“Maybe They Can Make a Saint Out of Me”: Fr. John Brown Celebrates 25 Years as a Jesuit
By Rachel Amiri
Father John Brown, SJ, didn’t know the Jesuits when he was growing up in Eunice, Louisiana, but he knew the Jesuit Blue Jays – and he couldn’t help but like them. Raised not far from the former novitiate and Jesuit retreat houses in Grand Coteau, Louisiana, Fr. Brown spent summers working alongside students from Jesuit High School of New Orleans at a camp for disabled children.
“These guys were hard-working men, men for others, men of faith. I couldn’t help but admire them and think to myself, ‘Whatever is going on at that high school in New Orleans, it is special,’” he said.
Today, as the president of Jesuit High, Fr. Brown knows a lot about what makes the New Orleans school so special.
He has been missioned to Jesuit since 2012, serving first as a teacher, then as interim president in 2020 and president since 2021. He leads the school in fulfilling its almost 200-year legacy of rigorous formation that produces remarkable graduates.
Father Brown is enthusiastic about his work guiding young men during their adolescent years of “tremendous growth.”
“They are ready and willing to soak up knowledge,” said Fr. Brown. “It is a special time to be in a young man’s life.”
It is not without its challenges, he added.
“There’s kind of a crisis right now in our culture, especially for young men. They are offered a lot of different alternatives for what masculinity looks like, what manhood looks like, what fatherhood looks like. They need some help recognizing what God has called them to do in their own lives,” Fr. Brown said.
“And that is a special process to be part of, as a person, as a teacher, and right now, as an administrator at Jesuit High School.”
For Fr. Brown, clarity about the school’s mission – “to develop in its students the competence, conscience and compassion that will enable them to be men of faith and men for others” – is the key to that process. The means is offering the best secondary education that you possibly can, he said.
“We focus on where our students are, what they need to be prepared for, and how they need to be formed so that they’ll be able to discern the good from the bad in everything that comes their way,” he said.
Academic rigor and high standards for conduct and achievement are part of this picture. But Jesuit education “for the greater glory of God” isn’t just a slogan for Fr. Brown or Jesuit New Orleans. It is a lived reality.
“For you to achieve great things, to live up to your potential, is not so that you can get a trophy,” he said. “When you glorify God in all that you do, you are taking on the weight of bringing God into the world made more manifest each day. You’re taking part in something like the incarnation.”
In this, Fr. Brown leads by example. Discernment and a ministry of reconciliation have shaped his approach to leadership.
“My priesthood and the Jesuit charism, those two things have formed me in the way that I’m going to make any decision, work with people and try to build bridges between them.”
He regularly celebrates the sacraments at the school, guiding the students in the integration of faith and intellectual life. In addition, Fr. Brown ministers to the Servants of Mary, Ministers to the Sick in New Orleans and at St. Nicholas of Myra Byzantine Catholic Church. He tries to build bridges online through a YouTube channel: ¡Qué Viva! With Fr. John Brown.
“I see myself as a ‘man for others,’ wholly and completely the property of God and therefore the property of the people that God has asked me to minister to,” he said.
For many of his 25 years as a Jesuit, he has been called to serve the community at Jesuit High School in New Orleans. His profession of final vows in 2019 took place during an all-school Mass.
“There’s nothing secret about my love for the Society of Jesus, or my love for the Church, or my love for the service I’m able to perform here at Jesuit High School,” he said. Professing final vows was a confirmation of what had been in his heart since the beginning, he said.
Reflecting on that beginning, Fr. Brown said it was the Jesuit saints who spoke to his heart.
“I felt like the Jesuits have such great saints, and often those saints came to the table without all the gifts that you would imagine they’d need,” he said. “I thought, ‘Maybe they can make a saint out of me.’”
Today, Fr. Brown’s enthusiasm for his vocation continues to grow. He looks to the future and the promise of the young men entrusted to Jesuit High School with hope.
“I feel so alive by all these things that are part of a Jesuit vocation,” he said. “I cannot help but want to light other fires with the fire that’s been lit in me.”
Is God inviting you to imagine your path to holiness in the Society of Jesus? Visit www.beajesuit.org to explore a Jesuit vocation.
