Trust the Process. Since 2015, this phrase has been synonymous with Philadelphia sports, especially in describing the 76ers basketball team’s approach to winning a championship. But the idea of “trust the process” has been deeply infused in the DNA of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) since its founding nearly 500 years earlier, in 1540. I am both a Jesuit priest and a die-hard Philadelphia sports fan, and so, Trust the Process is a fitting title for this bulletin series.

Over the next several weeks, I will commandeer Fr. Phil’s usual space in the bulletin and take the opportunity to introduce myself to you, the people of St. Raphael Parish and describe a bit of my own Jesuit formation.

Long before becoming a rallying cry for a struggling basketball team, Trust the Process could have been the perfect tag-line for Jesuit formation and even for the Society of Jesus as a whole. For St. Ignatius Loyola, the Jesuit founder, process referred not to building a winning sports franchise, but for building loving Christian disciples. He called his process “Discernment of Spirits,” which he describes in his powerful little book, The Spiritual Exercises. It’s a method of paying attention, of sifting through the many voices that vie for our attention on a daily basis in order to discover which one belongs to God...and latching onto it.  Like the 76ers (who are still working on that championship), St. Ignatius’ process is constantly ongoing. For each moment of each day is a new opportunity to discern and discover how God is moving in our lives.

Lasting a decade or more, the formation of a Jesuit priest is St. Ignatius’ custom-made plan of teaching a young Jesuit how to discern and trust in the will of God. This process normally includes four main stages: Novitiate (2 years), First Studies (3 years), Regency (2-3 years), and Theology (3 years). It’s a long process, for sure and while the specific content of each stage differs from the others, the overall goal is the same: to teach a young Jesuit to discern God’s will, so that he can come to know the person of Jesus Christ more intimately, love him more intensely, and follow him more closely. 

 My own process of formation has led me on some great adventures. I entered the Jesuits at our Novitiate in Syracuse, NY in 2009 and was subsequently sent to Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston and all sorts of places in between. It’s been a wild ride. I look forward to sharing some of it with you here and I’m excited to add Raleigh, NC to the list of places God’s will has taken me!  

Fr. Adam Rosinski, S.J.
Parochial Vicar