Jesuits In Their Own Words

Tertianship

posted by: jcad on Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Tertianship is the final formal period of formation in the Society of Jesus. The Provincial usually invites men to begin Tertianship three to five years after finishing Formation or Graduate Studies. It is intended to be a time in which an individual steps back to critically assess his experience of living and working in the Society of Jesus and whether this is, in fact, the life to which he is being called by Christ. After two years in the novitiate, the Society will usually invite a novice to make a commitment through a profession of three vows – poverty, chastity and obedience. While this profession of three vows serves to bind a man to the Society of Jesus, the Society does not make its formal commitment to an individual Jesuit until that person has been with them for better than 15 years.

There are two types of tertianship programs offered in the United States. The first is a seven to nine month program that runs during the academic year, and the second is a two-year program that runs during two consecutive summers. In both programs, tertians study the Constitutions and General Congregations of the Society, make the 30-day retreat, study the Spiritual Exercises and participate in an apostolic experiment chosen by the Tertian Master.

To Serve in the Society of Jesus

To the delight of some and the relief of many, I disappeared for a prolonged period last summer. I wish that I could say that I was whiling away the time on some sun-dappled beach, or in the beauty of the northern California highlands, but the reality is that I was in two places not noted for their scenery – Scranton and Reading, Pennsylvania. This was the first summer of my Jesuit tertianship, and it was spent renewing my acquaintance with the history and constitutions of the Society of Jesus, and in making the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, a 30-day experience of prayer.

My first profession of the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience was intended to be an expression of my desire to be a member of the Society of Jesus forever. While this decision was made only after careful deliberation within the Society, it still reflected a certain youthful ardor (youth in terms of time in the Society, not of age!) and a measure of ignorance as to what that commitment would require of me. A great deal of personal growth needed to occur in these past 16 years, along with a deepening of my relationship to Christ and to the Society of Jesus. I know that I have contributed much to the Society’s work during this time. I am also painfully aware, however, of the times the Society has stood by me and supported me when I was struggling to integrate all of the elements necessary to make an effective offering of myself to Christ and the Church. That process continues to this day, and will continue to the day I die. Trust me when I say that it has not always been pretty, nor without moments of Sturm und Drang!

In my tertianship program, there are five other Jesuits from the New York and Maryland Provinces. We began last summer at Chapman Lake outside of Scranton. There we spent considerable time reflecting on the history and Constitutions of the Society of Jesus. It was a wonderful week of looking at what St. Ignatius of Loyola hoped to accomplish in founding the Society of Jesus, and to think critically about where the Society of Jesus is at the start of the third millennium. We had candid discussions about our hopes and fears concerning our future within this order at a time when the number of Jesuits in first world nations is steadily declining, and the direction of our Church is very uncertain. Were we prepared to ask the Society to make a permanent commitment to us given the uncertainties that lay ahead both within the Society and within the Church? Even with all the reason for caution and concern, there was ample reason for hope and enthusiasm recognizing what the Society had already accomplished and what it could continue to do with even a small body of dedicated members.

After that week of reflection on the Constitutions, it was time for us to journey to the Jesuit spirituality center in Wernersville to begin the 30 days of prayer that make up the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. Those 30 days are spent largely in silence, broken only by our daily conversation with our tertian director, and two very much welcomed ‘break days’ (one of which we spent in the Amish country, including the quaint town of Intercourse – enough said!). This was a wonderfully grace-filled time of prayer for me.

In the preceding year, I was very much aware of how I had allowed the demands of work and community to serve as an excuse for not giving attention to my prayer. I entered into the retreat with some apprehension, therefore, wondering how I would be able to reconnect with a God to whom I had given too little of my time. To my great delight, I discovered that God was anxious to renew our acquaintanceship! Through the Spiritual Exercises, I was led to a deeper knowledge of self that opened me to the graces that God wished to share with me. The Exercises also helped me to encounter Christ once more in a new and deeper way so that I could make a free and informed decision to commit myself to him and to his Gospel. The dynamic of the Spiritual Exercises served to rekindle within me that original enthusiasm which had led me some 13 years before to pledge myself to the service of Christ in the Society of Jesus.

I have continued to meet with the tertian director each month, and he is quite adept at challenging me to be faithful to the graces that were mine in the retreat and to allow those graces to shape the way that I seek to serve Christ. It has not always been easy to be true to those graces and to be faithful to prayer, faithful to maintaining my renewed relationship with Jesus Christ. Yet the experience of that retreat was so powerful that I very much want those graces to persist in my life so that I will know a deeper intimacy with Christ. It is only through such a deep intimacy that I can hope to become the disciple of Christ that I desire to be, and to give effective witness to the rich love that I have experienced in and through my relationship with Christ.

I will be disappearing again this coming summer. My final summer of tertianship requires that I spend time in a work that is different from what I am currently doing. The idea is to become more dependent on the grace of Christ, as this work will be very different from my current work (in which I have presumably developed a certain comfort and competence). Having seen me in action for four years, you may have doubts on both of those counts! I will be traveling to the Cajun country of Louisiana to work in a Jesuit parish that has an important social outreach center attached to it. The challenge for me will be to work in a parish setting where the race and socio-economic status of the parishioners is radically different from St. Ignatius. It should be an exciting time for me, but one that will also test my flexibility and adaptability, not words normally used to describe me!

This period of tertianship has been a wonderful blessing for me. It has reminded me of what a great privilege it is to serve Christ and his Church in the Society of Jesus. I hope that at the end of tertianship the Society of Jesus will invite me to final vows – to a more complete incorporation into a Company that has served our Church with fidelity and love for almost 500 years.