From the time the Society of Jesus was founded in 1540 until his death in 1556, St. Ignatius Loyola dedicated his life to a mission he did not want: the administration of this new religious order. This included writing the Jesuit Constitutions, our governing document. Despite his preference to be “out in the field” serving the people directly, Ignatius came to discover that this mission of governance was how he could best glorify God, and so gave himself completely to it.

I found myself in a similar situation early in my Jesuit life. After the Novitiate, a newly vowed Jesuit is called a “scholastic” (our word for a seminarian), and like most scholastics, I was eager to get to work. The work came, to be sure, but not in the way I was hoping. A scholastic’s first mission is to “First Studies,” a three-year period of graduate studies in philosophy. Mine took me to Loyola University Chicago. Like Ignatius, I was less than excited for this particular mission, especially since I never would have chosen to study philosophy on my own! Initially, I found the work to be cold, distant, and draining. I was even tempted to study only what I needed in order to pass, and give more time to more enjoyable ministries, like offering retreats to homeless men in addiction recovery and serving as an athletic chaplain at Loyola.

However, on my annual retreat after my first year in Chicago, a wise, old Jesuit gave a talk about paragraph #340 of the Constitutions. Here, Ignatius tells the scholastics to devote themselves fully to the work of studies because it “will not be less but rather more pleasing to God our Lord” than anything else. I was floored. At that moment, there was nothing I could do--not even serving the homeless or helping college athletes come to know Jesus-- to please and glorify God more than studying philosophy...because that’s what God was asking of me!

I spent much time praying with #340 of the Constitutions and, while it didn’t make studying philosophy more enjoyable, it filled me with consolation. For Ignatius, “consolation” refers not to a feeling of comfort, but to an experience of God’s presence and affirmation. This is the important, and sometimes difficult, work of trusting the process of discernment: of sifting through the voices that vie for our attention on a daily basis to discover which one is the Lord’s. Once I heard God’s voice calling me to my studies, the once-draining work became lifegiving in a whole new way. It’s humbling to think that St. Ignatius may have experienced the same thing.

Fr. Adam Rosinski, SJ
Parochial Vicar