New Memories

I spent the past weekend in Syracuse, New York... I travel there each year to attend the celebration of first vows at the Jesuit novitiate where I began my own journey of formation for the priesthood. This year, five men professed vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience during a liturgy filled with beautiful music, inspiring preaching, and the company of family, friends, and fellow Jesuits. As a significant event in the life of a Jesuit, and the last major celebration of the summer, vow weekend is an occasion that draws together many Jesuits from the three provinces– New England, New York, and Maryland– that encompass the area from Maine to the Carolinas.

For me, in addition to savoring the beauty of rolling hills and farmland, lush after a rainy summer, along the otherwise maddeningly dull stretch of I-90 between Worcester and Syracuse, and seeing brother Jesuits who I don't usually meet while we're busy in our various assignments during the academic year, it was an opportunity to relive and reflect upon my two years as a novice before taking vows, and my five years as a scholastic and regent since that blessed August day in 2006. The vows, to me, are about more than just appropriate relationships, simple living, and carrying out my mission– they together shape a life of prayer and action centered on Jesus and shared in community. Yet the concrete, daily task of expressing that commitment, and staying faithful to it, is by no means easy nor straightforward. During the liturgy, I found myself longing for a renewal of the enthusiasm that I felt in my younger Jesuit brothers whose vocations and commitments we celebrated, for the same kind of freshness and wonder that I felt five years ago. My tendency to be a creature of habit has its advantages in certain aspects of my life, but I find my life of the vows duller when reduced to mere routines.

I found a desired spark when, along with one of my closest friends and brothers from my vow class, I attended Sunday Mass at the parish where he and I often worshipped while we were novices. Located in a poorer section of the city, it's a uniquely inclusive and welcoming family of faith. In a magnificent church built in the 1890s, the deaf community, the L'Arche community, the homeless, college students, and residents of more affluent neighborhoods some distance away all gather to pray, worship, and celebrate as brothers and sisters. It's a place where surprises and laughter, as well as thought-provoking preaching, are common, and in which the presence of God is a little more obvious, but no less mysterious. Put even more bluntly, it's a place where the love of Christ is palpable. In seeing members of the community whom I hadn't seen in five years, being recognized and welcomed anew, and feeling myself drawn into the unapologetic joy of our prayer, our song, our warm exchanges of peace, and our sharing in the Eucharist, I was reminded of why I proudly called this parish home for two years, and of a key element of my vocation. Having struggled with no small measure of self-doubt during two demanding and challenging years of middle-school teaching, my ability to confidently risk acts of generosity, charity, and kindness was sadly curtailed. Two hours at the parish seemed to undo, if only for a time, those patterns of hesitancy, replacing them with a clear resolve to extend myself to others, to pass on the welcome and acceptance that I myself received, and to strive to be newly devoted to a life of love, selflessness, and discipleship rooted in my vows and my relationship with Jesus.

I drove back to Worcester yesterday with a lighter feeling in my heart and soul, and a greater sense of hope that the seeds planted with these experiences will grow more fruitful as these new memories deepen and take hold. With my annual silent retreat beginning later this week, conditions should be favorable. Know that I'm grateful for your prayers, and that I'll be keeping you in mine.