The Companions of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood are lay people who have made a commitment to the Community, called a covenant. They gather together for prayer and study, celebrate special events with the Community, and consider themselves a part of the Precious Blood family. They perform many ministries within the larger church, often working alongside Missionaries of the Precious Blood in parishes and other ministry sites.

Companions have enhanced and enriched
Community life. They bring a variety of gifts
to the Church and to this Congregation.

To learn more about Companions, please
contact Director Br. Nick Renner, C.PP.S.,
C.PP.S., Co-Directors Mark Giesige (for the
Cincinnati Province) or Marie Trout (for the
Kansas City Province).

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Companions Welcome New Director  

He is not a perfect tree.

As Br. Nick Renner, C.PP.S., sees it, the tree is a good metaphor for the human condition, and he knows that he comes to his new task as director of Companions with burrs and blemishes. But he also brings gifts, he said, among them a willingness to listen and learn, an eagerness to be with the people, and a belief that in them lies the future of this Congregation.

“I come to Companions with a listening ear and a gentle heart,” said Br. Nick, whose appointment as director officially began on July 1. “I’m not going to come in with the idea of telling people what they have to do, although I’ve got thoughts and visions about what the movement can be. I want to walk with them and let the spirit guide our next steps."

Br. Nick, 63, has been a brother and a Missionary of the Precious Blood since his profession in 1964, and has been involved with Companions in the Cincinnati Province almost since their inception.

For most of his years as a brother, he lived at St. Charles Center in Carthagena, Ohio, working on the Community’s farm there. Last year, the Cincinnati Province regretfully decided to cease its farming operations. The land that Br. Nick once worked is now rented to local farmers. The barns that once held St. Charles’ famed Brown Swiss dairy herd are now leased to others. For the first time in many years, when Br. Nick drives past the crops on St. Charles land, they are not his worry.

It was not easy to accept. What helped him through the time of transition, he said, was a sabbatical he took earlier this year at Sangre de Christo, a retreat center for religious and lay people run by the Christian Brothers in the Sangre Mountains of New Mexico. Sangre de Christo, Blood of Christ: it just seemed like the right place to Br. Nick.

“I needed it between the long tradition of being at St. Charles, my long tradition of being a proud farmer, to the next part of my life,” he said. “It was a good time for me to step back. I had a lot of heart-and-gut things to work on.”

The sabbatical included classes, spiritual direction and field trips to see the New Mexico sights. “ New Mexico is a world apart,” he said. “The culture there sees everything in nature intertwined with themselves. It’s desert there; they get only 11 inches of rain a year. There will be an old scrubby tree, barely growing an inch a year, and they treasure that tree. They see themselves as one with that tree, with the birds, the sun and the wind.”

As he was finding himself in that new world, he got a call that he had been nominated (he suspects by the Companions of the Carthagena, Ohio, group, of which he is the sponsor) to be the next director of Companions. “My decision was made during a very prayerful time,” he said. “As I prayed about it, I felt no knots in my stomach. I really didn’t know what I wanted to do next. But this helped me see what other people saw in me.”

What people see in Br. Nick is a gentle, unadorned, unadulterated spirit of love. In his ministries as a religion teacher for teens at local parishes, or as a missionary to Haiti (he has made 16 trips over the last 25 years to help with the maintenance at a health clinic there), or as an active participant in the Rural Life Commission in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, he offers to people all that he has.

“I’m pretty plain-Jane, and that’s what I’m going to give to Companions, just the Nick,” he said. “I’m looking forward to supporting them, to being with the people, to working with (co-directors) Mark Giesige and Marie Trout. We’re certainly going to be a team.”

Br. Nick said he sees great hope in the lay associate movement, which is revitalizing many religious communities who were suffering from a lack of vocations to the consecrated life. There were 14 communities represented during his Sangre de Christo sabbatical, he said, and all of them had seen a decline in their membership. Their growth was in their lay associates.

“We’re finding a lot of new life in it. Through our lay associates we see that the Spirit is always moving,” he said. “We have to make steps – even if we don’t always know where we’re stepping. I see Companions as a new form of religious life. I don’t have a clear vision on that, but I see that’s how our charisms are going to live on.”