Mark Of The Vineyard; "I Want To Be A Jesuit"

I found this nice piece about a young mans journey to become a Jesuit.

When I came back to the Church, I was connected to the Jesuits. Their rational, down-to-earth, almost materialistic theology appealed to me - who had always been inclined to the “exact” sciences - greatly.

And yet something inside began to feel discomforted by this kind of theology (which I would later come to discover was Modernist).

Christ did not know He was the Son, and found that out as He went along; most miracles were not miracles; Hell is empty; the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius are mostly psychological and that there are no “bad spirits”; that there are truths and no Truth; etc. Where had all the mystery gone? Where was the mystical part of religion? What about Tradition? Could nearly 2000 years of Tradition be wrong? This could not be the Truth, I thought, for the Truth is immutable, it is not subject to the fancy of men. So I set out to search for it on my own within the Church and was happy to see that it still exists, even though in a somewhat mangled state.

When did I begin to question if I have a vocation for the religious life? That would be after I did the three-day version of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. I had come away from them with a great sense of inner peace, having spent most of the exercises thanking God for accepting me back and begging for forgiveness for having abandoned Him.

When I got home the question popped into my head: how about being a priest? At the time I dismissed it as a silly thought, as being nothing but the fruit of the week-end just finished. Why should I want to become a priest? After all, wasn’t my greatest wish in life to get married, have children and build a family? Becoming a priest would invalidate all that. And besides, priestly life had always seemed to me to be an awfully dreary affair. Yet the more I said "No", the more the question would impose itself. Where was this coming from? Certainly not from me, as it was the last thing on my mind. So I finally decided to stop fighting, to just let things lay and see where they'd go from there. As time went on the thought of becoming a priest, especially a Jesuit (their 4th vow and Ignatian Spirituality are very appealing), no longer seemed so dreary.

I began to find solace in prayer, to be able to imagine myself serving God, spreading the joy of His Holy Word.Though I ardently desire to officially start my discernment process, with a spiritual director and all,

I'm a bit busy at the moment. Towards the end of the year I will hopefully be going on a humanitarian mission led by the Jesuits. Until then the group is being prepared and since there is a formidable part of the training connected with religion I'm still not in too much of a rush. I have put my life in His hands and trust Him to lead me where He will. When He decides that it is time for me to take the first steps I will know.

Link to the full post (here)