I was tempted to name my Blog entry for today, as “The Fifth Week”, in tribute to the book which first gave me an insight into the world of the Jesuits. I read the book, purely out of curiosity, and as you can guess, I was hooked. The back cover of the book, which was written by William J. O’Malley SJ states that “Every Jesuit novice makes the month-long Spiritual Exercises: the first week is on the principle of life; the second is on Jesus’ life; the third is on his passion and death; and the fourth is on the resurrected life of the children of God. The fifth week is the rest of a Jesuit’s life.” Well, I’m in my 6^th week, having completed the Exercises on February 10^th.

Let me rewind a bit. I entered the exercises with an open mind, although I was half expecting to be transformed, and to be honest half-expecting to be a little bored. I was wondering how I was going to spend such a long time without any book but the Bible to read.  However, as Paul mentioned below, with up to 5 hours a day of prayer, I found the days were too short! It’s amazing how perception can change in a flash.  My experience of the exercises was simply put, a recognition of the never-ending love and mercy of God in my life. I felt a strong desire to match that love, although I know that I can’t compete with God.  I found myself recognising the need for God in my life and in the world, while I was contemplating the life of Christ. I would say that the retreat was really geared towards my lifestyle in the future. I can’t go back into the past and change any decision I have made, but I have recognised that I can determine how I make decisions and live my life in the future.

On coming back to outside world and the future, my fire and enthusiasm for doing the will of God is a little stronger and the fire of faith and love in my heart burns brighter.

I’m two days into my placement at an organisation called the Whitechapel Centre (http://www.whitechapelcentre.co.uk/) which aims at providing solutions to those facing housing and homelessness difficulties.  It’s been an eye-opening experience so far.

Hopefully, I’ll keep you posted about my future developments over the coming weeks. That’s all from me, I’m going back to my Future .Don’t forget to check us out next Wednesday, where more interesting happenings should be revealed from the other novices on their experiments.

Joel 

It has been a challenging yet rewarding experience so far, and a period in my Jesuit and novitiate life when I can say I have been the happiest. It has been a time of coming back to the place and the people where that initial flame of vocation was kindled, a time that has been full of grace as I meet old friends and people I used to work with. Having been away for nearly two years it has been interesting to notice the changes but at the same time how things have continued as I left them so there is a great sense of peace in that.

My work at JRS can be divided neatly into two sections, destitution and detention. They probably sound a bit peculiar but these are the two fields in which JRS has its mission. Within destitution I have been engaging in a variety of different projects here as well as dealing directly with refugees who are destitute namely those who have no recourse to public funds. In my detention work I have been visiting the Immigration Removal Centres near Heathrow and seeing a detainee one-on-one, which has been a fairly harrowing experience at times but at the same time a confirmation of where I am needed.

The Hurtado Jesuit Centre has been perhaps a more ad hoc adventure, and I think the word organic, that has become ubiquitous when we describe the centre sums up what I have been doing. Jim Conway and myself have, in some ways, been trying to understand, interpret and ultimately communicate an identity for the centre, so this has involved me developing a website and visiting local projects simply introducing ourselves as a Jesuit presence in the local area. So, there has been a great sense of creativity in the project and hopefully what we are doing initially will come to fruition.

The work I have most enjoyed, perhaps to my surprise, is in the local parish. I have taken over as the Catechist leading a group of people in the RCIA program, for adults who want to become Catholic. It has been a beautiful experience where I have realised what it means to pass on the gift of faith to people and how much people thirst for that hope that faith in God brings. It has taught me a lot about my own faith and my ideas for future ministry as a Jesuit as we continue to ask that ever-present question of ‘what is the greatest need?’

So as we sense the murmurings of spring, as Henry, Joel and Peter in the first-year rejoice in completing the Spiritual Exercises, I end with a Celtic prayer praising the reality of God who is in our midst.

I am more in heaven than on earth,
For I am the child that you gave birth.
You made me possessing eternal life,
Let me not lose it by sin or strife.

 This is the world which dwells in you,
Open my eyes to know this is true.
All is enfolded, Lord, in your peace;
Let me experience it and fears cease.

Help me to see that you, Lord, are here;
Then brightness comes and daystars appear.
Grant us to feel you are with us now,
Teach us in wonder before you to bow.

Everything created you, Lord, embrace,
Help us to sense it in this very place,
That we may know that whatever appear,
You, Lord, are present and with us here.

 (David Adam, Border Lands)

“We call you people Sniffers!” the Irish Vocations Director said with a grin as we waited outside the refectory for the evening meal. Four men had come to Manresa House in Birmingham to sniff out what life was really like in the Jesuit Novitiate over the course of a weekend. It’s a strange and disorienting experience being a guest in a religious house – the strict timetable governs the rhythm of domestic and devotional life and visitors have to quickly absorb and assimilate that routine into their own lives, taking care not to disrupt the regularity of the novices’ world. Those novices, some of whom were not long into their own journey of discovery were scrupulous in their welcome – introducing themselves with broad smiles and a relaxed, easy manner that said that they too knew how it was to arrive in this house for the first time.

We began the retreat, in Loyola Hall, a Jesuit-run spirituality centre on Merseyside, on January 11^th, around the same time that the second-year novices were beginning their experiments. The three men involved, Joel, Peter and Henry, have been praying for four or five hours most days since then, sometimes getting up in the middle of the night for an hour of prayer. For much of this time they reflect upon incidents from the life of Christ, as recorded in the gospels. Ignatius adds a few “set-pieces” he himself devised. What kind of a leader might you be prepared to dedicate your life to, and how does Christ match up to this ideal? Can you recall a time when you set out along a good path, only to find yourself led astray into moral cul-de-sacs?

And all the time, the novice brings into prayer his sense of the direction his own life has taken, his call from God, his hopes and fears and desires. Sometimes new light is shed on each or all of these. Sometimes he finds himself challenged to go further. Often, he will experience himself as affirmed by God, and strengthened with the gifts he will need for his Jesuit life.

In ten days or so Henry, Peter and Joel will emerge from the experience of the Exercises. Not until they make their tertianship, the final stage of Jesuit training, perhaps a dozen years from now, will they again spend quite so much time in prayer. Before February comes to an end, they will each have been assigned to a first full-time pastoral placement of a month or so. Yet they will go about that work drawing deeply on all that they have received over these last few weeks. If you are yourself a person for whom prayer means something, you might spare a prayer for each of them in the days ahead.

Last Wednesday I had another day in the community café, but rather than coming out of my shell and talking more with the customers – for much of the day I positioned myself squarely in front of the sink and washed dished. The dishes needed cleaning but I’m supposed to be there mainly to talk to people. On Sunday I went to help at our soup kitchen and valiantly went to sit at a table with some guests. I could hardly understand a word the woman on my left said and exhausted the conversation with her friend to my right in four sentences. A fellow-volunteer then came along and before long the man was telling her his life story. Part of the problem I realise is that I don’t really care for the people.

At least twice in the time I have been here I’ve opened the front door and been faced with a stranger who has just walked in – they are people who have been many times before and don’t expect to give an explanation but I don’t know them and should have held the door and engaged them instead of being steam-rolled.

On Saturday afternoon I went to the Occupy at St Paul’s with our newest volunteer and while I went and saw and was ready to go home in a few minutes he was all fired up and determined to return before the expected eviction later this week. While there I pushed myself to overcome my natural inclination to avoid conversation with any of the people selling their particular protest and listened to a man and signed his petition against government cuts. With hindsight I’m not sure how genuine the petition was and I realised that I gave my address to a member of a revolutionary communist group – that would have been a boundary worth keeping.

I am hearing people in and around the Catholic Worker talking about their activism and direct actions that they have taken. They are telling me more about the negative effects of militarism which gives me a feeling that I don’t want to do nothing – that is not how the new world order of the Kingdom will come about. On Monday evening I went on an errand to the Missionaries of Charity – radical in a different way – and I was really touched by the care and love expressed by the sister for the people she serves and for God. She left me with no doubt about her commitment to the Kingdom and doing the hard things that may be necessary to help bring it about.

Being the weak, cowardly, ungenerous, incompetent person I feel myself to be, I can’t even imagine being able to do anything. The challenging message of the Sermon on the Mount has been in my mind:

How blessed are the poor in spirit: the kingdom of Heaven is theirs.
Blessed are the gentle: they shall have the earth as inheritance.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for uprightness: they shall have their fill.
Blessed are the pure in heart: they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers: they shall be recognised as children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted in the cause of uprightness: the kingdom of Heaven is theirs.
Your light must shine in people’s sight, so that, seeing your good works, they may give praise to your Father in heaven.
I say this to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.

I’m here (as a novice, perhaps also this experiment) because I feel that God has called me here – I’ve asked before whether God got the wrong person and the answer has been: “You did not choose me, no I chose you; and I commissioned you to go out and to bear fruit, fruit that will last…” I don’t know where the fruit will come from but I hope that this is still the case.

Geoff

p.s. to break the monotony of the Geoff show we might have another author next week.

A few people from the house went to a talk by a lawyer who represents Guantanamo prisoners in New York (http://www.meetup.com/americansabroad/events/47755512/). He knows Catholic Workers in the United States and had met one of our group before, the peace protester world is quite small.

I heard a some discussion this week about not wanting to only protest – criticise the way things are, rather to propose something better. During my time here I have also taken some time to get to know a bit more about the founders of the Catholic Worker and contemporary people in the non-violence movement. In a biography of Dorothy Day (Love Is The Measure), I was struck by a comment about Peter Maurin, the other co-founder that he was more interested in proposing a vision of what could be and starting to live that vision than taking part in protest action. (Here is a little biographical information about Peter http://www.catholicworker.org/roundtable/pmbiography.cfm).

For a contemporary view, I watched a DVD by John Dear (http://loveyourenemies.wordpress.com/2008/01/06/the-narrow-path-dvd/) describing his beliefs and how he was formed in them, including a trip to El Salvador in the mid-1980s when Ignacio Ellacuria (http://ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-voices/20th-century-ignatian-voices/ignacio-ellacuria-sj-1930%E2%80%931989/) told him that his purpose at the University of Central America was to help bring about the Kingdom of God. This made me recall a criticism I read of the recent Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace document (http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/justpeace/documents/rc_pc_justpeace_doc_20111024_nota_en.html) that it sounded like it was promoting a new world order and hence obviously bad. Yes, that is exactly what Christianity proposes – Jesus called it the Kingdom of God. A global financial authority will fall short of that but it may be a step in the right direction.

Dorothy Day seemed to be one of those people who had the vision of the Kingdom and began to live it in her life and helped others to have a little glimpse. Prayer was a fundamental part of that. We started a Bible study in the house on Thursday to try to build our sense of the vision from the book of Genesis. I managed to get up early and pray a bit more a few times last week, but I still lack the vision and the grace to live it in my own life. I pray that I persevere.

Geoff

This morning I went to an event which was strikingly religious – I accompanied CW Martin to his court management appearance in the Westminster Magistrates Court to prepare for trial of the case against him (http://london.indymedia.org/articles/10350). It was my first time in a court and the ritual part of it struck me. The people in the court stand as the magistrates enter and leave (each time). Lawyers bow when entering and before leaving. The magistrate is addressed as “Your worship”. People sit and stand when they are spoken to or when they talk. There is a sacred vocabulary, besides the technical legalese, to talk about things. There was even an “usher” who reminded me of the man in some parishes who looks after the collection. However, for all its religiosity I didn’t feel that three hours in court substituted for Mass. It did give me a chance to see the broken Body; about ten people who seem to be losing the battle to live the fullness of life Jesus came to bring them. Hopefully, the man who drunkenly assaulted a security guard will be helped in the programme he was encouraged to attend to address his drinking. However, it’s hard to see how the man arrested for carrying a screwdriver will be reformed after four weeks in prison or that the unemployed Polish man will be able to find a job after his time in jail and so stop shaving in restaurant toilets.

Not that I think that the magistrate or lawyers or even the police do not mean well, but it didn’t seem that they were making much positive difference to these people’s lives. Martin and his co-defendant were fortunate to have their bail set without the conditions the prosecution were asking for which would have banned them from the borough of Westminster and prevented them from carrying chalk or charcoal outside their home districts.

This has been the most striking but by no means the only new experience for me during the last week and it is sure not to be the last.

Geoff

The novitiate year (http://www.jesuitvocations.org.uk/the-novitiate-year/) has entered a new phase. After almost four months at the novitiate in Birmingham, we have had family visits (or friends in a few cases) and are about to go into an experiment phase. The first years will be doing their 30-day retreat and I am sure that one or more of them will write about that in February. The second year novices are doing a 3-month experiment.

Experiments are Jesuit-ese for placements. They have been important parts of the novitiate from the time of Ignatius. The foundational experience is the full spiritual exercises over 30 days. The others are opportunities to gain some first-hand knoweldge of Jesuit life beyond the novitiate. They tend to raise questions about what it is to be a Jesuit, to relate to non-Jesuits and to try to be a Jesuit presence in the various, often challenging situations we find ourselves.

This is a time when we do not have the support of the novitiate schedule and are usually doing activites that stretch us and so it might be difficult to make regular postings on the blog during this period. Our aim is to continue posting once a week but we’ll have to see whether that works out.

Geoff

Advent

The run-up to Christmas has been quite fun. It is a time of final preparation at the novitiate, with all of our community – novices, priests, and lay collaborators all doing their bit before going their separate ways after Christmas (for a while!).

Yesterday, we had a presentation by Adrian Porter SJ. Adrian has been working in Jesuit schools in the UK for years, and more recently he has coordinated with others the Jesuit institute – a fabulous link of resources for schools. He intended to be inspiring and it showed in deeds even more than in words as they say! One phrase really struck me: ‘in the spirit, from the heart, practically’. It comes from the early days of Jesuit education speaking of Christ dwelling within us in the concrete reality of our experiences. I’m still not quite sure what it means but it is worth pondering…

Today (December 20, 2011) was special. I had the good fortune to be asked along to a prison in Birmingham. Mark and Henry have been working at the prison this year on Thursdays and Sundays, and from what it seems they have built up a good relationship with inmates, wardens, and clergy from different religions. Today we arrived early to celebrate Catholic Mass together – only Mark, myself, Henry, and a priest named Michael. Even though we were a small group to celebrate, it was as usual an energising experience which is very much the centre of our day.

After mass, inmates, wardens, and others came in to the multi-faith chapel and celebrated a Christian carol service. As I sat down, I realised that I was also surrounded by inmates beside me. Surprisingly (or not surprisingly by now!), I felt quite at home chatting away with the lads and having a bit of banter. I told them why I was there and I then proceeded to give them a bad rendition of ‘Oh Holy Night’. As we Christians read, prayed, laughed, and sung together – I was reminded there and then through Ignatian reflection (‘examen’) that this was indeed a very special moment or event to experience, with goose bumps here there and everywhere.

While queuing for a cup of tea with a spoonful of sugar, one of the lads who I was originally talking with called me ‘crafty’ as apparently our novitiate rendition of ‘Gaudete’ was better than my original ‘Oh Holy Night’. I took this as a complement but at the same time shook my head knowing that this time it was not craftiness on my part, but rather an occasion where I was simply able to be myself in the good and bad.

We left the prison in good spirits acknowledging our own good fortune, and then went off to a Jesuit novitiate Christmas party at a lovely house where two elderly ladies live (‘M & C’). I was reminded in the conversations with the Jesuits that we are all prisoners in a way, waiting for Christ to set us free in what we believe to be the ‘next’ life. As usual we embraced the tensions (in reference to a previous blog) and…  it was a life-giving experience!

Tomorrow will be another day – and as the dew falls on a rose – may it open more possibilities in the Spirit of Christ among us.

The fundamental questions he asks, seem to me to be: Have all things in heaven and earth been created in Christ (Col.1:16)? Is the whole creation waiting with eagerness for the children of God to be revealed? Has the whole creation been groaning in labour pains (Rm.8:19,22)? Do our decisions and actions matter – do what we bind and loose have repercussions in heaven and on earth (Mt.18:18)? If the answer is “yes” to the above, and Brian does say “yes” our lives should reflect this.

On Sunday morning our novice master, in his homily at the parish of St Francis, Handsworth (http://www.birminghamdiocese.org.uk/parish_directory_detail.asp?parish=33), asked us to imagine the disruptive effect John the Baptist would have if he burst in through the church door and began his preaching. Then he lulled us into a false sense of security by saying how fortunate it is that we follow the more socially acceptable and better presented, Jesus. But then he reminded us that in the gospel of Luke Jesus begins his public ministry by declaring his mission to be inspired by the first reading (Is.61:1-2). Isaiah says that the spirit of the Lord has anointed him to bring good news to the poor, bind up broken hearts and free those in prison. Paul told the Thessalonians in the second reading (1Th.5:16-24) never “to suppress the Spirit or treat the gift of prophecy with contempt”. Jesus appears not to have done either and it caused him quite a lot of trouble and as his followers and those who have also been anointed by the spirit of the Lord makes demands on us too.

Now I dislike meetings more than the next person. Framing them in the context of the labour pains through which the whole creation is going through so that everything in heaven and earth might be reconciled in Christ (Col.1:19-20) makes me think that I should try to promote this agenda at meetings that I attend. The message isn’t new but it’s presented in a way that seems fresh and as challenging as the Baptist disturbing Mass.

Geoff