~ by Fr. Jack Bentz, SJ

Jesuits vow to live lives that are chaste, obedient, and poor. By doing this, Jesuits choose, in a very formal, intentional way, to embrace what most people spend a lifetime trying to avoid. Why? Why walk into the fire rather than away from it? Because by taking vows we choose to be like Christ who saves the world while hanging naked on a cross. Did I mention this life is not for everyone?
Jesuits take vows to be more …

~ by Fr. Jack Bentz, SJ

Candidates weekend.
It all came down to the room. A very small room. In a very ordinary building. With ordinary men. My seeing where I might live as a Jesuit novice was a huge step in my believing it could happen. And it did.
For me, traveling down to the novitiate of St. Francis Xavier in Portland, Oregon in the middle of December was meant to be just an information gathering trip. I was going only because I had told …

~ by Fr. Jack Bentz, SJ
As the Society of Jesus we are servants of Christ’s mission. Not our mission, but the mission of Christ. So we are sent into the world like Christ and with Christ. Wow, that’s big. Of course that’s what a good mission statement does for us – big enough that no matter how much we do we are not done with this mission. We can never just check it off the list, rather, it keeps drawing us forward into …

~ by Fr. Jack Bentz, SJ
They say it all began with a cannonball. Saint Ignatius was soldiering along and Wham! a cannonball finally woke him up. Well, it first laid him low and then God was able to get to him. He had a conversion of heart and the rest is the history of the Jesuits. So where is my cannonball? Have you been hit by one?
The size of the hammer God uses to wake us is relative to the hardness of the heart God is …

~ by Fr. Jack Bentz, SJ
I figure if the sign says 70 miles per hour I can set my cruise control at 79. 79 is the exact spot where I can break the law and still not be pulled over by the police. 81? Too fast. 70? Way too slow. But not any more. I have become a new man, a law abiding man, and I have found God in the slow lane, all the way over to the right. This indeed is the frontier for me and I have …