Life as a Novice
Ben Anderson, The Jesuits' Wisconsin Province

My name is Ben Anderson, from Chanhassen, Minnesota. I’m 25 yrs old and I graduated from Creighton University. I came from a small family, just my two parents and an older sister and a younger sister.

To get to the novitiate door took a lot. I was really excited throughout college. I had all these other options I could be doing. I had an internship I did the summer before entering the novitiate that I loved and I really wanted to continue it. In my senior year I was really interested in a girl and almost started dating her but didn’t. There were all these “almost’s” and “what if’s” …..

I had a lot of really good spiritual directors and good people who said: “you’ve been talking about this for a long time; you just need to do it”. I may really want those other things, and that’s all right. I am only human. I just need to trust in this deep desire that God is inviting me to this life and will sustain me in it.

I think the novitiate has been a great time to meet Christ, finding who I am in God, and finding I have so many gifts--and yet I am called to be Christ’s heart for the world. I came into the Jesuits really on fire for social justice and changing things. I have grown a lot in spirituality and learning who I am and what gifts I have. My call is being invited by Christ through the different experiences, and especially the Spiritual Exercises - the month long retreat - just to be Christ’s heart to the world - agent of that love all over, to the rich and the poor, and everyone, but especially to the people on the margins. I want to be free enough in the vows we take to go where other people don’t want to go, and to really find life and to find God in people who are forgotten by others.

Ignatius had a vision at LaStorta of Jesus carrying the cross and inviting him to join in that. It looks hard and can involve a lot of suffering in taking that cross. I found that in working with these people it is really frustrating sometimes, and it is really hard. But, how beautiful it is to be able to not just bring God there, but to find God there. To find love and to labor with Christ in these people and to connect all sorts of people together into this great Kingdom of God is what we are about: to be a sign of Christ’s love that unites and reconciles all the people of the world.

This is what I wanted for my life. There are always other desires and other imaginings of what I could be doing, and they are all really good. I could be doing them, but God has planted this seed in me, and this desire to live this life in full service to Him. I want to always come to Him in prayer and to be fully dependent on God in everything. The vows (of poverty, chastity, and obedience) really scared me because I didn’t think I was really worthy, or living up to who Ben, the Jesuit should be—that I needed to be this really holy guy, and this really spiritual person and this really profound speaker or something…and I realized, no … God is just calling Ben, just me, the person who walked in the door here with all these desires, these weaknesses, and these gifts. I am a sinner, yet called by God. And that is exactly who God, Jesus, is inviting to take vows. Just coming to a greater and greater understanding throughout the novitiate that I am going to mess up sometimes in this life (hopefully not too bad), but that God is calling me to use my gifts to the greatest of my ability and to just throw them out there for Him and see what happens. I feel at peace with the simple truth that God loves me for who I am, and calls me and will sustain me in this life.