As I look back on my life as a Jesuit I appreciate its deep continuities and underlying themes. Still there have been some unexpected moments, for example my most recent assignment as socius to the Novice Director. This blog is part of my reflection on how this fits into the unfolding of my Jesuit life under God’s providence.

Second childhood is a theme that we, of a certain vintage, often reflect on. It might entail a Shakespearean period of sans eyes, sans teeth, sans everything, and often a dimming of memory, accepted in the spirit of the Ad Amorem. But hopefully it will also entail a return to our origins, a rebirth of childhood trust and openness, undergirded by the wisdom of a lengthy life with its struggles, triumphs, and defeats. We began as childish and in need of maturation. Let us end as childlike, having moved beyond the cares and concerns, the prerogatives and pretence at self-sufficiency of our adulthood.

The above applies to me not just in my life tout court, but also in my Jesuit life. I began as a novice, and in my sunset years I have returned to the novitiate as a socius. One knowing the history of this particular novitiate might say: “he had a hand at making that bed, let him now lie in it.” But thus far my sleep has been easy.

I sense the deep continuity between the novitiate as I experienced it and the current novitiate, in its purposes and outcomes, but at first blush the differences are much more striking.

Some of them are quite obvious. In my year of entrance there were about 40 novices in both years, this year there are 4. Out of the 24 who entered in my year there are 3 left. ( By contrast the overall rate of departures in the English Canadian province on the whole has diminished significantly in the last twenty years or so.) Our novitiate was the first stage of formation for that Province; this novitiate is bi-provincial and its novices are being trained for one Canadian province about to come to birth.

There are other changes as well. The vintage cassocks we received upon entry and the rosary beads we often tripped over have been replaced by a multicolored array of t-shirts, pants, long or short, and our sensible black shoes with contemporary footgear of many types. Indeed we were to be covered from head to toe, with manualia jackets to inculcate modesty in dress and prevent furtive glances at exposed forearms. We were enclosed in a protective cocoon and the outside world to which we were to reach out only after years of preparation was perceived as too dangerous.

Today’s novices with their lengthy experiments are much more encouraged to move out and face the challenges of a world mostly indifferent to their religious convictions, to discover at first hand both its beauty and its misery. Hospitality then was strictly limited, with strict enforcement of “grades”, which meant very limited access to Jesuits at other stages in training and practically no contact with ‘outsiders’. There may be times of isolation, but now hospitality is encouraged not only for Jesuits but for lay friends, relatives, and apostolic colleagues on the outside.

One of the most significant changes is in the style of prayer. We used to mostly pray in the sight of each other, whether in the chapel or in the ascetory (a large hall in which each novice had a desk). But now the prayer regime of the novice – the time to be devoted to prayer is similar – is between the novice and the novice director, as to when and how and where the prayer takes place. Each novice has a room where he can be private. The keynote used to be conformity verified externally; it is now personal accountability.

Our common prayer apart from the daily mass used to consist of litanies and on special occasions benediction, but now that prayer consists of morning prayer from the breviary, which normally begins the day, and a more informal evening prayer. In 1958 the reform of the liturgy was just beginning to have an impact in Jesuit communities, with singing of some of the simpler Gregorian settings and of a relatively sparse selection of traditional Catholic hymns. The flavour of the day now is an abundant selection of Taizé chants, with appropriate harmonies and occasional dissonances as novices are encouraged to develop whatever musical talents they have.

But what has blown my mind is that the selections chosen are as likely to be in German, Italian, Spanish, or Polish as in French or English. Is this a foretaste of things to come, of a pentecostal turn in our new province not only to bilingualism but also to multilingualism, buttressed by formation experiments designed to broaden horizons in ways we would have never expected as novices in our day?

We lived on a farm, and most of the food preparation, remote and immediate, was done by a large group of devoted brothers. The meals were simple, but abundant and tasty. Occasionally on a first class feast we were entitled to a bottle of inexpensive soda bought in the neighbouring town of Guelph. Now pretty well every one is involved in food preparation, including the novices and their director, with a lay cook who loves to do innovative things, and buyers who know how to access the unusual foods available in this extraordinary neighborhood for reasonable prices. Items normally bought are often prepared from scratch. I find myself gastronomically challenged, having to mind my p’s and q’s as I choose what wine goes with what food, and often experiencing new tastes and new textures.

A final point of difference touches me more significantly at this time of life. When I was a novice we had no watches but bells rang maybe twenty times a day to move us from one activity to another. Now novices rely on their watches and their ready recall of the daily schedule. This is a struggle for those in the community of an age where memory is less agile.

The differences are many, but in the end they are superficial. The essential purpose of the novitiate is initial formation. The formation of earlier centuries worked well for those centuries. Today’s formation works well for our own times. But the road from then to now, triggered by the return to the original charism which Vatican II mandated for religious communities, was not without its bumps and potholes. We had to learn how to do things well in a new mode, and that takes some time. How could we make sure that the best of our old traditions would find flesh in a different world? How could we properly discern what traditions had lost their usefulness and needed to be discarded? The exploratory role of those who took on the challenge of directing the novitiate in those intervening years was invaluable.

Back then we endeavoured to prepare ourselves with traditional penitential and devotional practices for the church as we knew it, led by the Angelic Pastor Pius XII, with his ascetic and distant mien. Very soon, in the aftermath of Vatican II, the certainty with which the novitiate carried out its mandate was called into question.

The current novitiate prepares novices with a spirituality that goes back to the original Ignatian inspiration but in a contemporary transposition which speaks to our world. It conforms to the desires of Pope Francis for those called to ministry in the Church: presence, involvement, compassion, abnegation, unstinting service. We still have much to learn about formation, but we have a solid spring-board for our further advancements. Second childhood for me yes, but also a worthwhile and challenging journey for all of us, novices and directors.