Become a Jesuit

The Novitiate

“Stay at home …
If the idea of becoming a Jesuit makes you unsettled or nervous.
Do not come to us if you love the Church like a
stepmother rather than a mother.
Do not come if you think that in so doing
you will be doing the Society of Jesus a favor.
Come …
If serving Christ is at the very center of your life.
Come if you have broad and sufficiently strong shoulders.
Come if you have an open spirit, a reasonably open mind
and a heart larger than the world.
Come if you know how to tell a joke and can laugh with others and … on occasions, you can laugh at yourself.”
Fr. Pedro Arrupe, SJ,
Superior General [1965–1983]

The Novitiate

“A school of the heart” as St. Ignatius called it, the novitiate is a time of discernment and formation of the heart to free a man to be generous and grateful in all things. Almost 500 years ago, St. Ignatius laid out a method for forming the heart so that a Jesuit might be free to love as God created him to love – generously, courageously, intentionally.

As men of the Church at the service of the Church, each Jesuit spends two years immersed in prayer, service, study, and community life to discern whether this unique way of following Christ is God’s true calling for him.

Prayer

Come to encounter Jesus as a companion – speaking, thinking and laboring heart-to heart, as a friend to a friend. Through Ignatian Contemplation, the Examen and the devotional life of the Church, a novice encounters Christ as a friend.

Service

Come to encounter Christ in the faces of the world. Just as meeting Jesus in your prayer is central to the novitiate, so too is meeting Jesus in the faces and struggles and suffering in the world today. Service is not a job but a mission, with the fruit of our vocation seen in the joy that is evident.

Study

Come to know our charism, our “way of proceeding.” The novitiate is a time to get to know our founders, our history, our contemporary mission today, our way of discerning what it means to “labor under the standard of Christ.”

Whether through classes and seminars, extensive reading, and ample time to reflect on the experiences of putting great desires into action, a novice grounds themselves in depth.

Community Life

Come to live your vocation as a collaborator – living and laboring alongside others who share this call. To be a companion of Jesus means to live in community with other Jesuits; it means to discern together with the Church, the Society of Jesus, and non-Jesuits; it means to give your life as a collaborator with Jesuits and lay people in the mission of Christ.