The work I am beginning in two weeks is a stage of Jesuit life called “Tertianship.”

For me, this stage happens to converge with a stage of academic life that is familiar: sabbatical. Normally, a sabbatical is designed for professors to take concentrated time for writing and researching in order to advance their subject and to enhance their teaching. In my case I am certainly using the sabbatical time to write and research, but that work will occur (indeed, has been occurring) mainly during the two summers around the school year. But the seven months running October 2026 through April 2027 I will spend on tertianship.

I will, no doubt, have a better idea of what tertianship involves during and after my experience of it. But I know enough to take the first step. Right now it is as if I am standing on a rock on the edge of an ocean. I can discern some lights blinking in the distance, over the rush of the waves I hear faint sounds of boats powering toward the horizon, and I feel drawn to head out into deep waters.

Formation

I am stepping away from the normal crush of work. There are expectations of my teaching and even my priestly ministry that occupy my mind and heart. I step away from those things, good as they are, to allow myself to be formed according to the graces and gifts that this Jesuit way of life offers. In some ways it will be like returning to the time when I first entered the Jesuits: I just heard today that the director of the program will be controlling how much money we have for personal expenses to ensure that we all have the same amount. It will be a newly tangible experience of the vow of poverty that I made 22 years ago last week.

I also do not know anyone in the group going into the experience. Just as when I entered the order, what binds us together are not the ordinary links of proximity and similarity but a sense of divine call. Human bonds will have to be built in the process of sharing this time together. A crucial piece of what is being formed through these facts is a sense of dependence on God and on the community.

Testing

St. Ignatius wanted repeated periods of testing built into Jesuit life. He trusted that God was showering down many graces on the world and particularly on the members of the Jesuits. But these graces would be noticed, recognized, and developed when they were tested. Through times of testing the Jesuit could savor the graces God had already given him, recognize the weaknesses for which he needed God’s pardon and aid, and see where God might best use his unique gifts in the future. Likewise, through testing, the Jesuits as a community could see their men even more clearly for who they are.

Preparation

The formation and the testing prepare for two related things. The more immediate preparation is for final vows. A Jesuit has to complete tertianship before the order will invite him to make his final profession of vows in the order. This solemn moment commits both the man and the community to one another in a complete way, and the community needs to form and test the man during tertianship before this deep commitment can be offered.

Part of those solemn vows, for Jesuits, is an even deeper commitment to obedience and to one’s mission in the order. The Jesuit motto is ad majorem Dei gloriam, for the greater glory of God. A Jesuit should not be sent where he can do a job that is merely good enough, but where his particular strengths and weaknesses can be used to advance God’s glory, to make God’s glory more evident.

So the preparation for final vows in the near-term is supposed to be also a preparation for a long-term goal of living ever more for the greater glory of God. The formation and the testing are designed to allow the Jesuit to be even more committed to this ideal and even more filled with realistic knowledge of God and of himself. Likewise, the formation and testing allow the community to send a Jesuit in the future with the community having clear confidence in his commitment to the goal of the order. We hope the community can then send him to a mission that makes use of his talents for the greatest unfolding of God’s plans that we can envision.

I will say more in another post about the particular components of tertianship, but, for now, it is enough to say that the crucial element in every tertianship comes from Jesus Christ. The most important thing a Jesuit can do at all times is to pray, and so the fundamental building block of tertianship is having more time to pray. In the flow of our busy work in many different sorts of institutions, it can be easy for Jesuits to let time for union with Christ be squeezed and compressed and reshaped by the obligations to the people we serve and, sadly, by our own egotism. This time of tertianship allows us to allow Christ to nudge out of the way anything that might have displaced him. He is the one thing necessary. May he be glorified forever.