Before Their Calling

The path to becoming a Jesuit sometimes involves a prior career outside religious life

By Garan Santicola

In his first assignment for the Evening Tribune in Albert Lea, Minn., cub reporter Chris Manahan profiled a man unicycling around the world. The assignments, and the personalities, continued to hold his interest for close to 15 years, but in 1993, he left the newspaper industry and entered the Society of Jesus.

“The variety of people, situations, and issues one experiences as a journalist is what I remember and appreciate most,” Fr. Chris Manahan, SJ, says today. He, like many Jesuits, had great success and fulfillment in a career outside religious life before answering the call to serve God and the Church through the Society.

For Fr. Manahan, when his brother Tom joined the Jesuits, it sparked thoughts of a religious vocation for him, too. Tom had been a marketing professional at General Mills Inc., and when he entered the novitiate, Chris was working as an editor of The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Eventually he took a two-year leave of absence to pursue an education degree while also discerning his vocation. At the end of those two years, he decided to join the Jesuits.

“I began to see it was what would satisfy me for the rest of my life,” he says.

Father Manahan’s journey in the Society of Jesus has taken him from Manila, Philippines, to northeast India, from the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota to the novitiate in Saint Paul. He served as the director of the Jesuit Retreat House on Lake Winnebago in Oshkosh, Wis., and today he is the Midwest provincial assistant for senior Jesuits and pre-tertians. In that role, he travels throughout the Midwest to maintain contact with Jesuits 70 and older, and those who have finished theology studies but not yet made tertianship. He also preaches at group retreats, directs individual retreats, and offers ongoing spiritual direction as time permits.

Father Manahan’s exposure to the people, places, and situations of his journalism days surely inform his work as a Jesuit, yet he draws a distinction between the two experiences.

“Objectivity is the value,” he says of journalism. “In contrast, as a priest I now appreciate evermore that my value is in being able to participate in people’s joys, sadnesses, challenges, successes, doubts, uncertainties, and in their everyday events and life-changing moments.”

He also feels called to help people recognize God at work in their lives, the lives of others, and the world around them.

Brother Ralph Cordero, SJ, practiced optometry for 10 years in his hometown of Lorain, Ohio, before entering the novitiate.

“My life as a Jesuit brother has led me to places that I would have never imagined,” Br. Cordero says.

He was inspired to service through his work as an optometrist in what he describes as “a life-giving community.” In one experience, he performed eye examinations as part of a mission trip to an underserved community in El Salvador. There, he encountered a mother of three young sons, each with congenital cataracts. He called upon the generosity of the people of Lorain to bring the boys and their mother to town, where an ophthalmologist performed surgery. But it did not end there. Before the family left, the people of Lorain set up a trust fund to help with their finances back in El Salvador.

“After my mission trip to El Salvador, and learning about the martyrs and their work for the poor and marginalized, I felt strongly that the Lord was calling me to live out my vocation as a Jesuit,” Br. Cordero says. He chose the Society of Jesus because he was drawn to Ignatian spirituality—in particular, praying the Scriptures with Ignatian contemplation, which helped them come to life for him. Today he serves at the novitiate in Saint Paul.

Brother Cordero’s path in religious life has led him to the United States-Mexico border. “Encountering those who suffer from extreme poverty, violence, and injustice opened my eyes to the suffering Christ,” he says. His path has also led him to ministry at San Quentin State Prison in California, and to the field of education, where he worked with students struggling in school, and directed retreats and service trips, to Appalachia and the Dominican Republic.

“The years helped me understand what it means to listen to others and see where they are,” he says. “But even deeper, I realized that the Lord was precisely working where they were. God was precisely using where they seem stuck, and bringing a new encounter. There is much joy and gratefulness in me to witness how the Lord continues to work in people’s lives.”

For Fr. Kevin Embach, SJ, the call to religious life began as a pre-med major at the University of Notre Dame, when he enjoyed philosophy and theology classes and was drawn to attend Mass frequently. “Often, after Mass, I would stay in church to pray, and it was during these times of prayer that I felt the Lord was calling me to be a priest.”

But the young Kevin Embach also felt called to continue on the path to becoming a physician. He went on to earn a medical degree from the University of Virginia and a master’s in public health from the University of Michigan. He then practiced and taught internal medicine at Bons Secours and Beaumont Hospital in Grosse Pointe, Mich.

“As a lay physician, I began to witness the great spiritual hunger in many patients,” Fr. Embach says. “Additionally, during this time, I sensed that the Lord was continuing to call me to the priesthood.” The charisms of education, scholarship and social justice, and his love of Ignatian spirituality, attracted him to the Society of Jesus.

Today, Fr. Embach teaches at Creighton University School of Medicine. His journey as a Jesuit has included prison ministry, medical missions to Honduras, Haiti and Bolivia, and a teaching assignment at Loyola University Chicago’s Stritch School of Medicine.

“It has been a great privilege to accompany so many medical students and internal medicine residents being formed to follow Christ in the healing professions,” he says.

In addition to his teaching and clinical duties in the Department of Medicine, Fr. Embach celebrates Mass and other sacraments at St. John’s Church at Creighton, and in surrounding parishes in Omaha. “I am profoundly consoled being available for sacramental ministry, particularly celebrating the Eucharist, anointing of the sick and reconciliation.”

Working at the intersection of faith and science, Fr. Embach sees God’s hand at work in the complexity of creation. True compassion for any patient always begins with good science, and the Gospel is at the center of good health care.

“Despite the best evidence-based medicine, applied in a compassionate and patient-centered way, which often extends and improves the quality of life, all of us will eventually die,” he says. “The great order and complexity of the human body will eventually fail. It seems like planned obsolescence. To me, it points to even a greater order, to the promise of resurrection and eternal life, to what Christ has promised.”