by Fr. Jack Bentz, SJ

“What does God want me to do with my life?”

This past weekend I was in Boise, Idaho helping with an Ignatian Spirituality retreat, and again and again, this question was asked by men discerning a call to religious life. I have heard this and similar questions from so many who are generously trying to serve God.

How can I serve God when I feel clueless about the job description? How can I be sure that joining the Jesuits is a better option than working in an orphanage in Africa or getting married and having a family or committing myself to a social justice group of Catholics? Which would be better? Which way of life does God want for me and how will I know it?

Nothing wrong with these questions – in fact, these are the best kind of questions.

Vocational discernment can be a very complicated task and it becomes vastly more difficult if we approach it with a head full of rational career concerns rather than a heart open to love – just like these men I met in Boise.

There are times for rational job concerns, like when deciding on a summer job. For example, we might just need cash to get through the next school year and so we take the highest paying job we can find. Done. We’re able to put up with horrible conditions on board a fishing boat in Alaska or behind a bar filled with drunks or on a factory line filled with contaminants. And each day as we stumble home from work, we can tell ourselves that it is worth it because of the money. Even when we begin to wear out and whine to our friends, they can remind us that we chose this difficult job (which we hate) because of the money.

This might be how we choose a summer job when we are strapped for cash but this is not how we choose to fall in love.

Very few of us fall in love based upon calculated motives of profit. Unless we imagine we’re a character in a Victorian romance novel or we’re caught in an old-world system of arranged marriage, we fall in love because our heart responds to something in another person. The person we love is probably imperfect, and yet we love them despite these imperfections. He or she might be poor, and yet we choose to be poor together. They might even be unpopular or misunderstood by our parents and friends but if we’re in love then nothing else seems to matter. We try to explain the reasons behind our feelings but we fail because we’re are using limited words to describe the limitless experience of love.

Wherever the Beloved goes we want to go with them. If they go to the store we look for an excuse to tag along. If they have to drive to Tacoma, we find a reason to be in Tacoma. We want to be with them because we love them. And when we cannot be with them we are thinking about being with them. This is called love and it is out of this kind of relationship with God that we enter religious life.

Most of us enter religious life on a hunch that this relationship with God will lead to a life filled with purpose and meaning. The relationship deepens, we gain more and we loose more and accept God’s invitation to remain open a bit more each day. And thus a life is lived in the Jesuits – as we are all doing this same thing independently and yet together: living a life that is based on love and a life spent loving.

I have never met anyone who chose to become a Jesuit because it was the best career choice. Wait, I take that back, I have met them but they all left the Jesuits when times got rough, as they will in any relationship. But the ones who stay in the Jesuits do so because we want to stay with the God who calls us to himself through our prayer, our work and our lives together.

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