Welcome to Fra Oscar Aguilera

Chaplain 2010
I am very pleased to announce that Fra Oscar Aguilera osm has agreed to be part-time chaplain at Trinity College. Fra Oscar is well known to our community as he assisted the College with many of our Masses and Retreats during 2009. I thank him for agreeing to take on this role.
Ivan Banks, Headmaster

My name is Fra Oscar Aguilera, osm. The Fra is short for friar and osm stands for “Order of the Servants of Mary”. I was born in Chile, South America. I am one of seven children: three brothers and three sisters. I grew up in the northern part of Chile and was baptised and received my First Communion there at the hands of a missionary priest from Spain. While in Chile, I received a very traditional upbringing.

We moved to Australia and after a few years everything began to settle down, especially as we became more at ease with the language. I liked school and even now I keep in contact with friends I made at high school and university. One day one of the Servite Friars from school (Servite College) asked me to translate a letter from English into Spanish. It was the very first time that I met this friar, who, eventually, was to become my spiritual director and friend. At the end of my studies I wanted to enter the Servites, but the vocation director at the time suggested that it would be a good idea for me to “see the world” before making a decision.

That is how I ended up in a metal factory and then, two months later, working in the Kimberly with BHP in the Department of Exploration. I was with them for two years. We worked in the middle of the desert and I found the country there to be very beautiful. It was a significant time for me because, being in the desert, I had a lot of time to think and reflect. It was like my own exodus.

With money in my pocket it was time to go back to Chile in search of my roots. It was an interesting experience as most of the memories I had of Chile I had formed as a small child. However, this time upon my return to Chile I was coming back as young man.

It was at this point that the Servites asked me if I was going to join them or not! I went to live with them in Melbourne, so as to gain a deeper understanding of their way of life and to experience life in a community. Right from the beginning I found myself in a community that was being re-founded in Melbourne (Parkville). There was a lot to be done and we had to work hard together from the first day, all three of us. A beautiful testimony of community life!

After I was accepted I was formally received into the Order as a postulant in Melbourne. From there I went to Mexico where I spent two and a half years in the pre-novitiate and novitiate programmes. I returned to Australia to receive the Habit and to make my First Profession. After a few months I was sent to the "Eternal City", where I studied philosophy at the Urbanian University and theology at the Marianum Pontifical Faculty.

During my time in Italy I was able to do many different apostolic works, such as: working with the homeless, the terminally ill, mission in Albania, helping women to leave the streets.

Upon my returned to Australia, in 2003, things started to happen very quickly. I made my Solemn Profession in May 2004 and was ordained a Deacon during September 2004. On 8th September 2005 I was Ordained at Saint Denis Church in Joondanna. From 2006 I have been working at Catholic Schools around Perth. After Fr Michael became ill I was asked to assist at Trinity College, first as a “subcontractor”, and now as a Chaplain of such great community.

Fr Michael wrote in his report in 2007: As a “Preacher Man” I take my cue from Jesus and how to foster relations. And we do this by following a simple rule: Love God, love your neighbour. During my homily at the Year 12 graduation in 2009 and even during this report – autobiography, you can identify this sense of “passing by” of relationships and life. I spoke about this image and how we can live the commandment left to us by Jesus. This image of passing by is part of our every day. Every moment in our life is a passing by.

Fraternally in Jesus and Mary

Fra Oscar Aguilera, OSM
Chaplain