Posts Tagged ‘Vocations’

Today is the feast of All Saints and Blessed of the Society of Jesus, and also when National Vocation Promotion Day is observed by Jesuits and their partners.

Jesuits are blessed to continue to have prayerful men with generous hearts who desire to labor in and for the Kingdom. Today, Jesuits recognize the ongoing need to engage men who might be called to religious life.

The Society of Jesus is a community of priests and brothers dedicated to the service of God and the Church for the betterment of the world around us. No matter what the work, from university to infirmary to barrio, it is for the glory of God and the help and salvation of souls.

Even within the Society of Jesus, there is a great variety of voices, an array of talents, but all are at the service of the call and the mission. Some are gifted at social analysis, others at immediate and effective working with people at the margins of life or society. Many are scholars, many are missionaries. Whether teaching, preaching, giving the sacraments or praying for the society, the voices are as varied as the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, but there must be one message: to love God with all our hearts and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

If you or someone you know is discerning a vocation calling to join the Jesuits in service, we encourage you to visit jesuit.org for more information on the Society of Jesus.

Today, on National Vocations Promotion day, National Jesuit News offers a prayer for vocations to the Society of Jesus.

Father,
in the name of Jesus,
through the power of Your Holy Spirit,
we pray that You inflame the hearts of men
with courage and trust
and the desire to labor for Your Kingdom
as Jesuits.

We ask You
through the intercession of Mary, our Mother,
St. Ignatius, and all Your saints,
to bless the Society of Jesus
with bountiful vocations
that it may continue to serve Your church
with passion and zeal.

May Your will be done.
Amen

Below, Jesuit Father Robert Ballecer, national director of vocation promotion for the Society of Jesus urges us to reflect on this day of the feast of All Saints and Blessed of the Society of Jesus and asks that you help us to continue the mission.

On October 12, 1963, American-born Jesuit Father Walter Ciszek (1904-1984) arrived in New York after 23 years in Russia, much of it spent in captivity in Siberian labor camps and Soviet prisons. To add to the intrigue surrounding this extraordinary Jesuit’s life, Fr. Ciszek’s daring release — a complicated prisoner exchange — was negotiated with the help of President John F. Kennedy just one month before the president’s tragic assassination. Although Fr. Ciszek’s life reads like a Hollywood script, his experience results from one simple question: Will you devote your life to the service of others? As Jesuits have for centuries, Fr. Walter Ciszek answered that call.

To commemorate his inspirational life, the Society of Jesus, the largest order of priests and brothers in the Roman Catholic Church, has chosen to highlight Fr. Walter Ciszek and the theme, Life in Service, for November’s Vocation Month.

Father Robert Ballecer, director of the Office of National Vocation Promotion for the Jesuits, explains, “Walter Ciszek’s work is a legacy of the frontier spirit of the Society of Jesus. It’s the spirit of ‘Where is God calling me today?’ Walter Ciszek answered the call by going to the Soviet Union. Today, Jesuits are working around the globe on the frontiers – from building schools in Malawi to aiding migrants at a small border town between the United States and Mexico. That’s the spirit of the Society; that’s the spirit of service.”

According to Fr. Ballecer, Fr. Ciszek is still beloved by American Jesuits, and those who knew him remember his kindness and humility. Among other tributes, Ciszek Hall, the community of young Jesuits in “First Studies” at Fordham University, is named for Fr. Ciszek.

A Call Answered

Born in 1904 in Shenandoah, Pa., to Polish immigrants, Fr. Ciszek joined the Jesuits in 1928. The next year, he learned that Pope Pius XI was calling on seminarians to enter a new Russian center in Rome to prepare priests for work in Russia. For Fr. Ciszek, it was “almost like a direct call from God.”

Jesuit Father Walter Ciszek (center) in 1938.

Missioned to Rome to study theology and the Byzantine rite, Fr. Ciszek was ordained in 1937, but since priests could not be sent to Russia, he was assigned to work in Poland. When war broke out in 1939, Fr. Ciszek was able to enter Russia with false identification papers. He worked as an unskilled laborer until June 1941 when the secret police arrested him as a suspected spy.

After his arrest, Fr. Ciszek found himself in the infamous Lubianka Prison in Moscow, where he was interrogated as a “Vatican spy” and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in Siberia. Although forced to work in a Gulag coal mine, Fr. Ciszek found ways to hear confessions and say Mass.

“For all the hardships and suffering endured there, the prison camps of Siberia held one great consolation for me: I was able to function as a priest again. I was able to say Mass again, although in secret, to hear confessions, to baptize, to comfort the sick, and to minister to the dying,” he wrote.

In 1955, Fr. Ciszek’s sentence ended early since he had surpassed his work quotas, and he was freed from the labor camps but forced to live in the Gulag city of Norilsk, where he worked in a chemical factory. Happily, after decades of being presumed dead, Fr. Ciszek was finally allowed to write to family members in the United States.

In Norilsk, Fr. Ciszek and other priests ministered to a growing parish but, before too long, the KGB threatened to arrest him if he continued his ministry. Missioned to another city, the KGB quickly shut him down again.

Then, in 1963, Fr. Ciszek learned he was going home. In a release negotiated by President John F. Kennedy, he and an American student were returned to the United States in exchange for two Soviet agents. Following his return, Fr. Ciszek worked at the John XXIII Center at Fordham University (now the Center for Eastern Christian Studies at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania), until his death in 1984.

Jesuits Called to the Frontiers

Like Fr. Ciszek and his Jesuit brothers, the present-day Society of Jesus is also called to the frontiers.

Fr. Ballecer explains, “In Fr. Ciszek’s time, the frontiers were physical boundaries, parts of the world we hadn’t fully explored. Today, the frontiers are often in new areas, including media, science and technology. From Jesuits working with a development team on a particle accelerator in Europe to the Higher Education at the Margins program, which brings college courses to refugee camps, Jesuits aspire to serve where the need is greatest.”

An Inspiring Life in Service

A hometown welcome for Fr. Ciszek upon his return to the United States.

A quarter century after his death, Fr. Ciszek’s life is still inspiring those considering a Jesuit vocation, and soon even more people may learn of his legacy. This past March, the Vatican gave its formal approval to begin the canonization process for Fr. Ciszek.

Fr. Ballecer says Fr. Ciszek is more relevant today than he ever was. “A life in service like Walter Ciszek’s means commitment; it means something that’s unknown; it means relinquishing control of your life to something that’s bigger than you. What will you do when someone asks you to do something difficult, but worthwhile?”

In his memoir describing his years in Russia, “He Leadeth Me,” Fr. Ciszek wrote: “My aim in entering Russia was the same from beginning to end: to help find God and attain eternal life.” By devoting his life to serving God and his people, Fr. Ciszek succeeded in both goals.

Jesuit Father Paul Lickteig, who was ordained to the priesthood this past June, has written about his vocation for the Huffington Post. Fr. Lickteig, who also contributes to The Jesuit Post, explains how his vocation emerged in a piece titled “How I Became A Jesuit Priest.”

Fr. Lickteig writes that vocation is a strange thing:

“It is the idea that people can be drawn towards a particular way of life. Vocation is partially about the job, but more about the way a person’s choice of work allows something deeper to develop in his or her heart. For many, ‘the call’ comes at the expense of other aspirations. It is a trade-off. We let go of certain impulses and choose to follow other desires, in an oftentimes circuitous route, that we hope will lead towards a deeper awareness of how we might better love and serve humanity.”

For Fr. Lickteig, his desire to love and serve led him to “explore a single mystery in a deeper way: GOD.” When he found the Society of Jesus, he writes, “I found a group of people that were responding to this same mystery in a profound way.”

In the piece, Fr. Lickteig describes the wide variety of work he did during his eleven years of Jesuit training, which included working with addicts in the Bronx, gutting houses in New Orleans, taking classes in counseling, teaching religion at a prep school and building affordable housing in Omaha.

“I moved from community to community, never staying in one place for more than nine months at a time. In each new home I was asked to interact with the best and worst that humanity has to offer, and somehow find the grace of God thread through it all,” Fr. Lickteig writes. “Ultimately, this is the purpose of Jesuit training: to find Christ in all things.”

Fr. Lickteig concludes, “Eleven years ago I gave a commitment to continue exploring this great mystery in a faith that stretches back thousands of years. It is a yes I will continue to follow as this life unfolds mercifully before me.”

Read Fr. Lickteig’s full article at the Huffington Post.

Jesuit  Father Chuck Frederico, vocation director for the Maryland, New England and New York Provinces of the Society of Jesus, was a recent guest on “The Busted Halo Show with  Fr. Dave Dwyer” on Sirius Radio.

In addition to discussing the Jesuit formation process, Fr. Frederico shared his own vocation story.

Fr. Frederico explained that after high school he went to the Culinary Institute of America in New York, which had previously been a Jesuit novitiate, St. Andrew-on-Hudson.

Before attending, one of Fr. Frederico’s high school teachers, a diocesan priest, told him to do three things when he arrived. One, to take notice of the “AMDG” — which stands for Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam (“For the greater glory of God”),  the motto of the Society of Jesus — written on the front door. Fr. Frederico recognized this from his grade school days. “I’d been writing that on the top of my loose leaf since first grade because the nuns I had, the sisters of St. Joseph, were founded by the Jesuits.”

His teacher also said in the small chapel there would be a window of St. Aloysius Gonzaga receiving first communion from St. Charles Borromeo. Fr. Frederico recognized this from his grammar school days as well, as he attended St. Charles Borrmeo.

Third, his teacher asked Fr. Frederico to read a book on Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and Fr. Frederico was fascinated by his life.

After culinary school, he went to Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia to study food marketing. “I  met the Jesuits in spirit at the Culinary Institute and in the flesh at Saint Joe’s,” Fr.  Frederico said.

Fr. Frederico was planning to have his own restaurant, but God had different plans.

“I was fascinated by these guys [the Jesuits]. I had six different Jesuits in the classroom, and each of them taught with such passion,” he said.

By his senior year, Fr. Frederico was applying to the Jesuits. Listen to the whole segment with Fr. Frederico online.

Jesuit Vincent Strand (right), with his brothers Fr. Luke Strand (left) and Fr. Jacob Strand (center).

Jesuit Vincent Strand, a regent currently studying German in Austria, was recently featured in an Associated Press story because he and his two brothers, Luke and Jacob, all have a calling to the priesthood.

Vincent Strand’s older brother Luke and younger brother Jacob are already ordained, and Strand is on the path to ordination.

According to Strand, his original plan was to become a neurologist, get married and start a family. He said he remembered thinking, “Oh, good. [Luke's] going to be the priest. I don’t have to now.”

But while at Marquette University he found his calling. Strand said a theology professor showed him “God was real in a way I hadn’t [realized] before.”

Strand told the AP that he thought about devoting himself to God even if he got married but decided to “completely empty” himself and pursue his calling.

“The celibacy and that vow of celibacy has been one of the real things I love about the life and one of the very freeing things about the life,” Strand said.

Read the AP full story on Strand and his brothers.