Jesuit High School ignites faith, inspires students to pursue priesthood

 

CNA Staff, Dec 27, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Talking to the graduates of Jesuit High School in Tampa, Florida, who are now pursuing priesthood, a familiar refrain emerges: Most of them didn’t have a strong Catholic faith before entering high school, at least not a faith that they considered their own.

“Like many Catholics today, much of my faith was very lukewarm growing up,” said Austin Smith, a 2017 Jesuit graduate and current fifth-year seminarian at St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary in Boynton Beach, Florida.

But following their high school experience — at a school marked by a culture of peer ministry, readily available Catholic sacraments including daily Mass and frequent confession, inspiring retreats, and mission trip opportunities — several young men in recent years have found that God is calling them to serve him in a way they couldn’t have imagined before: as priests.

“I certainly didn’t have any desire to be a priest when I was going into Jesuit. I didn’t have any desire for a life of virtue in general … [but] I can say for my life, [God] has surprised me in so many wonderful ways, and fulfilled so many of my desires beyond my wildest dreams, just from being faithful to him and following him,” Smith said.

Jesuit is an all-boys Catholic high school founded in 1899 with approximately 860 students. Jimmy Mitchell, director of campus ministry at Jesuit, has previously told CNA that the school’s emphasis on peer-to-peer Catholic ministry, whereby students are encouraged to share their faith with their classmates, fosters among the student body what Mitchell calls “a brotherhood with eternal consequences.”

Jesuit High School had 22 students convert during the 2020-2021 school year alone through its RCIA program — an unprecedented number that both continued and elevated a trend, with dozens of students choosing to accept the Catholic faith each year since.

Easy access to the sacraments — especially Mass and confession — is a cornerstone at Jesuit. The school also prioritizes “beautiful, noble, dignified liturgies” at its Holy Cross Chapel, a Romanesque edifice built in 2018 and designed to encourage devotion. Students also participate in mission trips and local service opportunities whereby the school’s motto, “Men for Others,” is actively put into practice.

Speaking to CNA last year, Jesuit Father Richard Hermes, who recently stepped down as president of the school to take a sabbatical, said that there was “nothing more important” to him and to the school than promoting the faith and leading the young men to God.

Hermes led the school for 16 years, and between 2010 and 2023, over 100 students were baptized and received into the Church.

“They’re leaving here with a mentality of being at the service of the Church, and [their faith’s] not just dying here after they get the diploma,” Hermes said at the time.

‘Fall in love with God’

Smith, who graduated from Jesuit before the completion of the new chapel and before the arrival of Mitchell as campus minister, nevertheless described the school environment “like a womb of faith” that provided him “foundational steps along the path” to grow the seed of faith that he already had after first hearing a call to the priesthood at age 16.

“I had an experience of God’s love in the sacrament of confession. It was at that time that I decided to start following God. I started going to confession pretty much every week as a personal commitment I had made to follow God,” he explained.

He said the school provided him and other young men interested in the priesthood the opportunity to go on discernment retreats. The example of the Jesuit priests at the school, including Hermes, the former school president, helped to make the priestly lifestyle seem more like a possibility for Smith.

“You had many priests there. You had daily Mass twice a day. You had solid theology. You had good retreats … it was a great place to grow in faith,” he said.

And despite the school’s commitment to an orthodox teaching of the Catholic faith, inquiry wasn’t frowned upon in his theology classes, he added. Questions were encouraged as each student charted his own path — ideally toward a full acceptance of the Catholic faith.

The peer ministry program under Mitchell grew significantly after Smith’s departure from the school, but Smith said it was still “extensive” during the years he attended. As part of the ministry, students lead one another in faith formation through small groups, engaging in vulnerable conversations, sharing testimonies, and discussing their faith.

Smith said participating in the programs with his younger peers helped to foster “a fatherly heart” within him and a desire to bring Christ to the young men.

“I want these guys to experience the love of God that I’ve experienced, to experience the mercy that I’ve experienced in the sacrament of confession, to experience the healing in different broken areas of their life that I’ve experienced. I think giving us abilities to be leaders in the faith, and take ownership of our faith, was huge,” he said.

Smith said he wants to encourage other young men who may be trying to discern God’s call for their life to surround themselves with people that will help them grow in virtue. In addition, he advised, seek to “grow in relationship with God. Fall in love with God. Allow him to win your heart more and more through personal prayer every day, through the life of sacraments, and everything will flow from that.”

“Any life of holiness he calls us to, when we give God our ‘yes,’ you have no clue where he could bring you. I can promise anyone reading this, it will be much greater and more unique and more wonderful than anything you could ever imagine,” Smith said.

‘Sinners, yet called’

Jeff Miraflor, a 2013 Jesuit graduate and current seminarian, is studying theology in the Philippines at Ateneo de Manila University.

He told CNA that despite having and practicing his Catholic faith going into Jesuit High School, his faith lacked personal depth until it began to be shaped by Jesuit education. Miraflor said all of his teachers at Jesuit, clerical and lay, helped to model the faith for him and challenged him to grow in many ways.

“All of these Jesuits who taught me in the classroom gave me a holistic picture of who priests and specifically Jesuits fundamentally are: sinners yet called. It was through them that I saw the human side of the priesthood … priests and scholastics who were highly intelligent, very demanding of their students yet reasonable and merciful, talented, and also had a sense of humor.”

Similarly to Smith, Miraflor said the opportunity to be a mentor to younger students as part of the peer ministry program helped him to strengthen his own faith while simultaneously building it up in other people. It was on one of the school retreats that he first began to consider the priesthood, he said.

“Leading students as their peer really requires one to be confident in their own faith, which was tested in giving my own testimony in front of my peers during retreat talks and in small-group sharing,” he explained.

Miraflor, a singer, was edified and inspired by learning at Jesuit about the Church’s tradition of sacred music from Jesuit Father Patrick Hough. He also mentioned Hermes as a formative presence at the school who modeled what Miraflor realized he wanted out of a priestly life.

Hermes later offered Miraflor a personal invitation to join the priesthood, he said.

“It was my first experience of what I now know as a Jesuit is called ‘ministry of presence,’ being there for the people even if we don’t have anything to ‘do.’ For [Hermes], it was more than just ‘being there’ but it’s experiencing the life of the school with the students and through that getting to really know the students,” Miraflor explained.

“This built a trust that made him less intimidating as the school president, which was important for when he would spontaneously join our school retreats or be the priest sitting in the confessional during lunch,” he said.

After studying for a time at the University of Central Florida following high school graduation, Miraflor later attended Fordham University after joining the Jesuits. He then taught for three years at Jesuit High School in New Orleans, also serving as choir director and director of campus ministry, before leaving for his Jesuit mission in the Philippines.

“Although I definitely didn’t get the amount of sleep I needed, being there for students in the same way that the Jesuits were there for me as a high schooler is a very privileged position, because many of the students have trust in me knowing that I’m there for them not for money, not for my own gain, but at their service,” Miraflor said.

“It’s also a joy to be with young people who are incredibly smart, talented, skilled in their own crafts, and who also know how to laugh and enjoy life.”

For other men feeling that God may be calling them to the priesthood, Miraflor’s advice was simple.

“There’s nothing to lose in going on a discernment retreat … Even if you discern that God is calling you somewhere else, the growth that you get from knowing yourself better is incredibly valuable,” he concluded.

‘Talking to the Lord every single day’

James Slack, a fellow Jesuit graduate and a freshman at the University of Dallas, is currently seriously discerning the priesthood. He told CNA that unlike some of his peers, he chose to attend Jesuit High School because he had recently begun to take his faith seriously and knew the school would provide him what he needed to grow in that faith. The school’s chapel was still relatively new when Slack arrived.

“Seeing the beautiful chapel and the environment and the culture of the school, I knew that that’s where I could grow my faith the most, and I think that’s where the Lord wanted me to go,” he explained.

“It took the seed, I think, that the Lord planted my heart of wanting to be a saint and wanting to be very intentional in my relationship with him and just gave it all of what it needed to grow.”

Slack said the priests at his high school were “some of the best men, in general, that I’ve ever been able to spend time with… incredible people who really made the faith personal and available to me.” He said he was particularly inspired by how available the priests made themselves in the confessional and said he has grown to desire to serve people in that way as well.

As his discernment process continues, Slack emphasized that he is trying every day to draw near to God through personal prayer. For other men trying to discern God’s call for their lives, he emphasized the importance of seeking guidance from others and trusting in God’s timing.

“The Lord can work in whatever way he wishes … and I’ve been really happy just patiently seeing if I can hear his voice day by day,” he said.

“I think if if anyone’s discerning or feeling this call, I think the most important thing to do is to maintain a good prayer life, making sure that that every day you’re turning to the Lord with trust and with faith, but also with a certain sense of regularity and discipline … It’s really easy to get lost in our own thoughts, in our own plans, in our own feelings, and it can be really hard to distinguish them from promptings of the Holy Spirit if we don’t spend time just talking to the Lord really personally every single day.”