"Reset": Brent Faubert's Journey to First Profession

Brent Faubert in his white Novice habit.

For much of his adult life, Brent Faubert was doing exactly what he thought he was supposed to do. He built a successful career. He pursued professional achievement. He worked hard, advanced in his field and accomplished many of the goals he had set for himself.

Then, in his 30s, something unexpected happened.

“I had achieved so many of my objectives and didn't feel the way I thought I should feel,” he said.

On August 1, 2026, Brent will make his First Profession of Vows as an Augustinian, promising to live poverty, chastity and obedience in the Augustinian way of life. After completing his novitiate year, he will officially become an Augustinian friar.

Looking back now, Brent sees his vocation as the story of God patiently resetting his understanding of what makes a life meaningful.

Brent grew up in Ontario, Canada, in a French Catholic family. He attended Catholic schools, served in a small Catholic community and regularly attended Mass with his family. His faith was real, but at times felt difficult to fully embrace.

As Brent grew older, another influence began to shape him: science.

But, far from drawing him away from God, science became one of the first places where Brent encountered Him.

Speaking with a biologist one day about the complexity of human skin, Brent found himself overwhelmed by the beauty of creation.

“I was just kind of taken back to the divine,” he recalled.

That experience awakened a belief in God as Creator. But while Brent believed, faith had not yet become the organizing principle of his life and instead, he devoted himself to building a career.

Like many ambitious young professionals, Brent measured success by achievement, financial stability, and professional recognition.

Looking back, he recognizes that those priorities quietly became his philosophy of life. But one day, he realized that it "wasn't working" for him, which led to years of reflection. Brent began questioning not only what he was doing with his life, but why he was doing it.

He remembered the faith he had learned as a child and slowly began taking it more seriously. Yet what ultimately transformed him was not simply reading or reflection, it was what he calls an encounter with God.

“God graced me with an encounter - with several encounters,” Brent said. “Those proved to me that not only is there a creator, God, but it's the very God that I was taught, the one who knows me better than I know myself.”

For someone who naturally approached life through reason and careful analysis, the experience had an impact.

“It was a 180 for me because while I was ready to make a big change in my life, I just wasn't sure where to go.”

Brent became convinced that God was asking more than belief, God was asking him to follow. That conviction changed everything.

First, Brent made changes to his career, his relationships, and the priorities that shaped his life. He immersed himself in Scripture, joined parish ministries, became involved with the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, attended lectio divina groups and found himself drawn to the Carmelite community in his hometown. Little by little, faith stopped being something that punctuated his week, it became a way of life.

“I didn't quite pick up that Christianity was a way of life when I was younger,” he reflected. “And so... that made me think, well, I'd like to maybe go deeper with this life.”

Through his experiences with the Carmelites and other faithful Catholics in his parish, Brent discovered something he had never fully experienced before: people whose lives were genuinely centered on Christ.

“Community helped then, has helped since, and is now helping me to get closer to God.”

That realization eventually led him to discern religious life and Brent approached discernment the same way he approached many important decisions: carefully.

He spoke with vocation directors from numerous religious communities, prayed extensively, and spent time learning about different charisms. Several communities resonated with him, particularly the Jesuits, whose intellectual tradition appealed to his academic interests. But over time, another realization emerged.

“I don't know that God's calling me to be a better academic,” Brent said. “I think he's calling me to learn how to be a better brother in community.”

That insight ultimately led him to the Augustinians. The warmth of Augustinian community, combined with the life and writings of St. Augustine, felt like home.

“I really identified with St. Augustine completely, with his entire life and spiritual journey.”

Over the past two years, Brent says that conviction has only deepened. Traveling throughout the Province, he has encountered friars and lay collaborators whose lives continue to inspire him and bring him hope in God's presence, in mercy, hope in the Church, and hope that all people are called to a purpose.

“I have hope in His presence,” Brent said. “I have hope in His design. I have hope in His salvation.”

Although Brent has spent much of his life relying on reason, religious life has challenged him to grow in another way: learning to love more deeply.

“Love is the message of the gospel,” he said. “If you can't love, how are you ever going to fulfill those commandments?”

It is a lesson he continues to learn each day, often sitting quietly before the Blessed Sacrament and savoring the experience. As he prepares to profess his first vows, Brent does not pretend to have every answer and still wonders exactly where God will lead him or what ministry awaits. But he no longer feels the need to know everything before taking the next step.

Instead, he returns to a question that has become something of a compass for his own life:

“How willing are you to be reset?”

For Brent, following Christ has meant allowing God to reorder his ambitions, reshape his priorities, and redefine what success looks like.

Soon, as Brent professes his first vows as an Augustinian friar, that willingness becomes a public commitment not simply to believe, but to keep following wherever God leads.