The first stop jesuits make on the road of their vocations is the novitiate. The novices whose individual photos and bios you will see in the next few pages will spend the next two years at novitiates in Berkley, Mich.; Boston; Culver City, Calif.; Denver; Grand Coteau, La.; Portland, Ore.; St. Paul; or Syracuse.
Language and custom differences aside, a Culver City novice would find a pretty similar routine at the novitiate in Benin City, Nigeria, or the one in Ciudad Guzmán, Mexico: setting times aside for prayer, liturgy, spiritual direction, ministry, recreation, and chores is part of the tradition of Jesuit formation that spans the globe and goes back years and years.
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| We did think of printing this shot of Australian novices upside down, but then we’d have to reverse the names of Daniel Grixti, Geoff Pearson, Kent Rosenthal, Tom Riemer, Trung Nguyen and Tyson Niblett, at the front gate of the novitiate in Sydney. |
Canisius College near Sydney is home to six novices from all corners of our continent. Geoff Pearson, a psychologist from Melbourne; Trung Nguyen, a theology student and mechanic from Brisbane; Tom Riemer, a lawyer from Sydney; and Tyson Niblett, a chemistry grad from Melbourne, are our first-year novices, while the second-year crew includes Daniel Grixti, a math graduate from Melbourne originally from Malta, and me, Kent Rosenthal, a journalist from Queensland. We help maintain the five acres that surround Canisius, which also houses a retreat center, tertianship program, and facilities for elderly Jesuits. The bushlands support flocks of cockatoos, parrots, and kookaburras, large kingfishers with a raucous, laughing call that wakes us up.
We work two days a week at a downtown Jesuit parish, caring for the homeless and drug-addicted and at a support center for asylum seekers. Longer experiments take us outback to Aboriginal communities, hospices for the dying, and Jesuit high schools.
For recreation we go bushwalking—trudging through subtropical rainforest of New South Wales’s coast hinterland. We also swim, fish, visit museums, play soccer and volleyball, and have barbecues. Novices often head to Newport, one of Sydney’s beaches between the harbor and the Hawkesbury River, and stay at the Jesuit villa house, which overlooks the rolling Pacific. Trung has been known to treat us to meals there of freshly caught shark, cooked Vietnamese style.
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| Mexican novices Agustin Reyes, Luis Enrique Gómez, Luis Antonio Lucas, Ricardo Villa (below) and Enrique Mireles enjoyed a free day at the Nevado de Colima, a very old volcano that towers above Guzman City. |
At Beato Pedro Fabro Novitiate in Guzmán City, Jalisco, (named after Blessed Peter Faber, one of the founding Jesuits) are eight first-year and seven second-year novices in addition to province socius Fr. Javier Peóa, SJ, administrator Br. Glodomiro Vega, SJ, prenovitiate director Fr. José Luis Serra, SJ, and vocational team coordinator Fr. Daniel Stevens, SJ.
Novices coordinate their apostolic work with the diocese. Three visit the regional penitentiary, which holds about 180 inmates; another eight are busy with pastoral work at four rural communities, while four novices go into two sugar-cane region towns and work with children, teens, and adults, giving religious instruction and leading reflection groups. All these activities take place during the weekends and some special times, like Holy Week and Christmas.
During free time, the novices here do some of the same things novices around the world do: get some exercise, go to movies, bang out some e-mails to friends and families. One specialty here is meeting at a café to share a cup of coffee and a relaxing chat.
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| Novices in Kingston, Jamaica: Carl Philadelphia, Rohan Tulloch, Eric Walker, Raphael Gonsalves, and Mark McDougall (from the Oregon province), posing at the Missionaries of Charity Home for the elderly poor in the city. |
The Jesuit novitiate in Kingston, the entry point into the Society for the English-speaking Caribbean, is a mix of Afro-Caribbean, Amerindian, and East Indian. Rohan Tulloch is from Jamaica, while Carl Philadelphia, Raphael Gonsalves, and Eric Walker hail from Guyana.
Besides studying the Society’s spirituality and history, novices work a good deal with the poor in inner-city Kingston. Rohan’s been active in Catholic Youth Ministry on the diocesan level. Others teach in primary and secondary Catholic schools, recently in session only intermittently due to gangs’ gun battles. Novices also teach at a prison and work at a home for the elderly and at a soup kitchen run by the Sisters of Mercy.
From this Jamaica base novices go to work in other parts of the Caribbean to familiarize themselves with a variety of Jesuit works. Eric, our guitar player, has taught villagers in the Pakaraima Mountains in the interior of Guyana; Raphael’s worked as a cathechist among the Amerindian people of Guyana; and Carl (our film buff and wrestling fan) has counseled people with HIV/AIDS at a health center in Georgetown, Guyana.
Oregon Province novice Mark McDougall is here with us; we have a program that lets novices from other novitiates share the experience of formation in a developing country.
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| Novices at Benin City, Nigeria, head out for a day of swimming. Author Fr. George Quickley, SJ, on far left, is novice master. |
I start my 4:30 A.M. jog around the novitiate compound in Benin City and notice lights on in a novice’s room. Why’s he up so early? I insist that novices get plenty of sleep to meet the demands of the day.
I check with him later. Turns out he’d gotten up early to put final touches on a presentation he would give in a few days on Ignatius.
“I hope you’re not replacing your prayers with studies,” I say.
“Oh, no, Father, I worked until 5:45, then I began my meditation at my normal time,” comes the reply. I’ll have to talk with him about time management soon.
The novices do keep busy. During the week they teach catechism to inmates at Benin Prison and reading, writing, and math at Faith House, a residence for the mentally and physically handicapped.
At evening prayer, many of their prayers are for people for whom they have ministered during the day. Friday faith sharing draws out of them stories about how they experience God in their lives. It’s a blessing that they can be so transparent about their experiences.
Saturday afternoons are devoted to soccer. The games are always fascinating to watch. At age 55 I think I should stick to my early morning jogging.
On Sundays novices teach catechism and assist at churches as Eucharistic ministers or conduct Eucharistic services at an outstation church. The treat of the week comes at Sunday supper when novices display their culinary talents, and we taste a new Nigerian or Ghanaian dish, a celebration of the “liturgy of the stomach.” Alleluia!
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| Ward Biemans, from the Netherlands, plays the bassoon. |
In a leafy suburb of Birmingham is where you'll find Manresa House, the British Irish novitiate, which also welcomes novices from the Netherlands and Belgium.
Ward Biemans, our Netherlands novice, studied at the University of Utrecht and worked for the government in Holland. He's our bassoonist an unusual sounding instrument when played on its own.
Raymond Perrier, 35, from the British Province, studied at Oxford and worked in marketing in London and New York. He's the one here who likes to sing Anglican hymns.
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| Colin Rothery, from Ireland, cooks; both Colin and Ward (above) are novices at Manresa House, the British Province's novitiate. |
Colin Rothery, 34, from the Irish Province, graduated from University College in Dublin. Fluent in Spanish, he's taught in Spain and has also worked as a stage and television actor.
Five other Jesuits live at Manresa, among them a Byzantine scholar, a retreat director, and Fr. Robert Costello, Missouri Province's former provincial who's here working with Christian Life Communities.
Novices take courses in theology at a nearby college and in prayer guidance with an ecumenical group. They also teach religion in primary schools and English to Rwandan, Iraqi, and Afghani refugees. Each May they meet with French novices in Lyon or here for courses in Ignatian spirituality; this past summer they studied with novices from North America in Denver.
On Sundays they help out at parishes or at a prison. Longer experiments take them to hospices and high schools, while summer pilgrimages lead them to Ignatian sites in Spain, ancient Christian sites in France, and former Nazi concentration camps in Poland.
By the end of two years novices come to know and love Christ, the Church, the Society, and themselves a little more. The rest is a life's enterprise!
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| Novice master Fr. Philip Heng, SJ, celebrates liturgy with Francis Irenus bin David, James Boey, Clement Trong, and Justin Joannis at the Jesuit novitiate in Singapore. |
Loyola Jesuit is home for nine novices, average age 32, here in Singapore. Most have graduate degrees and work experience that ranges from two to ten years.
Their day begins at 5.30 with personal prayer and ends with lights out at 10.30. In between times are filled with classes, mass at the parish, spiritual direction, and work on projects such as planning for vocation weekends and other events.
Their recreation time fills up with Trivial Pursuit, badminton, or tending our beautiful garden. On Villa Days, their days off, they head to the city’s historic sites and gardens and churches, generally making a stop at the new Border’s Books on Orchard Road. On Sundays they take turns cooking dinner: soup, fried vegetables, stewed chicken or pork or beef, noodles, and fried rice.
Ministries? Novices regularly visit a home for lepers, help with youth groups at the parish, or work with immigrants from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, and China, here in Singapore as contract laborers at construction sites.
On longer experiments they go to Bangkok and work at hospitals and prisons. Figure in the three eight-day retreats and the one thirty-day retreat during their two years in the novitiate; it adds up to a full yet very fulfilling life!