Fr. Greg Carlson, S.J.

"How does your vocation challenge you to go beyond your comfort zones?"

My Jesuit vocation is thrilling: it keeps challenging me beyond my comfort zones and invites me again to listen to God and to serve people well.

An old Irish proverb says "May you have many adventures!  And may some of them turn out good!"  I have plenty of adventures, and many of them turn out good.  Recent adventures include sharing the diaconate ordination of thirteen Jesuits whom I had earlier accompanied, sleeping on the floor in Houston's Airport, teaching great stories from Chaucer, hearing a young Jesuit preach his first homily in Spanish, and completing two loops on a model railroad.  Good adventures!

I love preaching.  Preaching offers a stiff challenge every time.  First I ask: "How does this gospel challenge us?"  From there, I do not so much prepare a homily.  I rather "worry" it through the day or week.  I let it bother me and invite me; I let it reach into my experience and my imagination.  I try to trust God to guide me and the people listening.

Jesuit obedience has taken me out of old comfort zones into great new places--like working in Nigeria or leaving tenured teaching positions to help train younger Jesuits. 

I have been a Jesuit superior three times.  How many times that responsibility called me beyond comfort!  "Will you challenge this younger Jesuit where he needs to grow?  Will you ask this older Jesuit to stop driving?  Will you help this Jesuit to face his death?"  Serving my Jesuit brothers has taken me into good but tough new territory!

Might some of you reading this want to join the Jesuits for adventures like these?

< Back to Living Witness home