On Towards Tertianship

As many of you know, Jesuit formation takes a long time. Our formation shapes a man to become not only a priest or brother within the Church, but a man who is committed to the way of life envisioned by Ignatius and his first companions.

To that end, I will be leaving Cheverus in December to begin my final stage of Jesuit formation called Tertianship. I will enter a period of prayer and study that is designed to be a “school of the heart” before I petition for final vows. During this period, I will go on a 30-day silent retreat called The Spiritual Exercises, study the Jesuit Constitutions, and will work among God’s people in a ministry experiment for six months. At the end of this period, a Jesuit applies for final vows and full incorporation into the Society of Jesus.

This period is likened to the first phase of Jesuit formation called the Novitiate. During this period, a man enters his Primus (First) year and his Secundus (Second) year at the end of which, he professes perpetual vows of poverty, chastity and obedience while making a promise to enter the Society of Jesus forever. At the tail end of formation, a man enter his Tertius (Third) year, where he replicates the experiments of the novitiate and at the end professes again his vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, enters the Society, and makes a fourth vow to the Pope for availability with regards to missions.

After a man completes the novitiate, he studies philosophy for three years, then teaches in a school as a Regent for three years, then studies theology in order to be ordained a deacon then priest, and then works for three to five years in a ministry before being invited to tertianship. This is the stage at which I find myself. Formation’s goal is always to aid a man to become available and to form him into a man who is shaped by the Spiritual Exercises and our Constitution. To symbolize this, on our gravestones we record our birth date, date of entrance, and our date of death.

I am delighted to be entering into my tertianship year. I do love my brothers in the Society of Jesus and I am still very inspired by the work we do across the world. I am also saddened to be leaving the many good people who I have met in Maine and at Cheverus. I will miss you. I will hold you in my heart as I go forth, especially as I make my own thirty-day retreat. I ask for your prayers too. I need them. I think of the words of St. Ignatius at the end of the Spiritual Exercises. I ask for the grace to be able to depend upon God as fully as Ignatius captures it when he writes:

Take, Lord, receive all my liberties, my memory, my understanding, my entire will, all that I have and possess. You have given all to me and to you, O Lord, I return it. Everything is yours; do with it what you will. Give me only your love your grace. That is enough for me.


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