A New Day in a Very Old Place
Entrants’ arrival at the Jesuit novitiate in Grand Coteau, Louisiana, is a historic occasion
by Mark Thibodeaux, SJ
On Saturday, August 15, 2009, a historic event occurred in the sleepy town of Grand Coteau, Louisiana: eighteen-year-old Louie Hotop and eleven other men arrived to become Jesuit novices. In one sense the event was routine. Every year at this time, at this place, several men begin their lives as Jesuits this way.
Author Fr. Mark Thibodeaux, SJ, director of novices at the Jesuit novitiate in Grand Coteau,
Louisiana, greets first- year novice Matt Kappadakunnel on arrival day this August. Thibodeaux
was a novice himself here in ’88. His upcoming book, Ignatian Intuition, The Jesuit Method of
Discernment, will be published by Loyola Press in Spring 2010
What made this moment special, however, was that when Louie and his classmates stepped through the door, not only did their lives change, but so did the very existence of the novitiate at Grand Coteau. Their entrance inaugurated a new novitiate: The Jesuit Novitiate of Saint Stanislaus Kostka, named after the patron saint of Jesuit novices.
Jesuits first came to Grand Coteau in 1837. The Religious of the Sacred Heart had opened a girls’ school here in 1821 and had petitioned the bishop of Lyons, France, to send Jesuits to open a boys’ school.
The Jesuits did not say yes until the sisters sweetened the pot by offering their own 100,000 bricks, handmade from the nearby river, to be used to construct the college. The new boys’ school was to be called Saint Charles College—a strange choice given that St. Charles Borromeo was not a Jesuit, but not so strange given that Mrs. Charles Smith had donated about 1,000 acres for the girls’ school, a boys’ school, and a parish church.
First-year novice and pianist Matthew Stewart leads the novices in singing practice. They are
learning hymns for liturgies and developing a repertoire of songs for social occasions and
holidays at the novitiate.
When Jesuits in Rome created the New Orleans Province of the Society of Jesus in 1907, its first novitiate, Saint Stanislaus, was in Macon, Georgia. When a fire destroyed this enormous and beautiful building in 1922, the novices and their superiors moved to Grand Coteau, but the name Saint Stanislaus did not. Instead, the new place was called the Jesuit Novitiate, Saint Charles College, which is now the oldest Jesuit novitiate in existence in the United States.
But there was a different novitiate named Saint Stanislaus, one further up the Mississippi River in Florissant, Missouri. It served as the novitiate for the Missouri Province from 1823 to 1971, when it moved to Kansas City. It later moved to Denver and then to St. Paul. As was the case with the New Orleans Province novitiate move, the Saint Stanislaus name was lost in transit.
Fast forward now to present day. In April 2008, Jesuit superior general Adolfo Nicolás approved a realignment of the Jesuit provinces in the United States. Among the changes was the merger of the Missouri and New Orleans provinces. In anticipation of this merger, which will take several years to complete, the two provinces decided to make the novitiate in Grand Coteau the common house for their novices.
Novices (clockwise from right) Penn Dawson, Jonathan Harmon, T.J. Keeley, Joseph Sandoval,
Kevin Gunn, Matthew Stewart, and Louis Hotop gather in Arrupe Hall, where novices relax,
shoot pool, and cook on occasion.
The provincials also decided to give it a new name, and the choice was obvious: Saint Stanislaus, a name change that marks the coming together of the long and fruitful histories of these two provinces.
And here is a surprising and fortuitous footnote to the story: What might you imagine is the hometown of Louie Hotop, one of the twelve Missouri and New Orleans Province men who launched our provinces into a new era? You’ve guessed it: Florissant, Missouri! Louie grew up within a few miles of the old Saint Stanislaus Novitiate there.
I like to think that the Lord, in his benevolent sense of humor, is using this happy little coincidence as a way of confirming the new endeavor we’ve begun.
Second-year novices Jason LaLonde, David Moore, and Matthew Baugh sign their first vows
of poverty, chastity, and obedience after Vow Mass. They’re moving on to first studies,
working on degrees and studying philosophy.
I like to think of Saint Stanislaus, who himself traveled a great distance to enter the novitiate at the tender age of seventeen, is smiling down at Louie and all the rest of us, praying on our behalf, leading us into the future.
St. Stanislaus Kostka, the patron of Jesuit novices, was born into an aristocratic Polish family in 1550. His parents enrolled him at age fourteen in the Jesuit college in Vienna, and he spent so much time in prayer and study that his elder brother began to mockingly call him "the Jesuit."