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 Exploring Jesuit
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Life as a Novice
Scholastic Life
Meet the Vocation
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Introduction to life at the novitiate.
Who can imagine the adventures that lie ahead when the spark of a religious vocation gets fanned into flame? Each young man who begins formation to be a Jesuit priest or brother comes to the novitiate with high hopes and vast dreams about the work he will one day be doing.
Most people rightly understand that the work of religious formation is spiritual and largely internal. Prayer and the discernment of one's vocation are, indeed, primary. But not all of the prayer is done on one's knees; nor is the tone of the house all piety and devotion. The most lofty spiritual principles are often discovered-and best applied-in informal, ordinary, daily living. This is why most novices are surprised to find that life in the novitiate is much more down to earth than they ever suspected.
The first two years of Jesuit formation are based largely on what Jesuits call "experiments," including making the 30-day Spiritual Exercises, working with poor or marginalized people, making an extended pilgrimage with few material resources to depend on, and, finally, a five-month period living in a Jesuit community and working at a Jesuit ministry. Foremost among these experiments is the daily interaction with the others who are aspiring to live their lives as Jesuits. As a novice tests out Jesuit life to see if it is right for him, the Society of Jesus takes a hard look at the novice to see if he has the aptitude to minister as a Jesuit and to benefit from Ignatian spirituality. This mutual evaluation process is based largely on the novice's response to the various experiments the novice director sends him on.
The St. Paul novitiate, one of seven in the United States, serves the Jesuits' Missouri, Wisconsin, and Upper Canada provinces. The images on these subsequent pages simply offer glimpses into the daily life of our Jesuit novices.
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