By David McMahon
Perth man Samuel Vermeulen is at a departure gate at Sydney airport and we’re talking about the next big step in his life.
He’s preparing to enter the Australian Jesuits and is heading off to begin his novitiate in the Philippines.
He says profoundly: “The heart of Jesuit spirituality is realising how much God has given you.”
“I was probably about 19 or 20 when I started to really understand where my life was going.
“There were many different factors – all seemingly separate but still inter-connected in a way – that brought me to the Jesuits.
“The starting point of that journey was my fierce interest in what I would describe as Christian radicalism from a young age, even before I was Catholic.
“I was very inter-church when I was young. I grew up Pentecostal but then I fell off the Pentecostal train after being drawn to the social implications of the Gospel and the Church.
“I think my conversion to Catholicism at 17 was prompted by a desire to follow the social teaching of the Catholic Church, a big inspiration in the process of my conversion.
“I had a significant interest in Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement and I was also influenced by the late Jesuit, Fr Daniel Berrigan SJ, who had links with them.
“His peace activism, for which he spent a total of seven years in prison, was part of his consistent ethic of life which led him to protest against war.
“When I started discerning religious life, I had a pretty natural leaning towards the Jesuits.
“I had friends involved in politics and friends who identified as queer, so I found that trying to navigate that in a Christian way was really difficult.
“As a young person dealing with a lot of very challenging things in the secular world, I found that the Jesuits were the ones who were consistently talking about these things in a way that was not just faithful but charitable as well.
“That said, the Jesuits helped me find my way through those important issues. That was an added attraction to the Society.
“I always had an interest in missionary work and that was a big motivator for me. My grandfather was a missionary in Papua New Guinea and he was a very big influence on me. He didn’t showboat it around or anything, but his experiences were a significant part of our family history. Zeal for the Gospel was always present in my family.
“I grew up with a very white upper middle-class kind of Christianity and then when I started taking the Christian faith seriously, I realised that It was quite radical in terms of not just loving the poor but loving your enemy as well. It was about loving those who are regarded by some as quite difficult to love – the dispossessed, the widow, the orphan.
“I think that was why I started gravitating towards Christians who were conscious of that. I was lucky enough to meet young Catholics who also had that concern. I spent time in other churches too – a Lutheran Church and a house Church as well. But Christian radicalism and that side of things isn’t just restricted to political activism. It needs to be strongly tied to spirituality and mysticism as well, which I found was more the case in the Catholic Church.
“At this pivotal point in my life and exploring my vocation, what really drives me is a combination of all those factors. I know whatever happens next, it won’t be me doing the guiding or making the decisions, it’ll be God.”