Most of earth's inhabitants work to get by. They didn't pick this or that kind of job out of passion; the circumstances of their lives did the choosing for them. Loveless work, boring work, work valued only because others haven't got even that much - this is one of the harshest human miseries.

Before joining the Jesuits, I lived in the hungry villages of sub-Saharan Africa, the flimsy slums of Guatemala, and in cramped, smelly inner city homeless shelters. Most of the people knew that at day's end or when my service ended, I would leave their world for one with prettier views, better plumbing, and closer stores. None of those irritating differences mattered. What seemed important to them was whether I was rested, whether I could take a joke, and whether we could look each other in the eyes when we spoke.

In these obscure places, under desolate circumstances, and among the poorest class, it became clear that this world is oozing with holiness. Working and living with these uncelebrated casualties of human indifference, it became apparent how rare a gift it is to even imagine the idea of being called to a vocation. Only the circumstances of their lives called for them. Journeying with their joy and hopes, their grief and anguish, it became tough to hang on to any pretense that life is tidy and fair.

It was also easy to understand the idea of Incarnation in very human terms: against a backdrop of violence and hunger, a mighty and embracing spirit refuses to die. It lives when people insist on planting their crops even when last year's drought wiped out all savings. It is born again when parents of children slaughtered in civil wars move on from grieving to forgive the killers. It flourishes in the explosive spirit of tired folk who insist on celebrating Christmas, even when there are no presents, no family, no tender memories. It is through these sacred encounters that I fell stubbornly in love with this self-giving spirit and was awakened to the desire to serve as a Jesuit priest.

Early in my Jesuit formation, I continued to discover an incarnate God in unlikely places: in the fears of rebellious and withdrawn adolescents; in the hopes of tired and fed-up parishioners; in the deadening outlook of many people in western culture.

With my ordination less than six months away, the discoveries continue as I struggle with my Jesuit brothers to grow in this consecrated life with integrity. It is in plugging through these sacred moments, usually not gracefully or boldly, that the presence of Christ seems close, certain, and calming.

Church language can be beautiful, but too often it is distant and flat. The time spent in Mali, Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer gives a sharper image of what I hope priesthood is about. The nomadic tribes there always have some member of the community who ensures a flame stays lit. The "fire-keepers" sustain the ember while the group travels.

The blaze serves as a locus for celebrations, deliberations, and sustenance. The charge of the fire-keepers is to keep before the people what is sacred, enduring, and life-giving. Their task is to keep the spark - sometimes taken from dying ashes - burning, and in doing so draw the community together in warmth, light and beauty.

In Church language, I hope to keep alive the fury and the spark of the paschal mystery (life-through-dying) with a mix of festivity, glory, and gratitude. To be a priest in a post-modern, post-predictable age is to be a public, insistent, and uncompromising advocate of the "real presence" of God, and carry that closeness in a world weary of hypocrisy and nihilism. We all need people in our lives to illuminate just how earthy, life-giving, and explosive faith can be.

Woven through all of this, I would hope priesthood regularly and consciously calls others to depth, prayer, and interior journey - and others echo these calls back to the priest. I hope priesthood invites people, including the minister, to be transparent in their deep love of a fallible, pilgrim, and expectant church. Priesthood can take people to places of the heart and lead them to take steps to a mature faith and a restful life, which is trust in a generous God. I want to commit myself to bringing a far-flung and diverse humankind to an awareness of this love that binds all, carries all.

Priesthood, at its best, can pass on the abiding richness and realism of the Catholic faith, which is that the goodness of God is inescapable. I hope to make this claim obvious because it is the only truth that allowed me to twice battle back against a life-threatening illness, and because I have come to see how easily and destructively people dismiss this truth.

Like Ignatius, I hope to do so in ways that pierce hearts, quicken minds, and ultimately lead to mission. I have come to believe there is no more basic, more needed, charism of Jesuit priesthood than to consistently and gratefully extend radical hospitality. This for me is the core of Ignatian spirituality. It is what defines the act from Creator to creature, and it is one that takes on new life when extended to the alienated, the frightened, the slow, the annoying, the jaded.

It doesn't take a priest to bless the world, but sacraments remind us of how delightful and overlooked this nearness to God is. It happens in the sobering ritual of reconciliation, in the proclamation of much needed good news, and in gathering broken, searching and incomplete images of the divine in breaking bread.

I am ready to try all these ministries as a Jesuit priest not because I have succeeded flawlessly in the past. I have failed at too many projects and acted with too many mixed motives to move forward with anything other than humility and hope in the tender mercy from on high. What motivates me to serve as a Jesuit priest is a hope to kindle in others the idea that they may consecrate this world, that they can point to the magis of things. I have never been more convinced of the enormous, perhaps unlimited, capacity of people to be generous, forgiving, and hopeful. We are limited only by doubting God's constant embrace.

I have learned, often reluctantly and awkwardly, of the peace that comes in turning one's will over to God. It occurred when moving beyond an overload of grief from the loss of friends to AIDS. It happened when transformed by surviving, against all odds, leukemia 11 years ago, and it shook me most recently with the current prognosis of again beating this life-threatening disease. I survived all these experiences, though in ways that defy rational or medical explanation. What has been clear is how much God strives for deep and unbreakable communion.

Waking up to that intimacy can trigger a passion that dwells within all, waiting to burst out and share with the earth's weary inhabitants. If we are among the lucky who get to choose their passions and jobs, then the least we can do is remember how fortunate we are. From there it becomes easier to see that our vocations do not belong to us. They belong to God, and our task is simply to relax and let God take over.

Fr. Karl Rahner, SJ said: "The priest is able to persevere patiently with God and accept from Him his vocation to follow Christ without demanding the same from everyone else. The holy priest knows how to give things up, pure and simple, without tarnishing his relationship to the world."

For us less holy ones, we will need constant prayers and leniency from the people of God. For all the confusion over the identity, relevance, and viability of the priesthood, it is a wonderful time to be ordained. It remains a channel to discover the world's sacredness, to help keep hearts and embers on fire, and to invite the Incarnation to be born again and again.