By Daniel S. Hendrickson, SJ

Oddly, we were encouraged to contradict ourselves. The first days of my Jesuit novitiate experience in St. Paul, Minn. were filled with  instructions and guidelines for orienting the 10 of us first year novices to a purposeful program of community life and vocational discernment. There were rules about the cars we would share, procedures for kitchen duty, and responsibilities for Morning Prayer. There More...

By Patrick Fairbanks, SJ Vocation Director, Chicago-Detroit Province

I was a bit stunned when the young man came back with no way to respond to my question about prayer. In my years of interviewing men who want to join the Jesuits, I will say that I have heard lots of different answers to questions like: Why do you want to be a priest? What do you like about the Jesuits? Where do you More...

By Ken Homan, nSJ

I had looked forward to the Pilgrimage Experiment for some time. The pilgrimage for us novices is this: $35, a one-way bus ticket, and a month to get home. We should avoid staying with people we know or Jesuit communities. Most, if not all of us, set out with particular graces we sought. I wanted to visit different Native American ministries and to look for More...

“The whole weekend was truly a holy, fantastic and insightful experience for my discernment,” said one participant of a discernment weekend this fall. Six men attended a “Weekend at the Novitiate” in St. Paul, seeing what life in the novitiate is like. Ten men visited Chicago’s Jesuit Loyola Community in late October, talking with and learning from young scholastics. On both occasions, the More...