By Amy Korpi

Father Peter Fennessy, SJ, cannot help but chuckle at the recollection of a significant trip he took around France many years ago. He had meant to stop very, very briefly in Lourdes—in case his mother ended up seeing his route and asking why he didn’t go there.

“But I ran into a friend,” he says. “And the person who was pushing his wheelchair suggested unceremoniously that I take over.”

Father Fennessy ended up spending two rewarding days with people in search of healing—an early example of how his life has unfolded in unexpected ways.

“I like to differentiate healing from curing,” he says. “A person can come away from Lourdes without a cure, but with peace and healing. Although my time at Lourdes was longer and different than I expected, it had a profound effect that prepared me for my eight-day retreat when I went on to Annecy. That retreat was the most profound experience of the Spiritual Exercises I have ever had, and it has colored my prayer and preaching ever since.”

The weeks that followed were full of similar, unplanned and unexpected events. “Finally,” he says, “I heard God asking, ‘Do I always have to let you know that I’m working on you? Just trust me.’”

At one point in life, Fr. Fennessy became interested in the Baghdad mission and hoped to be sent to the Middle East. Despite his self-directed study of the region, his forte was Latin and Greek, which meant he was a better fit for Jamaica at the time. He taught there for three years before moving to John Carroll University (JCU) in University Heights, Ohio, where he would spend the next 26 years. He served in many capacities at JCU, including vice president and director of campus ministry, offices he says he “never expected to hold.”

After a sabbatical at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif., where he studied theology, art and Buddhist aesthetics, he joined the staff at Manresa Jesuit Retreat House in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. There, many of his retreats explored the confluence of art and spirituality. “If it is a choice of looking at beautiful paintings or my face for 40 minutes or so, that’s a ‘no brainer,’” he says with a laugh. “Images touch the emotions more deeply than words and can communicate the material more effectively.”

When the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) exhibited Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus in 2011-2012, Fr. Fennessy served as a consultant and offered illustrated retreats on the theme. Since 2017, he has taught a Praying with Art seminar with a longtime DIA docent.

Father Fennessy also writes articles for Manresa Matters magazine and provides art reflections for the retreat house’s Facebook page. “Reflecting on the pieces, and writing and doing presentations about them, has become a form of ongoing prayer for me,” he says.

Some have called Ignatius the patron saint of second jobs, Fr. Fennessy adds. “He tells us that at every moment everything around us and within us are gifts of God’s love given to us for our welfare, and that God is at work in all these things for our good, whether we understand it now or not.

“In other words, as Romans 8:28 says, ‘We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose.’ So, while God does not bring about our suffering, there is ample reason to be open to what we find on our path.”

The surprising new directions of Fr. Fennessy’s life and mission are not too unlike those of St. Ignatius of Loyola, whose calling encouraged him to leave behind some of his own dreams and aspirations. Only with some perspective does one’s unexpected past begin to make sense in the present.

“As I look back on these many years as a Jesuit, I see a unity of which I was unaware during any particular event,” Fr. Fennessy says. “It brings to mind the prayer of affirmation and hope given to us by the great diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld—‘For all that has been, thanks! To all that shall be, yes!’”