By Nicole Sweeney EtteR
Photography By Gary Dineen

Marquette grads on the path to priesthood

THE RULES ARE SIMPLE. Thirty days, $35 and a one-way bus ticket. Get to where you need to go, and beg your way home. It sounds like the set-up for a reality TV show, but no camera crews are trained on Marquette alums Joe Simmons, Arts ’04; Brad Held, Arts ’06; and Stephen Wolfe, Arts ’03. This is just another test in their first year as Jesuit novices, and the beginning of their 10- to 12-year journey to Jesuit priesthood.

THE 30-DAY PILGRIMAGE

The month-long silent retreat. Tending the needy and sick during the “hospital experiment.” While there are plenty of hours devoted to prayer and contemplation, the first year of Jesuit formation is nothing if not adventuresome.

Yet as the dwindling number of Catholic priests shows, the lifestyle doesn’t appeal to everyone. “There was a time when 20 guys would graduate and then go onto the seminary,” says Simmons, 25. “Now if you get one or two people out of a class of 1,700, it’s kind of remarkable.”

It’s not just that these young men have chosen the counter-cultural path of Catholic priesthood, of a life committed to poverty, chastity and obedience. They chose the Society of Jesus, which has the longest training of any religious order. It’s a life to which they all felt uniquely called, to serve Christ and carry on the 500-year-old mission of the Society of Jesus.
Recognizing the call isn’t always easy.

FINDING THE PATH

As a senior at Marquette, Joe Simmons faced a tough decision. Did he want to settle down and have a family, or did he want to join the Jesuits?

Simmons majored in Spanish language and literature and classical languages. He was active in Campus Ministry, fed the homeless through Noon Run, and participated in Marquette’s Manresa Project, a program that helps students and staff find how they can best serve God. He attended Mass on Sundays, and started going to St. Joan of Arc Chapel once or twice a week. Soon, he was there most days.

He and other buddies referred to themselves as “Jesuit junkies.” Every few months, they invited a Marquette Jesuit to dinner at their apartment. Once, they even invited Marquette President

Robert A. Wild, S.J., and were delighted when he came.

But when others suggested the priesthood, Simmons outwardly resisted. “I think they saw something in

me that I didn’t see in myself or didn’t want to see in myself,” he says.

Then during a five-day silent retreat, his thoughts kept returning to the Jesuits. “It was kind of scary,”

he says. “It was like, this isn’t what I wanted to do. This wasn’t part of the plan. And yet I kept coming

back to it. I wanted to be a father so much, but there are different ways of being a father than just a biological fatherhood. There’s a spiritual fatherhood.”

Brad Held, 23, also initially resisted the calling. A political science major, he was passionate about politics and envisioned a career working in the nation’s Capitol.

When once asked about his career plans, he found himself saying, “I’m going to go work in politics for 15 or 20 years and then maybe I’ll become a priest.” It was his freshman year, and the first time he’d uttered the words aloud. Still, he felt torn.

“There was definitely a point in my discernment when I remember saying in prayer, ‘I don’t have any more excuses for why I shouldn’t be a priest,’” he says.

For Stephen Wolfe, 28, the revelation came suddenly. It was Sept. 17, 2002. A Jesuit friend suggested that Wolfe might be happy in the Society of Jesus. “I was like, ‘Whatever, old man,’” says Wolfe, chuckling at the memory. But just a couple hours later he called his friends to say, “I think I’m going to become a Jesuit.”

It seemed to fit. As a graduate student in theology, he worked with University Ministry and became increasingly interested in his faith. And he already felt comfortable with two of the three vows.

“I certainly felt inklings that I was called to poverty and chastity. But obedience — yeah, that’s tough,” he says, and laughs.

Wolfe planned to finish his master’s degree and then travel for two years. But he felt God calling him sooner and decided to finish his master’s degree while at the novitiate.

I very clearly had an itch to enter the next stage of my life,” Wolfe says. It was just the lifestyle he was looking for.

“It’d be hard for me to get up at 6:30 in the morning and say I’m doing this because I work at a bank, versus I’m trying to spread the word of God and save souls here. That’s exciting stuff,” Wolfe says. “It’s your identity. You can’t punch out. And I love that, not making that distinction between what you do and what you are. In the priesthood, what you do and what you are really merge. ”(Continues on page 2.)