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Fr. John Ferone, SJ

I have wanted to be a priest since the age of five (in kindergarten) when I was overwhelmed with the goodness and kindness of the new associate pastor at St. Monica parish in Cincinnati. He was a great storyteller, a captivating homilist with a wonderful smile, a genuine laugh and an obvious desire and ability just to be with his people. I'm sure he was my first real life hero. And somewhere in my heart, I knew I wanted to be like him. From that time on, even though I thought about doing and being many other things over the years, including being an artist, band director or orchestra conductor, zoologist, marine biologist, anthropologist, a traveling photographer for a publication like National Geographic, a teacher, doctor, a professional reader (if there is such a thing), as well as a husband and a father, I always seemed to have priesthood somewhere near the front burner.

It was during my time in high school at St. Xavier, here in Cincinnati, that one of the Jesuit scholastics asked me if I had ever considered priesthood. When I told him that I had considered it for years, he further refined his question and asked if I had ever thought about becoming a Jesuit. I was very flattered, as this was a Jesuit for whom I had a tremendous respect and admiration and with whom I had a lot of contact, as he was moderator of the band, an organization where I had indeed found a home.

It was while sitting in the chapel at the Jesuit retreat house in Milford, during my junior retreat of high school, that I first felt the Lord inviting me to explore the option of the Jesuits more seriously. Four dynamic Jesuit priests and scholastics teamed that particular retreat. And throughout the retreat, I was very impressed with their talent, energy, camaraderie and humor as well as their obvious and real enthusiasm for working with us students. It was while watching two of these scholastics working on music for an evening slide presentation that I seemed to hear a gentle voice deep down inside me asking, "Would you like to join them?" I was a little taken off guard by this, as even though the band moderator had asked me earlier to consider the Jesuits, I really hadn't given the Society much consideration. What I found myself actually saying, though, again, deep within was, "You know, I think I would!" The following week I contacted the vocation promoter at the High School. With his help, I found a spiritual director, joined the candidacy program to learn more about the Society of Jesus, and give the Jesuits an opportunity to learn more about me. I graduated from St. X in 1971. And after a year of college at Xavier University in Cincinnati. I entered the Jesuits on September 3, 1972.

What I did not realize at the time, is that many of my other possible dreams and "options" would be woven throughout my life from time to time; everything from teaching religion and giving retreats to working with AIDS patients in Uganda, watching killer whales in British Columbia and Alaska, directing the choir of the Gesu in Rome and working with numerous bands and liturgical music groups, climbing the temples of the sun and the moon at Teotihuacan in Mexico, going on safari at Lake Nakuru (home to one of the world's largest concentrations of flamingos) in Kenya, and on occasion, being overwhelmed with so much magnificent art, that my response on one particular visit to the Uffizi in Florence, I'm, embarrassed to say, was, "It's just another Botticelli!" Somehow, I have a keen realization that any honest dream that I have ever had, even those of my childhood (when I longed to go on an African safari) have been given to me as part of my real journey as a Jesuit, and in the time when I could most appreciate it and share it with others. I must say, that the experience of this, on numerous has left me not only with a sense of overwhelming awe and gratitude for the gift of it all, but has reduced me to a state of where I could do nothing but just be still and silent, often with a humble smile on my face and not infrequently, tears running down my cheeks.

One final interesting note is that the diocesan priest whom I had admired so much in kindergarten, about seven years after I entered the Jesuits, entered the Society of Jesus himself. For a time we even worked in the same office of campus ministry. And you know, today, he is still one of those people whom I consider a hero.

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