Fr. Joseph Billotti, SJ

The topic: How do I find Jesus in my apostolate today? The short answer: Where I always found him—though I often was too dense to realize it during the 78 years of my life—in the thousands of relationships formed, for better or for worse, over a lifetime amid graced service with fellow pilgrims! The amended short answer: In my Jesuit vows, especially obedience.

Let me elaborate. While I was at Fordham University for the ordinations this past June, early one morning I sat on a bench to the left of Keating Hall and gazed at Edwards Parade grounds. The trees were in full bloom. They had grown so much larger over the years that they partly obscured the brilliant greenery of Edwards Parade. I remembered so clearly that day, sixty-four years before, when I entered the Fordham University campus through the Bathgate entrance, a scared 14 year-old heading for Hughes Hall where Fordham Prep was then housed. I was alone, the only boy from my grammar school to attend Fordham Prep.

Like Charlie entering The Chocolate Factory, the fear and anticipation of entering into this mysterious world of wonder was exhilarating.  But little did I know that day would be the most momentous day of my young life. My life’s journey with the Jesuits had started. I had applied to Fordham Prep because its principal, Fr. J.B. O’Connell, S.J., used to celebrate Sunday mass at St. Raymond’s where I was an altar boy. He encouraged me to apply. My mother was a convert when I was 4 years old. We knew nothing of Jesuits or of Jesuit schools. Were it not for my relationship with Fr. O’Connell and that first tentative step through Fordham’s gate (at the prodding of the Holy Spirit, I believe), I doubt that I would be a Jesuit today.

As I looked back from that bench, all the ups and downs, all the joys, all the pains of insecurity and failure, all the psychological and spiritual dark nights, all the stresses of jobs and life adaptations disappeared as I was filled with the warmth of the oh so many people I have been blessed to know and walk with hand in hand. The open spaces of the Fordham campus of 64 years ago which beckoned me outward were now filled with mature trees, alive and vibrantly green, old comforting friends, crowding my vistas, more inward now than outward. There is work still to do; but what I carry in my heart are not the tasks performed but the people who have touched my soul and given me substance and sustenance.

My career assignments have been LeMoyne College, the provincial’s office, Canisius High School, followed by twenty years in Micronesia in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia and, finally, in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.Now, back in Buffalo, I work part time at Canisius College and volunteer at St. Augustine Middle School, a Nativity/Miguel school for inner city kids.

None of these apostolates would have happened if it were not for my vow of obedience. It was not only that my superiors missioned me to them, but without my vowed commitment to go anywhere I was sent, the opportunities to serve God’s Kingdom in these scattered areas of the world would never have even presented themselves to me.

Never would I have been blessed to labor among such diverse peoples. Never would I have seen my own country through the eyes of so many cultures. Never would I have gazed upon the Body of Christ ornately clothed in so many colors, shapes and languages.

In one embrace this God of ours has bound us all into one divine family. We live out our earthly lives already members of his family. We live for each other here that we might live with each other in the Heavenly Jerusalem.

Can there be any more meaningful apostolate than forming and strengthening these human-divine relationships this very day in obedience to that command: preach the Good News to all nations?