenge.
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Brother Virgil Siefker: 
Making the Mission Concrete
By Karen Hurley

Brother Virgil with the Brothers Building Crew  in Monticello, Ark., in 1986.

From building parish halls and mission churches to “growing” people at the Glenmary Farm, Brother Virgil Siefker puts his quiet energy into actions, not words.

A chemistry major from the University of Dayton with one year experience teaching junior high near his hometown of Kalida, Ohio, Brother Virgil was looking for a summer volunteer opportunity. He ended up in the Glenmary mission in New Bloomfield, Penn.

But when the summer was over, he was not ready to go back to junior high teaching. He signed on for another volunteer assignment—this time in Glenmary’s missions in Adams County, Ohio. “Shortly thereafter I made a formal application to become a Glenmary brother,” he recalls.

After candidacy and novitiate, he spent two years in an architecture and construction technology program in Maryland. And for the next 10 years, he traveled throughout Mission Land, USA, with the Brothers Building Crew.

From 1980 to 1990 he was part of 10 different building projects in missions in Georgia, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Ohio and West Virginia. These mission buildings are, quite literally, the infrastructure for Catholic presence in the rural counties targeted for Glenmary ministry.

But Brother Virgil has been a builder of not only structures. He has also built community. The Building Crew drew folks from the missions they served into their spirit—into Glenmary’s spirit.

So, when a new assignment in 1990 took him from his building ministry to vocation work, it wasn’t a complete change of focus. He turned his attention full-time to building up the community of Glenmary missioners. After working out of Glenmary’s Cincinnati Vocation Office for four years, he moved to the Glenmary Farm in Eastern Kentucky in 1994 to direct the vocation program there.

He stayed at the Farm even after the Farm’s focus began to shift from “vocations” to “volunteers.” From 1996 to 2000, he served as director of Glenmary’s Appalachian Group Volunteer Program, providing thousands of college and high school students with the opportunity to experience mission firsthand.

Many of those who passed through the Farm during Brother Virgil’s tenure—both student volunteers and young adult farm managers—speak of how the Farm experience shaped career and life choices.

One former farm manager and friend, Dave Henley, entered Glenmary’s Candidacy Program in Hartford, Ky., in August 2001 to prepare for Glenmary brotherhood. (See page 16 for more on Dave Henley.)

Assigned to Cincinnati this past year, Brother Virgil has tackled long-overdue renovations at the Glenmary residence as well the remodeling of the Glenmary chapel sacristy. (He helped construct the chapel in 1983.)

After 25 years of many kinds of building, Brother Virgil is now participating in a three-month sabbatical program at Sangre de Cristo in Santa Fe, N.M. He doesn’t know what’s next. He is not a person who likes to speculate about the future—either Glenmary’s or his own. What he does like to do: translate mission ideals into concrete realities.