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Rev. Paul Mueller, SJ

When I was a senior in college at Boston University, there were two paths in life that were particularly attractive to me. One path was to do teaching and research in physics. In college I had fallen in love with doing physics, and I wanted to do more of it. The other path was the Jesuits. I had been in conversation with a Jesuit friend all during my college years. I had recently begun to try to pray more seriously and more consistently. Also, Jesuit community life attracted me on many levels. I loved being at dinner with the Jesuits, enjoying their interesting conversations, and it amazed me that men of such diverse temperaments and talents could all live together in peace!

I pursued both paths in my senior year. I applied to a number of doctoral programs in physics, and was offered some good fellowships. And I applied to the Jesuits and was accepted. I kept flip-flopping on what I wanted to do. Many nights I couldn't sleep. Instead I'd go for long walks around Boston. Lost in thought on one of those walks, I was jumped by several young men and robbed. I found myself without wallet or jacket, shivering in my shirt sleeves on a cold winter night, several miles from home. The face of God was presented to me that night by the understanding cabbie who gave me a ride home.

In Easter week I made a retreat at a monastery in Boston. That was a new experience for me, and I found it exciting, boring, exhilarating and frustrating all at once. But something important happened. One evening, while trying to pray in the chapel, I found myself plunged into the deepest peace, quiet, and stillness I had ever known. In that quiet place, I could see and feel with clarity which path was right for me: the Jesuits. That quiet peace lasted for a few minutes by the clock, and after it was over with I no longer felt sure that the Jesuits were the right path for me. But I could remember that I had been sure, and I could remember what it had felt like to be sure. I still remember.

Only on a few occasions over the years have I again experienced that deep peace, quiet and stillness. I set time aside every day for God; I sit in prayer for an hour in the morning. Sometimes God seems close and I can talk to Him, and other times He seems far away. If you would ask me on any given day whether or not I can feel a peaceful certainty in my heart that Jesuit life is the right life for me, I would honestly have to answer No. I don't feel that every day. But I can always remember the special moments over the years when I did feel that peaceful certainty. I consider those moments to be special gifts and graces which God has given to me. When I'm troubled, that's where I turn.

I entered the Jesuits, in the fall after I graduated from college. In retrospect, I can see that I saw my choice for the Jesuits as a choice against physics and the academic life. Physics represented a part of myself that I wanted to get away from: the grinding, hard-edged, competitive, heartless number-cruncher. I wanted to discover and explore my heart; I wanted to let my heart grow.

The years I've been in the Jesuits have indeed been a time to discover and explore my heart, a time to find God in my heart and in the world around me. In fact, over the years I've come to realize that God can be found even in physics and in the academic life. I'm now in a doctoral program at the University of Chicago--not in physics, but in the history and philosophy of science. I hope to be able to teach and do research at a Jesuit college or university after I finish my degree. Our God found a way for me to redeem my past: a way for me to find Him in just those aspects of my personality which I used to think were obstacles to being with Him. I really can find God in all things; or better, God reveals Himself to me in all things, even in very unlikely places. That's very much at the heart of the Jesuit "take" on the world: it's our mission to find God in unlikely places and to point to Him.

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