I cannot help but smile as I remember a conversation I had with Abby on the way home from preschool the other day.

Me: What did you learn about in chapel today?

Abby: The fruits of the spirit.

Me: Really? What are the fruits of the spirit?

Abby: STRAWBERRIES!

While Abby did not answer with a “Fruit of the Spirit” as we know it, she did provide me with an incredible moment of consolation: a felt presence of God through the gift of laughter and the increase of hope and love. Abby helped me remember, as she does so many days, that I have no doubt that I discerned the vocation that most brings me to a fuller life.

Human life has meaning. We are not aimless beings, without a goal or purpose. We have been created by a God who loves us. We are called to build the Kingdom of God by knowing, loving and serving God and other people and thus entering life everlasting.

While some people view “the world”  as a religious desert, Ignatius was convinced that the world is filled with the Spirit of God,  and that the Risen One has conquered the world which was hostile to God.

God calls each and every one of us to share in a great enterprise. The lay person has a vocation, just as the religious and the priest has. The one thing that matters is to recognize our calling and respond to it faithfully. This is not something theoretical. It means rather that our lives should be centered on a person – the person of Christ.

Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, SJ

Ignatius Loyola, writing to a Jesuit who hesitated to work in the king’s court, fearing for the safety of his soul:

My own opinion is that even the argument based on your personal safety is not relevant.  Obviously if our religious profession has no other purpose but to ensure our security, and if we were supposed to subordinate the good we do to keeping clear of danger, then we would not have to live among people and have contact with them.  But according to our vocation we have contact with everyone . . . If we go about with our intention upright and pure . . . then Christ himself will look after us in his infinite goodness.

Jesuits educated me (St. Peter’s College), they employ me (Loyola Press), and they pastor me (St. Mary Student Parish, Ann Arbor).  So I’m very interested in how the Jesuits see themselves these days.   Here are a couple of items that reveal a lot about them.

One, an article by Ryan Maher, SJ,  is an appreciation of what he calls the “passion that manifests itself in a bred-in-the-bone love of teaching.”

The other is a video that simply shows five newly ordained Jesuits talking about their passions and hopes as they begin their priestly ministry.  One says that his passion is “let other people know about this God who loves us so much and so much wants us to be part of our lives.”  It’s inspiring.  (Click here if you can’t see the video.)

Go Forth and Set the World on Fire from Chicago and Detroit Jesuits on Vimeo.

Over the past two weeks I’ve had the remarkable experience of being a nearly full-time Dad.  My wife has started a new job and has undergone an orientation process that’s taken her away from home for some time, so we’ve found ourselves switching roles.

It’s been a profound process of discovery for me.  This is by no means my first time as primary caregiver–we’ve shared that role over the years as time and demands permit.  Early after our first adoption, for example, I took two days home every work week to be with an infant who needed constant physical contact.  Parenting has stretched me unlike any other life experience.

But these past two weeks have still been a period of growth.  Primarily, this has been an experience of slowing down and really paying attention to my girls as I have not done often enough.  I am certainly guilty of a tendency toward workaholism, even though I have in theory been trying to maintain a healthy work-life balance.  The truth is that I often leave the emotional work of parenting to Sue, in large part because she is just plain better at it.

But with Sue away so much, I’ve stepped more deeply into the world my girls inhabit.  And what I am realizing is that our worlds move at different speeds, with different imaginative objects that help structure our respective worlds.  I live in an academic world and move freely between millenia; what captures my imagination are eternal truths I seek to understand and live by.  It sounds grand, but in extremes it’s an unreal world.  My girls live much more in the here and now; they live in imaginative worlds populated by figures from stories and TV and music.  What’s important, though, is that I have set aside my imaginative world for a while in order to move more freely about in theirs.  And I have discovered dimensions of who they are in the process, and I fall in love.

I am convinced that we become who we imagine ourselves to be.  Too often I imagine myself in ways related to my work.  The experience of the past two weeks has reminded me of my fundamental vocation in the world.  It’s not about my work, though that does express an important dimension of how God has gifted me.  It’s about my marriage and my fathering, that sacramental context which, by definition, is oriented toward eternity.  I have been reminded to slow down, to be part of the world of my children, to walk with them and discover who they are and who they are becoming.  It is a wonder.

Two Jesuit astronomers talk about “Asteroids, Stars, and the Love of God” on NPR.

Richard Blake, SJ, on his vocation.  (“I knew I wanted to be a priest maybe four or five years after I was ordained.”)

Brian O’Leary, SJ, on the search for meaning from an Ignatian perspective.

Find God at Other6 (if you don’t already).

Resource: articles on the Spiritual Exercises from The Way, the journal of the British Jesuits.

Nathan Stone, SJ, makes a strong case for giving the Spiritual Exercises to young people.  He thinks that veteran spiritual directors are too  cautious if they regard the Exercises as experiences for older, settled people.

Some might think it safer to postpone the Exercises. Yes, it is, because commitment is always a risk. But then, safety is not a priority for the followers of Jesus.

I would suggest that the Exercises are primarily a vocational experience, in the broadest sense, to discover one’s calling, whatever that might be. Those who have already chosen a path can still make them fruitfully, of course. But I think we reverse priorities, if we give the Exercises primarily to those who are already settled, and exceptionally, to those who are not.

When we offer the Spiritual Exercises, if we are to be faithful to the source, we must go outside the walls, to where the people are, and not expect them to come to us. Out there is where we will find the young adventurers.

Read the whole thing.

Jesuits come from many walks of life. Brother Pat Douglas, SJ was trained as a clinical social worker before he entered the Society.  In this video he talks about his vocation and his work among at-risk Lakota youth on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Indian reservations in South Dakota.

If someone you know is looking for direction in life, point them to “How to Discern the Elements of Your Personal Vocation” by Peter Ryan, SJ. It’s an excellent essay that sets forth “points to bear in mind,” the first of which is that “sincere discernment infallibly succeeds.”

Another point is that we “discern only what to try.”

After all, we do not know the future, and we could die at any moment. The real possibility that we could die before we carry something out or that other things could intervene and make something impossible should warn us not to conclude that we are definitely called to do something in the future, but only that we are called to try to do it. Often enough, all God wants is the effort; and if we make the effort, we produce the results he desires.

Here’s how one man found his Jesuit vocation: