Fall Classes

Each fall, a novice takes courses three times a week in the Novitiate itself, taught by the staff. During the first year, the classes focus on prayer, religious life, the vows, theology, and preparation for the Spiritual Exercises retreat in January. And during the second year a novice focuses his energies on learning the Jesuit constitutions and important contemporary documents.

In the first year, going through classes helped me to have a better sense of what it was I was getting myself into. As I was starting to become comfortable with my own identity as a Jesuit, I more authentically learned what living this life would take as well as some ideas and other Jesuits I could emulate as I continued through my process of formation.

In the second year, I came to better understand the depth of how one comes to live out the life of a Jesuit. The Constitutions gave me a better sense of the roots of the Jesuits, how we were originally conceived, as works in progress.

One consoling item I learned from these classes was that no man enters the Society of Jesus complete and ready. He grows into his identity as a Jesuit, learning through the course of experiences in ministry, community, prayer, and every other aspect of life. We are constantly in formation, whether in our first, second, or fifty-second year as a Jesuit. While it can seem daunting to never emerge from formation, there is certainly a sense of peace in recognizing that I don’t have to be perfect right away.

While I would not look back at these classes as particularly dynamic in my formation, I learned good fundamental lessons from them and continue to draw from them. They taught me that my voice matters and that failure is something to learn from, not something to be feared, a lesson I would certainly take into the following experiments.

Cover Image St. Ignatius of Loyola by Flickr User Bro. Jeffrey Pioquinto, SJ, via Flickr Creative Commons, available here.