Entrance Day and General Novitiate Life
On August 24, 2013, my parents and I arrived at 1035 Summit Ave in St. Paul, Minnesota. I had three bags with me and was ready to enter the Jesuit Novitiate. I took a deep breath and rang the doorbell. The man who would be my superior for the next two years, Fr. Tom Pipp, SJ answered the door and welcomed me into the house. As I stepped through the doorway, I became a novice and could officially put the letters nSJ after my name.
During the course of that day, six other men like me, ranging in age from 22 to 31, entered the house to begin the same program as me. We all were interested in becoming Jesuits and each had our own reasons for making that decision. Thirteen men who had been in our shoes the year before and three priests introduced us to the house and set about making sure that we and our families were comfortable.
I climbed the stairs and saw my room for the first time. Simple and bare, I had a bed, a desk, a chair, a bookshelf, a dresser, and a sink. In time, the room would become my own as I unpacked my clothes, books, and mementoes, including a few pictures of my family. In much the same way, the house would become my home and the men I would live with my brothers in Christ.
Over the course of that day and the next morning, we new novices and our families learned a little bit of what the two years ahead of us would entail. There would be a number of experiences designed to show us the wide expanse of what Jesuit life could entail. Through them, we would each learn whether or not we wanted to take vows and proceed to the next stage of formation.
I unpacked that night after my parents had gone back to the hotel, promising to be back for Mass the next morning at 9AM. As I crawled into bed and looked at the ceiling, I took a deep breath. I had taken the plunge and was a Jesuit. My hopes and dreams of the previous two years had started to come true, or had they? I did not know what to expect, and that was part of the beauty of coming to the Novitiate itself. One ultimately has to take a leap of faith, and I did.
The next morning, after Mass and brunch, our families departed one by one. Mine had come from Chicago, but some came from as far away as Columbus, Ohio. They would have long rides back to begin to process what had happened in this day of letting their sons become novices. We would grow into that role as the weeks and months rolled along.
After becoming more acquainted with each other and learning more of the day-to-day life of a novice, we settled into a routine. We would have Mass together in the mornings, pray at 5:45 in the evening, and then go into dinner. Thursday after dinner until 5PM the next day, the house would be in silence to help us pray. On Saturday mornings, we would clean the house, and on the weekends we would cook for each other.
In time, the schedule itself became second-nature and we used it to get to better know one another. While we would have a number of things to fill our days, we still had a good deal of free time and so we used that to do any number of things: sports, reading groups, studying, catching up with family and friends, and sharing our talents with one another.
