“Everybody has a vocation,” he said. “God is no further from ourselves than we are.”

Here, Fr. Sullivan’s mission is to help spiritual seekers grow in their relationship with God and in willing service to their neighbor. He compared a relationship with God to a human friendship.

“They have the same dynamics,” he said. “If you want to be friends with someone, spend time with him — listen to him.”

His calling to the priesthood came gradually, a gentle nudge throughout his high school and college years.

“I don’t think it was any one moment of time,” he said.

When he inquired about the possibility of a vocation, he was advised to go to college first.

Sullivan attended the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., one of the nation’s leading liberal arts institutions that embraces a Catholic/Jesuit identity. There, he majored in history.

“Eventually I thought about the Jesuits to be both a priest and teacher,” he said. “I got to know quite a number of Jesuits, many of them in their late 30s and 40s, who seemed interesting and happy.”

When Sullivan graduated in 1973, he was at a crossroads.

“I did apply to do graduate work in history or American studies and got accepted in a couple of places, or I could join the Jesuits,” he said.

Sullivan has spent time teaching high school in Maine and Massachusetts and also as a parish priest.

“I was open to another couple of years of parish work. I enjoyed being pastor,” he said. “But as things evolved, I ended up at Eastern Point Retreat House in Gloucester.

Noted for the spectacular beauty of its rocks, ocean and woods, the retreat house provides an idyllic environment for contemplation and prayer.

This is Sullivan’s third year as a member of the staff, which includes four Jesuits and a Sister of St. Joseph.

Based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, the retreats are open to people of diverse backgrounds and traditions who are seeking God in their lives.

“How do you see where God may be calling you? Sullivan said. “It is where your deepest desires intersect with the community’s deepest needs.”

You can read more about Fr. Sullivan’s experiences and about the Eastern Point Retreat House at SouthCoastToday.com.

Jesuit

Widely considered one of the Jesuits’ leading authorities on spiritual direction, Tetlow recently wrote this piece for the New Orleans Province of the Society of Jesus’ magazine Southern Jesuit. You can read more article about the work of the Jesuits of the New Orleans Province by visiting Southern Jesuit‘s online magazine.

I really began listening to what people need when I was ordained in 1960. I was sent to the Cenacle Retreat House in New Orleans to give a weekend retreat. When I got there, Sr. Margaret Byrne, R.C., asked me what I wanted to do. Actually, she knew what needed to be done a lot better than I did, and she patiently helped me learn.

What I learned is this: my need of grace and yearning for God are gifts to be shared; they are not for me, alone. The prayers and desires given to me are not just for me. They are also for all to whom God sends me.

Realizing that gave me an insight into the Spiritual Exercises. They were created by St. Ignatius because he needed them. During his recovery from a battle wound, he began to experience “spirits” – joy when he thought about God, misery when he thought about being famous and powerful. How was he to understand these “spirits?” He needed order and method in his praying and desiring that would give him a sense of making progress. His needs, in God’s design, are also felt by all of Christ’s followers. We all feel, in a vague sort of way, the need for order and progress, and we are helped as Ignatius was by learning about discernment.

Guided by the Holy Spirit, he organized the prayers and desires into Spiritual Exercises, and as the Holy Spirit brought him clarity of mind and heart, the Spirit also opened his eyes to other people’s need for the same things. So Ignatius began sharing his spiritual experiences. At first, he went too far: the illiterate people of Manresa were not helped by tales of mystical experiences of the Trinity.

So Ignatius had to listen. And like him, I had to learn about others’ needs. Some need solid instruction. Some need a way to reform a life that has gone bad. Some need to hear what God wants with their whole lives. You find, when you listen to enough men and women today, that we all feel this same broad range of needs.

Very commonly, retreatants report a mild depression. They know that they are getting nowhere, sunk in consumerism. People find the same help that Ignatius found in feeling a sense of moving along, of getting somewhere. Ignatius organized the Exercises for that purpose, “to make progress.”

Before all else, Ignatius found that he needed Jesus Christ. He needed to know Jesus of Nazareth more clearly, love Him more dearly and follow Him more nearly. So the Spiritual Exercises begin, continue and end in Christ Jesus. The Principle and Foundation, we are learning, tell us to “praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord Jesus Christ.” Think what it means that the first colloquy in the whole thirty day retreat has us stand beneath the Cross and ask Jesus how He came to be there instead of us. We ask ourselves what we have done for Him, are doing, and will do, for Him.

Listening to people, you find out that we need that focus today. Our fussing about conservative and liberal, about liturgy and others’ sins, fades into hot air and fog when we stand under His Cross. That is what I had to learn and that is what the Exercises free us to feel.

We struggled with this for a while after Vatican II. We got serious about studying the text of the Spiritual Exercises and had to sort out what was authentic and what was not. We forgot that, at the beginning, there was no text. Ignatius and his companions, and a lot of lay people whom they helped, were giving Exercises for two decades before Ignatius ever published his text. And all this while, wave after wave of retreatants passed on the Exercises with nothing but their own guided experiences and whatever notes they had kept.

We had to learn this: the Spiritual Exercises are first of all an orderly, disciplined way of coming to know what God intends in and through us. They are a specific kind of experience of God in Christ. They are the living spirit of every Jesuit and now of many, many lay colleagues as well. They are the way we follow and pass on – a way to Jesus Christ, to know Him more clearly, love Him more dearly and follow Him more nearly – and each person to whom we pass that on makes the Reign of Christ stronger and deeper in this secular world.

St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, always envisioned Jesuits and their partners as being “contemplatives in action.” He asked his first companions to reflect and pray in order to detect the presence of God in their lives. Then, through discerning Christ’s call, to carry out His mission through action.

Jesuit Father Jack Vessels has been called to the border of Texas and Mexico as the chaplain of the Sacred Heart Parish in El Paso. Before coming there, he was missioned to Brazil for over 20 years then headed to Rome to become the international leader of the Apostleship of Prayer, whose mission it is to encourage people to pray daily for the Church and for the pope’s intentions.

Today, Fr. Vessels says Mass daily at the parish, and many times at the parish’s food banks in Juarez, Mexico, the Our Lady’s Youth Center (OLYC) community, and at the Lord’s Ranch in New Mexico. He hears confessions for many hours each week and goes to the homes of the sick and elderly to give them the sacrament of the sick.

Vessels recently wrote this piece for the New Orleans Province of the Society of Jesus’ magazine Southern Jesuit on the work of the Our Lady’s Youth Center with the poor  who live along the border of Texas and Mexico — both in El Paso and across the Rio Grande river in Juarez, Mexico. You can read more article about the work of the Jesuits of the New Orleans Province by visiting Southern Jesuit’s online magazine.

Two years ago, because of my fluency in Spanish and my experience in the formation of ecclesial communities in Brazil, I was assigned to Sacred Heart Parish in El Paso to assist in the work of Our Lady’s Youth Center and at The Lord’s Ranch which is in Vado, New Mexico, just across the state line from El Paso. It serves as residence for several volunteers who have dedicated their lives to feeding and serving the poor on the border. It also serves as a guest house for volunteers who occasionally return to assist in the community’s ministries or to spend time in restful reflection.

Truly ecclesial and international, the Our Lady’s Youth Center (OLYC) community – now known as Las Alas or “The Wings” – is a community of contemplatives in action: by faith, united in prayer and action; no prayer without action, and no action without prayer! Through service to the poor, both volunteer residents and visitors contribute to the life of the universal Church in the three particular churches where it serves: El Paso, Texas; Juarez, Mexico; and Las Cruces, New Mexico.

“Go to the poor,” Christ told the OLYC community in its group discernment of scripture. It was across the Rio Grande in Juarez that the cry of the poor was most demanding, where well over a million people lived in poverty worse than any experienced in El Paso. Many of the members of the community were bilingual, with friends and relatives living in Juarez. They went “to see,” confident the Holy Spirit would enlighten their vision. Visiting the city’s municipal garbage dump, they found the poorest of the poor, feeding themselves and their children, sleeping in shelters made from trash, collecting whatever might be usable and sellable on the streets. Praying and discerning Christ’s words, “…when you have a banquet, invite the poor…,” (Luke 14:13) the community did just that at the dump on Christmas Day of 1972, often remembered as “the miracle of Juarez” because of the inexplicable multiplication of food that day, and they have been going back weekly ever since.

For years at The Lord’s Ranch, crops were grown and livestock were raised to provide food for the poor of Juarez, but eventually it was discerned in prayer by its resident volunteers that such was not as practical as accepting contributions from local wholesalers and purchasing whatever else was needed at the markets in Juarez for weekly distribution. In this way the volunteers living at the ranch are available for ministries that were developing in both El Paso and Juarez.

Over the years, four centers have developed for the weekly food distribution and other services to meet the spiritual and material needs in different areas of Juarez. The first began at the garbage dump itself. When the dump was moved to another site, the people of the neighborhood began to build on the old site, concrete block by concrete block, a center for the services provided: not just food distribution, but volunteer medical and dental care, a pharmacy, nursery for the children, and religious and spiritual formation for those of all ages. Volunteers now come from both Juarez and El Paso, and no service is rendered or received without prayer and the desire to fulfill God’s will. Misión Espíritu Santo is the fitting name of the old dump, with true new life abundantly available. As the Misión matured with its own volunteers and patrons, a new center called The Lord’s Food Bank was opened in the expanding western periphery of Juarez. A large vacant area was made available, and the now-experienced community of volunteers shifted their time and energies to this new challenge, where storehouse, clinic, pharmacy, chapel, classroom, nursery and prayer now provide for the spiritual and urgent needs of the poorest. Another newer center, Las Alitas, has recently been initiated on the southeastern extension of Juarez in an area where electricity has arrived, but not yet water – only the Living Water of the Word, with Love. And, the fourth location for prayer and food distribution has been established at a parish church, Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles.

Las Alas – still officially OLYC – is a prayer center with its own weekly schedule of spiritual training, prayer for healing, occasional workshops, seminars and conferences. It also serves as home base for the volunteers’ almost daily visit to Juarez, the storage area for supplies, and the offices coordinating the ever-expanding number of ministries.

My own work as a member of this faith community is saying Mass weekly with all the Juarez communities served, hearing confessions before and after Mass, visiting the sick and incarcerated prisoners with the volunteers and doing all I can to encourage, strengthen and console the volunteers themselves. The most enriching part of my experience is being immersed in the goodness and faith of simple, poor people who draw their strength purely from their love of God and His for them. All they have is their faith, and because the Word of God congregates people around it, we don’t “give out” to the poor. We share with them. And, it is good to think that, God willing, I will spend the rest of my priestly ministry among them.

The frontier, in this case, is a secular university in an overwhelmingly Protestant city. Fr. Morrill, the recently appointed Edward A. Malloy Chair of Catholic Studies at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, has only been in town a few months, but is already finding his presence is much needed at the school and in the community.

The only Jesuit priest currently serving in the Diocese of Nashville, Morrill has begun serving as the de facto spiritual advisor for the group of seven Jesuit Volunteer Corps members in Nashville. These recent college graduates who live in community and work at social justice organizations around town rely on Father Morrill’s support.

“It seems to be a really good fit,” Father Morrill said of his newly adopted city. “The people are fantastic, at Vandy and in the wider community,” he said.

In his first semester teaching at Vanderbilt, Morrill is teaching two master’s level courses and one doctoral seminar. His current courses are “Suffering, Politics and Liberation,” which is a survey of European, North and South American theologies; and “Aquinas, Rahner, and Metz,” a doctoral seminar on “one trajectory of 20th century Roman Catholic theology,” he explained.

A widely published theological scholar, Morrill focuses his research and writing on liturgy and the sacraments, with a particular interest in ritual, cultural anthropology, political theology, and investigating the problems of suffering in social contexts.

Next semester he’ll teach the second-half of a year-long required course in constructive theology for the Master of Divinity students, and then an advanced seminar in liturgical theology.

As Morrill’s seen so far, his presence is definitely a welcome addition to the “frontiers” of the Catholic Church in Nashville. The Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, were founded more than 450 years ago “to be available for missions and do things that nobody else can do,” Father Morrill said. “We were founded from the start to be men who are mobile and can work alone.”

The lighting of the first Advent candle marks the beginning of the penitential season, a holy time to focus on repentance and on our need  for Jesus in our World.  Yet, often in the preparations for Christmas, we can lose sight of the reason for the season. Jesuit Father Thomas Madden, retreat director at the Jesuit Spirituality Center in Grand Coteau, offered the following reflection to help us refocus our sights…

Now that Thanksgiving is past, we may turn our full attention and energy to preparing for Christmas.

The merchants already for some weeks now have been trying to capture our attention and get us to start the shopping frenzy that makes the coming month the most important time of the year for them. And there are reminders here and there to “put Christ back in Christmas,” but it is an annual campaign that seems to lose more ground every year to take hold of the popular, maybe even the Christian, imagination.

What does it mean to “put Christ back in Christmas” besides going to church on Dec. 25? How might Jesus himself answer that question about how to celebrate his birthday?

I asked myself the question and heard the answer in something that he himself once said.

St. Luke relates (14:12-14) that he told his host one time at a dinner to which he had been invited: “When you hold a lunch or dinner don’t invite your friends or your brothers and sisters or your wealthy neighbors in case they may invite you back and you have repayment. Rather, when you hold a banquet invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

This sounds very similar to Jesus’ statement about the criterion of final judgment: “Whatever you did for one of these least brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Mt. 25:40).

Could it be that this is how Jesus wants us to put him back in the celebration of his birthday?

The needy to whom Jesus himself ministered in his temporal life and with whom he now identifies through us are the poor, whose number is scandalous in our own country; the hungry and the homeless; the aged in nursing homes; the chronically sick and disabled; the marginalized at home and abroad; all those who live a borderline existence and depend on the charity of others to survive. These are those whom Jesus calls his brothers and sisters.

How much easier and how great a time-saver to select just the right gift for such as these. And how much greater the satisfaction both for the giver and the receiver and the loved one in whose name the gift is given. And how much simpler a way to stay within one’s own limited budget. All it takes is to write a check to your favorite charity or that of your loved one and send it in his or her name with a note accordingly on your Christmas card to him or her. This is an “alternative” way of celebrating Christmas, but one much more in tune with the original Christmas, when God gave us the gift of his first-born son to save us from the desperate poverty into which our human family had fallen.

“The political combat that is going on right now, I understand from just about everybody, is as contentious as it’s been in decades,” said Conroy.

Conroy sympathizes with the representatives. The former university chaplain said that much like the students he counseled at Seattle and Georgetown Universities, Congress often has hard tasks to accomplish in the weeks and days leading up to the holidays.

“It is, I think, a tough time for men and women of Congress who are men and women just like the rest of us who have their own hopes, fears, insecurities and brokenness and are trying to do heroic things in service to their country,” he said.

Conroy’s job as the 60th chaplain of the U.S. House of the Representative is, as he described it, to pray for the House as an institution and also for individuals.

Since he became chaplain in May, Conroy navigates the halls of the House, sitting in on floor votes, attending committee meetings (mainly those of the House Rules Committee) and working out in the congressional gym. He maintains a visible profile in the hopes that Congressional members on both sides will visit him for spiritual guidance, help and advice.

Read more about Conroy’s experiences as the U.S. House of Representatives chaplain in this article at the Christian Post.

Jesuit Father Rodney Kissinger has been a Jesuit since entering the Society of Jesus in 1942. At 96 years old, Fr. Kissinger still finds the time to help those who are interesting in experiencing the  Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.

In February 2004, Kissinger wrote an article for the print version of National Jesuit News explaining his idea of conducting retreats using the power of the internet by having the retreatant and the spiritual director conduct the retreat all via email communications. Since that time, Kissinger has had much success in conducting these very kinds of retreats and now shares with us his experiences and those who have come to him for spiritual guidance and direction. You can find out more about Kissinger’s approach to the Spiritual Exercises by visiting his site at www.frksj.org.

Most of my priestly life of over 60 years has been spent giving the Spiritual Exercises. I have given the preached retreat, the guided retreat, the personally directed retreat, the 19^th annotation retreat and now I am giving, with great joy and much success, a type of retreat of which Ignatius could never have even dreamed. And a type of retreat that I am sure the author of the “tantum quantum” and the “magis” would have joyfully embraced. It is the email retreat.

Email is the ideal vehicle for doing the 19^th annotation because it is least intrusive into the daily life of the retreatant. My edition of the email retreat runs for 14 weeks. I suggest that the retreatant do at least half an hour of prayer daily and make the exam of consciousness each night. This time frame, however, is flexible and adaptable to the retreatant. One may want to spend another week on one of the meditations; others may have to interrupt the retreat for a medical or business emergency. No problem, I just withhold the next meditation until they are ready. How foolish to try to corral the Holy Spirit into a certain time frame.

Most of the requests for these retreats I have received have come from the laity. We should not be surprised at all of this since Ignatius was a layman when he wrote the Spiritual Exercises and it was as a layman that he gave the first retreat to laymen. He also did a lot of counseling by letter. In fact, it is said that he was one of the most prolific letter writers of his day. How enthusiastically would he have embraced email!

What sparked the idea of an email retreat was the delight and gratitude of friends when I would attach a homily to one of my email letters to them. It was not exactly a leap of faith then to go from a homily to the 19^th annotation. Last June, I gave my first email retreat to two of these friends who volunteered to be guinea pigs. Since that time I have given 40 of these email retreats. The retreatants include a friend in Fulda, Germany, a biology professor at Lakeland College in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, an appellate judge in Bradenton, Florida, a married couple in Stafford, Virginia, a candidate for the Society in College Station, Texas, a director of adult spirituality at St. Ignatius High School in San Francisco, a Missouri Synod Lutheran in Adair, Iowa, the Dean of Humanities in Our Lady of the Holy Cross College in New Orleans, a hair stylist in Eugene, Oregon, a sophomore at LSU in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a Permanent Deacon in the Archdiocese of Kansas City, a senior recruiting consultant in Plano, Texas, and a disciple of the Legionnaires of Christ in Tampa, Florida.

Since most of my retreatants are first-timers I give a lot of material in my presentations.  All of the key meditations of the Exercises are given so that they see the big picture and get the thrust and dynamic of the whole of the Exercises. A thrust and dynamic which unfortunately, is often missed today when what are given are spiritual exercises but not the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. I suggest that they download or print out the presentations and keep them all together so that they can see the psychological and spiritual progression from the Principle and Foundation to the Contemplation to Obtain Love.

During the rest of the year and for years to come they can go over them again and again, and concentrate on specific meditations which are relevant for them at that time.  Repetition is important because these truths are so rich and so deep that they cannot be absorbed at one time. And whatever is received is received according to the disposition of the recipient which is constantly changing. What is repeated is not the whole meditation. When you find the needle in the haystack you do not go through the haystack again. What is repeated is the part that moved us either with consolation or desolation. Therefore, it is important to write down these movements, in a journal if possible.

The retreat takes place on two levels: what happens here and what happens between the retreatant and God. The important level is the relationship with God. Personal relationships demand knowledge and love. We cannot love what we do not know but it is the knowledge that comes from love which is the wisdom of the mystics.

The email retreat, of course, loses the personal contact which is found in the other types of retreat. But this is not an unmixed evil. It stimulates more initiative, responsibility and independence on the part of the retreatant. St. Ignatius in the annotations exhorts the director to allow “the Creator to deal directly with the creature, and the creature directly with his Creator and Lord.”

It is also true that sometimes in a personally directed retreat a conflict of personalities puts an added onus on the retreatant. It is a lot easier to express embarrassing questions in writing than in person. And the necessity of conceptualizing and expressing in writing our thoughts has a way of clarifying difficulties and often of revealing the solution. At the end of the retreat there is none of the jolt of re-entry when the rubber hits the road and the ideal meets the reality.

What a wonderful apostolate the email retreat offers to our future senior Jesuits who have been using their personal computer throughout their lives to record and store their inspirations and insights into the Spiritual Exercises. Now they can share all of this practical wisdom through an email retreat with anyone in any part of the world by a simple “click of the mouse.” And in doing so, they will discover, just as I have, that the Lord once again has saved the very best wine till last.

One such group are the Lakota Indians of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. On the reservation, which covers a 5,000 square foot swath of land in the southwestern corner of South Dakota, staggering poverty and an unemployment rate that hovers around 80% leave the children of the Pine Ridge facing an uphill struggle as they learn and grown up on the reservation. The Jesuits have been ministering to the Lakota of the Pine Ridge since the late 1800s, when they founded the Red Cloud Indian School.

20/20 recently profiled the Pine Ridge, and some of the young people who live on the reservation, including a few students from the Jesuit’s Red Cloud Indian School.

How to Help: Organizations Working to Improve Life at Pine Ridge

Today, Gillick is a retreat master, leading retreats throughout the country. He currently resides in Omaha, Nebraska and in involved in the Jesuit community at Creighton University. He is loved by many students and is always ready to listen to them and provide counsel. At Creighton, he serves as a student mentor and presides at regular mass at Creighton’s catholic church, St. John’s.

In this video, Fr. Gillick shares the story of his vocation.

Fr. Murray writes that his life at Eastern Point Retreat House in Gloucester, Mass., where he is director, is a “wild mixture of listening, companioning and managing a good size inn!”

“With our staff of Jesuits and guest directors, we listen and focus and shine some light into darkened hearts,” writes Murray.

He finds managing a retreat house is both a great challenge and a great joy.

“As I reflect on my years as a Jesuit; high school work, then principal, then socius and now as a retreat director, I marvel at how Jesus has become my true love and friend,” he writes.

Read more of Murray’s reflections.