By Drew Kirschman, SJ*

Father General Arturo Sosa’s visit to the UCS (USA Central and Southern Province) novitiate came at a most opportune time for our 1^st year novices. The first-year had just completed their 30-day silent retreat, their first in-depth experience of Jesuit prayer and Ignatian Spirituality. With the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius now a lived experience, instead of an academic exercise, the great joy and graces of the tender encounter with Jesus within the retreat invite curiosity about the life ahead in the Society of Jesus. To have Fr General meet with the novices as they ponder their future is a singular honor.

The UCS Novitiate is located just off the campus of Regis University in Denver, Colorado. Set with a view of the awe-inspiring Rocky Mountains, the novitiate’s sole purpose is to accompany men of various ages and life experiences as they discern their calling to live poor, chaste, and obedient in the service of the faith and justice in the Church today. Currently the UCS Province has 14 novices.

A two-year program, the fall semester sets the foundation for religious life: classes focused on the foundational documents of the Society of Jesus; diverse apostolic settings that put a man’s desires into action; lots of personal prayer and community-building activates. All this is to test the desires to follow in the footsteps of St Ignatius (“probar” was his word). The key to the novitiate: learning to notice God’s subtle (and not so subtle) movements and then trusting to let God lead. Novitiates are full of eagerness and zeal, creativity and courage; here, these are found in abundance.

The next five months are filled with experiments, as Ignatius calls them in the Constitutions. The 2^nd year novices have already begun their apostolic experiment, having been placed in Jesuit institutions around the Province to live Jesuit apostolic life full-time. They live and work alongside Jesuit priests and brothers to learn and confirm their calling. Each of the 2^nd year men met Fr General on his various stops in his visit.

Soon after Fr General’s visit in Denver, the 1^st year men will join the novices of the West Province in a class experiment. This is a time of putting into prayer and discernment the graces of the long retreat as each man deepens his understanding of himself, his understanding of our Church today, his understanding of the challenges our world faces today. The Spiritual Exercises have revealed God’s horizon – a horizon of unconditional love empowering us to give our lives generously. A novice now considers his vocation to serve with God’s horizon as his new world view.

Later this spring these men will be missioned on the time-honored tradition of traveling the world as pilgrims. With great desires to encounter Christ in the highways and byways of the world today, each man is sent with a one-way bus ticket and a crisp $5 bill. As the novice relies on God’s care begging his way through the world, he is invited to trust a bit more in the Truth that this is God’s creation, God’s mission, God’s Church. Co-laboring with God in this mission-field... what might that look like? Jesuits are invited to let the graces of being a pilgrim to become more and more his identity as a man of trust and surrender.

Novitiates set the foundation for religious life for all Jesuits. Fr General’s visit with novices opened a space for him to reflect on his own novitiate experience. When asked what advice he would have for novices, “pray” was his answer! To see the fruits of Fr. General’s life as a man of prayer and trust in God was deeply inspiring as novices seek to make these habits their own.

Fr Drew Kirschman, SJ, is the Director of Novices for the USA Central and South Province (UCS).