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i noticed that i found it difficultto take responsibility for my life and that of my wife and children. i often choose the easy way,such as sitting in the couch and reading while there is so much more to do. for a long time, i had become used to thinkingthat i had to resolve every problem by myself, especially the important and difficult thingsthat made my life miserable. i always worked on these problems alonewanting to resolve everything by myself. i sometimes give off the impressionof being emotionless and tough. that wasn't the case upthere with this group of men.

the atmosphere was genuinely open and it really helped meto become the man i am today. i can even say that i am proud ofthis transformation, which has becomeabsolutely necessary in my life. i am struck by the factthat many men today have become passive in the waythey live their lives. i often go for a walk in our villagewith my children. and when i take a lookinside the houses, i see a lot of men spendingtheir evening lying in front of the tv.

i believe that many men will gothrough their entire life and never become real men. many remain like little childrenthroughout their life. and the reason for this is thatmany of them are afraid or incapable of taking fullresponsibility for their lives. a feature of today's men isthat they find it difficult to find their way in a society that isconstantly changing. women are taking on more responsibilities andcan exploit their talents more effectively because of the spacethat has been granted to them.

faced with this, men do not always know what to do. i think that men havetwo important roles to play: firstly to encourage their wives so thatthey can be more fulfilled and secondly to help in achieving a betterdistribution of the roles within the couple. in the past, men built lots of things, conquered new lands or even fought. these days, you can barely choose theoptions for your car, and at work, you sit in front of a screen.

given this situation,what does it mean to be a man? how can you use your strength,your energy and your desire for life? henk stoorvogel and jeroen alting von geusau are both at the origin of a men'smovement in the netherlands. henk is a protestant pastorin the free evangelical church of zwolle he founded the movementof the "fourth musketeer" ten years ago. jeroen is the founder of "kingsmen",he is a catholic and a member of the chemin neuf community. these two movements organise expeditions for men,

for example, in scotland in the highlandsor in the snowy peaks of switzerland. beyond the physical challenge,it is above all about getting them to walk a spiritual path. in the mountains,something happens to a man. this is frequently found in the bible, both in the new and the old testament. when god speaks to men,the men go into the mountains. an important lesson to learn is the following: on a physical level, those 30 centimetresthat separate the head from the heart,

often take a very long time to travel. a man after god's own heart i was on a trip to the pyreneeswith a couple of friends. we experienced a very strongfriendship between us and we were very open to each other. as a result, i recovered a part of what makes me a man and when i came back home, my wife immediately noticed the change in me. other friends also noticedthe change and asked me

if they could also have such an experience. one year later,a group of nine of us set off on a trip and that's how our movement was formed and grew. the movement was founded by three friendswho were simply seeking friendship and the opportunity to share as brothers. our aim was to take a stand in life as men relying on each other for support. over the years, we experienced the grace ofleading many of these weekends, and we noticed that many friendships

emerged out of them. what we see in the church in the netherlands, both in evangelical protestant churchesand the catholic church is that many men are hidingin the background. it's a little perplexing, given that the churchand the liturgy is often led by men, and the leading roles are often occupied by men, who preach the homiliesand celebrate the eucharist etc. consequently many of them feel out of place, which leads them to leave the faith.

"the fourth musketeer" and "kingsmen"basically have the same goal. the day their two founders met, they had the idea of organisinga one-day event to bring men together. this unique event took placeat st. paul's abbey of oosterhout in the netherlands. the event was oversubscribed. the abbey was packed with men,catholics and protestants, who wanted to serve god together,while also giving strength to each other. i think that the most powerful moment waswhen we lit a big bonfire,

around which we expressed our desire to turn the fires of persecution of the pastinto flames of joy of rediscovered unity. it was then that we wrote all the prejudices we had held towardseach other on pieces of paper and threw them into the fire,thereby fuelling the fire of unity. i told myself that i had too muchon my plate as it was: anger, pain, loneliness, a sense of toomany responsibilities at a young age and so on. and when we were up there at the monastery,

i began to feel a sense of sorrow and anger against my father. when peter was three,his parents divorced, and he grew up alone with his mother. in his adult life, as the husband of judithand the father of their four children, he felt his lack of having a father figure. a real-life situationthat could make me very angry was when i tried to stand up for oneof my children during an argument, and they would ignore me

and continue their argument. it is easy to see the reasonfor this in my past, that is, the fact that my fatherand my mother didn't listen to me. many men are driven by an inward force to want to please their father even if their fatherhas passed away a long time ago. they might build a big company or work long hours for weeks on end just to gain approval in their fathers’ eyes.

that was the moment when i began to think and pray about all these things. my parents had been deadfor a long time already. i wrote them a letter,a very sincere letter. it was a harsh letter,but a sincere one. for me it was a question of being honest: â« you weren't there for me and now,havinglooked back through everything that happened, i understand that you couldn't be there,but i have to tell you that it hurt me deeply. as a child i needed you, and you were not there. â»

at the end,i was able to put this letter on the altar, it gave me an immense sense of liberation. it did him a lot of good, as a man and as a father. he spoke of how they sat togetheraround a table, and apparently that'swhen these kinds of stories would emerge. out of this blend of effort,silence and prayer comes these very special conversationsand a space is created that is conducive to healing, inner restoration and forgiveness.

at the moment, i'm working on beingmore present in my relations with my children. for the girls, it means telling them that they are great, they are beautiful and how wonderful it was to hear them singso beautifully at the school's easter celebration! as for samuel my son, it means horsing aroundon the bed and letting him win. at the beginning of our marriage,i would often ask judith, "what did your father do in this situation?” i now realise that as i graduallybecome more confident, i have begun to do the thingsthat simply had to be done.

where did it come from? i don't know, it's as if it came from within,it corresponds with who i am, and this is how i find meaning in my paternity. i believe there is a very important connectionwith the image of god as father. god gives us earthly fathersin order to show us what he is like. i can touch him throughthe attitude of a typical father : i have an unconditional love for my children,i will always be there for them. even if they do things that are wrong,i will always forgive them. and so we can go further together.they will always be welcome.

what is very special is thatyou are only among men, and there are no women. in this context,men behave quite differently. whenever a woman is present,men quickly become boastful. and what is wonderful is that when men are together,they never judge someone else's story and they will forget everythingonce they have left the mountain. what we find in the timethat we spend together is that we really share in truth. we cry, we laugh and we console each other,

all in the space of a quarter of an hour. everything makes sense and we even tell jokes! 4th musketeer weekends are very physical. we like to say that it'slike a 72-hour day that never stops. you have to completely buy into the programme. many men find it difficult because it involvesbeing dependent on others. the schedule always includes a night-time event in where we pray for those who stayed at home. we also go camping out in nature.

and during the day, participants are givena number of topics to reflect on for example bible passages to study or personal meditation. we often see that this works really well because the men are completely cut offfrom their homes at kingsmen,we built the course in three stages. during the first stage,you delve into questions of identity, masculinity and friendships. during the second journey,it is about your vulnerability.

and the third concerns your willpowerand ability to take responsibility. there is a logic behind this. because, if you don’t know yourself,if you don’t yet know your own identity, it is difficult to become vulnerable. and if you are not able to be vulnerable, you are not be able to demonstrateyour willpower or be a good leader. there are other themesthat are very important for men: how to behave within your family? how do you prioritize your “to do” list,

behave towards your wife or your children? what does it mean to makeimportant decisions about money or power or anything of a radical nature? sexuality is also a very important theme. many men stumble on this point,with pornography and the internet. how can i remain pureand chaste in this area? many men also discover that they are not the onlyones who are struggling with these kind of topics, namely sexuality, temptation and doubt. it's always very importantto realise that you are not alone,

that you can find supportin the group but also that together we can seek the support of god. a biblical text that has helped me a lotin this process is james 5: 15-16 â« if one of you has committed a sin,he will be forgiven. confess your sins to one another, and pray for one anotherin order to be healed â». jan has been married to gerdien for 11 yearsand they have three children. he took part in a 4th musketeer weekend.

during this time he gavehis testimony concerning his battle with pornography, and how he received forgiveness and liberation. what has also really helped me, was never allowingpornography to have a role in my life. i never considered myselfhappy in this struggle, even when i only fell once a month. i just simply didn’t want any more of it. i always talked about it to someone fairlyquickly and i was very grateful

that things happened as they did and that god gave me courage. and in that sense, it changed my identity. i was no longer a man who fought his problem but a man who depended on godto overcome his problem. what happens during these weekends is very special. because they make taking a steptowards god more accessible. this is due to the intimate nature of what you share,of all the difficulties and hardships that you have suffered as well asall the testimonies that you hear.

this helps to draw people closer to one another, but also to themselves and to god. in the end, our weekends always touch what we would considerthe highest summit in the world: the foot of the cross. then you are invited to find a stone which symbolizes in your life as a man, that which you wish to placeat the feet of jesus. and it can be one or several stones,it can be small or large.

it’s up to you to decide. placing these at the foot of the crosswe make a sort of altar all while singing and praying. and it's here that, at the end,we celebrate the holy supper together. often, they kneel at the foot of the cross there, they receive the grace ofa new coming of jesus into their life, and he comes to touch their hearts. there, they can place their worriesthat are weighing them down. they receive new strengthfor their return home,

whether it be for their life as a couple,as a father, in their work, or in the church. in all these places, they are now able to live their livesin an inspired way. growing takes time. growing always entails cycles of fallingand getting back up again. this work is beautiful in this setting. here you can fall and get back up,and with that, you learn to grow. what i see in many men is that,

despite the fact they have been fortunateenough to have a father at their side, there are many things that didn’t go well in thisrelationship and which come back to the surface. for example, their father may have beenpresent physically, but absent mentally. or a father who, instead of encouraginghis children, only ordered them around. and in some cases,these earthly fathers are still alive, which has led some of usto engage in dialogue with them after our return from the mountain. and that quickly becomes very emotionalbecause these fathers who have often become grandfathers,were actually waiting for this moment:

for their son to come to them and say ⫠i can finally tell you that… ⻠these are wonderful times of reconciliation. as a kid, i was a bit of a delinquent; my mother often left me aloneto manage on my own. i tried drugs and alcohol and all that stuff. mark took part in a session with kingsmen. the session had just finishedand he was full of enthusiasm for what he had lived. he was going to reunite with his wife ingeand their four children

and he suddenly learntthat he had lost his job. i felt like lightning struckthrough my peaceful blue sky. i didn’t see this coming at all then, going back home,i had to break the news. at this time, i had a serious problem with alcohol,which was getting worse. so, at a certain moment, i said to myself ⫠i can’t continue like this,i need you my god, and i need to get to work on this. ⻠i told him:

⫠if you don’t start to work on yourself now, and if you don’t change your course,well this will be over. ⻠i said that even though i was the one who wishedthe least to put an end to our marriage. but i knew that if something didn’t radically change, we wouldn’t be able to carry on much longer. mark then decided to totally reexamine his life. to become sober,he asked for professional help. he also decided to do a silent retreat, in which he realized that he had neversquarely addressed his past issues.

so, this priest said to me: "you need to relive your past by bringingyour memories up. but you can only do this with someone else. this someone must be jesus and you have to make sure he takes youby the hand like a friend. think of him as a real friend or brother,and go through this adventure together.” this was truly liberating for me. little by little,confidence was restored in their family. mark in the same way that god sees him.

god granted this prayer. inge sees it as god’s grace. so i was able to see through the pain, and i was able to forgive himthe day he asked me: "will you forgive me, because i have now understoodwhat i had to change in myself, i have seen what was not good,now i know who i am. learning to listen to others really changed me. it's really about showing your vulnerable side.

if you can show more empathy then your life will become much richerand more interesting because it will become pure and authentic. this discovery really enriched my life. it is crucial to act quickly on the choicesyou have made during the weekend. so, if you were in the habit of watchingtoo much television for example, or always sitting at the computeror never doing any sports, it is very important during the weekend to choose what to change and to put these into actionwithin 72 hours of your return.

it is also important to have a group of friends,of brothers, around you to be able to keep the fire of the holy spiritburning and to follow your path in the right way. judith and i, we are persevering in our prayer times. the children see it, because we simply sit in the living room earlyin the morning to pray. and often, one of the children will join us. when i leave for work in the morning, i bless all the children, as well as judith,by making the sign of the cross on their foreheads. and if it seems as though i’m going to forget,one of the children will always say

⫠hey, dad, you still have to… ⻠so, for them it is very important that i bless themat the beginning of the day. i am very happy. all this has really helped himto have more self-assurance. he now knows who he is as a man andwhat he should be as a father. it’s nice to live with someonewho feels this way. as to bringing up the children, i have peaceof mind, i have let go of things, because i know that peter will handle them. i notice it as well when my friends say to me,

''hey bud, you’ve really changed ! you’ve really become a good mate, a good friendand you are always there for us.'' and they add, ''we have noticed it as well with your wife, your children and all your acquaintances,it’s just cool to be with you !'' this difficulty with addictionshas brought me a lot, allowing me in a way to really become a man after heart's of god. i can say this now,having examined certain things.

in fact, i had to better learn to make difficultchoices, to dare to be vulnerable, and to be aware that i have a beautiful wife. i place my difficulties and my lonelinessinto the hands of god instead of trying to resolve these things by myself. what i find so beautiful is that through these sessions, year after year,i have seen men radically change. men who were overweight became ableto easily climb a mountain, having lost twenty or thirty kilos on the way,a thing that they were never able to do before. men with addictions to alcohol or pornography

became healed of these. or even men with difficulties in their couple dared to make choices. for me, the heart of masculinity is takingresponsibility for what you have done and for what you have left in your path. it is a responsibility in the eyes of godand those close to you, which you will be able to carrywith strength and in joy. acts 13 : 22-23 â« he raised up david to be their king,concerning whom he also testified and said

i have found david the son of jesse a man after my own heart,who will do all my will. from the descendants of this man, according to promise,god has brought to israel a savior, jesus. â» god our father,thank you for creating us men and women, with our differences and our complementarities. come and allow your people, and especially men, to live a real conversion, letting you heal their past issuesin order to be freer, to dare to be vulnerable at the foot of the cross,

to assume their responsibilities and to become menfollowing your heart.

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