A Necessary Conversation
My novice master and I sat across from one another in the living room of my Jesuit community in Portland, Maine, where I had been teaching and ministering during my novitiate long experiment at Cheverus High School.
“I don’t think you’ve ever been so open and honest with me,” he remarked after a couple hours of conversation. A brief silence followed, and I pondered his words.
I affirmed this insight. “I think you’re right, Jim.”
“Do you trust me?” Further silence. An uncomfortable truth teetered on the brink of emerging.
“You know, I’m not sure I do.”
Jim and I had been trying for a number of months to identify the unknown difficulty that lurked in my novitiate experience. We had our disagreements from time to time,1 but this never prevented me from dedicating myself as wholly as possible to the previous eighteen months of prayer and apostolic work. I strove to be generous and joyful, committed to the life of my community and to my relationship with Jesus.
And in this little parlor space, just a few months before I was supposed to profess perpetual vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, we arrived at an unsettling realization. The amorphous darkness came to light. It’s not that I openly rebelled against my novice master, or the auspices of living under the vows. I simply -- and quite unconsciously -- remained lacking in the sort of maturity that the vow of obedience requires. Never had I fully disclosed my interior life to Jim, and my regular manifestations2 with him always proved relatively brief. It took almost two years to become comfortable with our relationship.
At long last, we identified this subtle obstacle. My remaining two months at Cheverus flew by, and I offered this issue to Christ in my prayer. It became clear that my future in the Society might be short-lived. As I discussed this situation with other fully-formed Jesuits, including my formation director and community superior in Maine, they assured me that I had nothing to worry about, that Jim would not dismiss me from the Society against my will or against my prayer. I, however, remained unsure.
In prayer, I still felt the call to profess vows, and wondered if I could postpone them by six months in order to continue maturing in obedience. The Society’s Constitutions permit this extra time to discern, albeit rarely. My inability to live the vow of obedience, I believed, was something I could work on. It’s not that I felt incapable of obedience; I just felt iffy toward one particular novice master.
The Decision and Its Aftermath
In late May of 2012, I packed up a rental car and drove back to the novitiate in Syracuse, completely unaware of whether or not my novice master would permit me to ask this special permission of my provincial. I wept on that seven-hour car ride, trying to dispose myself indifferently toward the decision that awaited. It was His will that I sought, not mine.
Two days later, through a singular individual, the Society shattered my heart. Jim informed me that although he was grateful for my time in the novitiate, and appreciated all that I gave to the community, I should move on. “If you have a vocation,” he told me, “you will come back, and I -- along with many others -- will rejoice.” He assured me, in some trivial piece of consolation, that any other novice master would have happily allowed me to profess. A novice the previous year had asked permission to delay his vows, received this dispensation, then left the Society a few months later; Jim told me that he did not want to give the Jesuit provincials the impression that such a delay would become a regular occurrence. Thus, in part due to the discernment of another individual, Jim decided that he would not allow me to discern further within the Society. I thought that in this particular bit of discernment (basing his discernment for how to proceed with me on another individual’s choices), he defenestrated the ideal of cura personalis, “care for the whole person.”
The previous decade of progressively intensifying desire crumbled before me. My life fell apart in a single conversation. I did not understand how two individuals who loved Christ and his Society could come to such different conclusions. I could not fathom how this call to the priesthood, which began to take root in middle school, could disintegrate so quickly. My discernment during eight years in Jesuit schools, throughout which I fell ever more deeply in love with Jesus and the Society, atomized into nothingness with amazing rapidity, all because it contradicted the comparatively brief discernment of my religious superior.
As I packed up my clothing and books at the novitiate, the call still resonated within. My classmates expressed surprise and dismay, and we all remained convinced that I would one day return. Ironically, the single truest act of obedience I undertook was leaving the novitiate against my will, trying to seek God’s desires in a decision that I utterly resented.
My five months at Cheverus High School revealed something I had long suspected: teaching suited me extraordinarily well. One month after my dismissal, I accepted a teaching position at Xavier College Preparatory in Palm Desert, California, a place I had never been to. I drove out to California, and as I unpacked my car in 117-degree desert heat, I wondered if this was yet another colossal mistake.
I initially intended to treat that desert as Jesus treated his: a place of discerning preparation, separated from all my friends and family. I understand my most fundamental vocation to be one of evangelization, awakening the hearts and minds of others to the beauty, goodness, and truth of Catholicism, helping others to enter into a relationship with Jesus. I would continue to discern in this beautiful desert whether or not I could most fully live this out as a Jesuit or as a layperson.
My prayer life dissolved into non-existence during those first few months, due in part to lingering anger. No longer did I have a daily Mass community or spiritual direction, as I had throughout college and the novitiate. Grading and lesson planning filled my waking hours, and my life, previously centered around liturgical and private prayer, radically changed shape.
Confusion and frustration persisted.3 During those weeks and months that followed, Jim’s decision remained cloaked in ambiguity, and in my mind, a binary arose: either he was right in his discernment and I wrong in mine, or he was gravely mistaken in ignoring what manifested in my own prayer. I can never know if Jim’s will was in fact God’s will, or if he actually single-handedly managed to obstruct my vocation. This haunted me, and some nights I found myself unable to fall asleep. Certain beloved colleagues and students expressed belief that I would return to the novitiate, because God created me to be His Jesuit. Others believed that I’d meet the love of my life and raise a family.
Questions have rattled around in my heart for the past number of years: did I have a vocation, or did I not? Do I still? What if the wills of others have prevented, and still prevent, me from fulfilling it? If that was indeed my vocation, will I never find wholeness or joy? Would any hypothetical possible life be a “second best” to what could have been?
Realizations
What does one do in the midst of a different sort of vocation crisis, when one is not discerning between two goods, but when one’s freedom to discern between these goods has been revoked? Seeking an answer to this question, and trying to find freedom in this situation, has brought me to certain unexpected realizations.
I have come to believe that God has no such thing as a preordained plan.4 We tend to hear this all the time, though, especially in times of difficulty: be not afraid, God has a plan. But I answer now that there is no plan. “The plan” is utter nonsense, a trite and superficial quip that offers no real consolation in the long run.5
To suggest that God imposes a plan upon each human life is to suggest that we have no freedom, that regardless of what we choose, what comes of our lives has always been meant to come. Even more shocking, to assert that God “has a plan” is to say that God wills our sufferings, from the most minuscule to the most grotesque. God plans our sufferings, intends them, forces them upon us, that we might be forged in some mysterious fire.6 And that, I believe, lies firmly outside of God’s nature as Love itself. 7
As I’ve prayed and pondered, I’ve come to believe that God offers us greater freedom than a preordained plan; I think S/He’s way more flexible than a fixated and obsessive divine architect of our futures might be. God certainly has desires for us, and while we can discern what those desires are, should someone happen to interfere with those desires -- either myself or another person -- God remains ready and waiting with something else. Fruit can be borne of human folly. And it has been, since the beginning of all things; Jesus’ lineage in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke are full of rambunctious characters who digressed from all sorts of stereotypically pious expectations.
My dismissal from the Society of Jesus reduced me to my utmost vulnerability, and therefore brought me to a freedom the likes of which I had not known. I learned with far greater clarity the meaning of Ignatius’s Suscipe8 prayer, and what it means to surrender my most fervent dreams, my deepest desires, and even my supposed vocation. While my dismissal from the Society thusly wrote the crucifixion into my life, the freedom I subsequently discovered proved a sort of resurrection. In this, I have found true liberation. Suffering can indeed be redeemed; meaning can be discovered within it.
Nowadays, I no longer worry about whether or not Jim was right, or whether or not I had a vocation that he disrupted. My future vocation does not yet exist. It remains, much like Jim’s decision, a mystery. My calling, like that of every person, is to love Jesus in those I serve. It is a thing of immediate immanence, not a carrot dangling at some unknowable distance. And those I serve -- my students -- I have come to love more than I could have ever expected, and in unlocking my capacity to love them with a wild and reckless abandon, they prepare my heart for salvation. Part of my path to sainthood lies in them. Another part, I strongly suspect, will consist of how fully I give myself to my spouse and children.
The rest of the path will be stitched together from those infinite incarnations and crucifixions and resurrections that will infuse each day of my life, defining David Gregory. I can now say with sincerity that getting kicked out of the Jesuits has proven to be a facet of my vocation. It was not of my choosing, but that does not prevent me from dying in it, or being reborn in it.
A vocation, I’ve concluded, is not some future unknown thing that I chase after, as it’s something that can only be understood in retrospect. The thread of grace weaving throughout our lives can only be seen once it has been woven. Grace manifested in the various ministries and the Spiritual Exercises of the novitiate, drawing me into deeper love for Jesus of Nazareth. Grace appeared in those lives that transformed mine as I discovered teaching in the Coachella Valley’s desert. Grace even reared its gorgeous head in OKCupid.9 It’s constantly bubbling up, this Trinitarian Love that pours outside of its own Self, creating and renewing all things and persons, beckoning me into relationship.
My particular calling, or in more eschatological terms, my particular sainthood, lies in this moment. It can only be discovered here and now.10 My will reaches out towards -- and even touches -- the eternal evermore, be it salvation or perdition, with each and every fleeting second.
All this to say: thanks, Jim.
1 My favorite of these disagreements is this: I affectionately called the crucifix hanging in our dining room “Six Shooter Jesus” because his fingers on both hands were formed into guns (in reality, the gesticulation is typical of iconography: the thumb joins the curled ring and pinky fingers to symbolize the triune Godhead, and the outstretched index and middle fingers symbolize the hypostatic union of Jesus’ full humanity and full divinity). We were setting up the space for our annual Lessons and Carols, I made some off-hand remark about Six Shooter Jesus, and Jim started yelling at me in front of the community. I definitely deserved the scolding for my irreverence (though I wish it had been done in private), but still...no regrets. Jim also hated my Oscar the Grouch hooded sweatshirt, and asked me to get rid of it; had I known he was going to kick me out of the Society, I would have kept it.↩
2 A “manifestation,” in Jesuit lingo, is the conversation that occurs between a Jesuit and his superior (generally the community superior or the provincial), and centers around discussion regarding the Jesuit’s life, ministry, prayer, and discernment.↩
3 These days, I’m perhaps most ticked off by the fact that the director of vocations refuses to return my certificates of birth, Baptism, and Confirmation; I apparently legally signed them over, and he says I can just go get new copies. Take note, those of you considering religious life: read the fine print, because proving your existence or getting married will be made considerably more difficult if you discern your way out or are kicked out.↩
4 I should comment that I’m talking about divine predestination regarding an individual’s life, as opposed to the macrocosmic scope of salvation history.↩
5 To draw this point out, I’ll offer an example. Telling the parents of an innocent child whose life was taken by some horrible disease that “God works in mysterious ways” or that “Her death was in God’s plan” does nothing for their mourning. It does nothing for our theology, either.↩
6 In the words of one of my all-time favorite poems, “Holy Sonnet XIV”, by Anglican clergyman John Donne:
Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. ↩
7 Editor’s Note from Dan: Building on to Dave’s expositions here, I’ll add God's having a plan suggests that our freedom is illusory. However, I think God's providence and grace in some mysterious way know intimately the potential of our gifts and hearts and know the amazing possibilities if we use our freedom to realize that fullness. The mechanics, though, are surely a mystery and ought not to be reduced by bumper-sticker theologies.↩
8 Here’s Dave’s personal version, cobbled together from various translations: “Take, O Lord, and receive all my liberty, my understanding, and my entire will. Whatsoever I have and hold and call my own, You have bestowed upon me as untold gift. To you, O Lord, I return it. Dispose of it according to Your will. Give me only love for You, along with Your grace. With these alone I shall be rich enough, and desire nothing more.”↩
9 After several dumb years of online dating in the desert, I had given up, though I allowed a profile to remain on OKStupid. A certain blue-eyed ginger from Portland set her search criteria for “anywhere,” stumbled upon my profile because we were a 99% match according to the site’s algorithms, and dropped me a line. We wrote platonic letters as pen-pals, had a 14-hour first date at Disneyland (which totally messes with all your emotions, it’s so danged charming), and I relocated to the Pacific Northwest a year later because I adore the film Good Will Hunting. Go on, judge me, but we’re at 16 months and going strong.↩
10 In C.S. Lewis’ masterful Screwtape Letters, the demon Screwtape writes to his nephew tempter-in-training Wormwood that demons should draw their subjects’ (“patients”) attention to the past and toward the future, but never the present: the past cannot be changed, and the future remains entirely open, but the Divine touches the present. Distracting humans from the present, therefore, remains prime ground for potent temptation.↩
