Well, I talked a lot with Fr. Larry Foran, S.J., who encouraged me. "It sounds to me as though you really want to be a priest," he told me. At first I was not overly enthusiastic, but what he told me about the Jesuit life sounded good. I was beginning to get ideas and to think about things. I thought I'd be more interested in a priesthood which had something to do with the intellectual life rather than the strictly pastoral. But it was rather generalized; there was nothing like any extraordinary religious experience. So I decided to give it a try and went to Shadowbrook.

When we started preparing for the ad grad exam at the end of theology [to determine one's grade as professed of three or four vows], I had to get some of my old philosophy notes out, since the exam covered a lot of theses from both theology and philosophy. The philosophy I had studied was the very old fashioned scholastic philosophy, but as I reviewed it, I suddenly found that I was coming to life again. I had studied theology, because that was what we were supposed to do, and I had done pretty well on the exams, but that moment was when I realized that philosophy was what I really liked doing. So I plugged away at the theology, caught up on the philosophy, and did well enough in the final exam.

Going to Guest House and then later to Marquette were important steps in my life; there was something that came from both experiences which turned out to be a great benefit. To me it was a real grace that at Marquette I met Fr. Cy McKinnon, an older Jesuit who had also gone to Guest House. He used to give Twelve Step Retreats for alcoholics. He had more retreats than he could handle, so he said to me, "I think it would be very good for you and you'll do very well giving retreats for alcoholics." I said, "I don't think so. I've never given one." He said, "But if everybody used that as a reason, then nobody would ever do anything!" So I agreed to try, and I did. I gave my first retreat in May 1970, and at first I was very nervous and hesitant. Then I started relaxing and talking about my own experience. I could see people come to life. Before that, they had looked bored to death, but then all of a sudden they were paying attention. I revised my prepared talks considerably and spoke more about my own experience, trying to relate it to them. I began to see there was something really positive there, so I started doing more retreats. That became kind of a secondary apostolate.

To get back to my main job, one of the reasons that I thought it was good for me to be teaching philosophy was just being a priest and being part of the whole intellectual apostolate. In later years I saw that the department could get plenty of people who were much younger and more scholarly than myself, and I began to have misgivings about my continued value to the department. Yet I remember talking to the chairman, Pat Byrne, and his view was that if a person is an experienced priest like myself, part of the Church, and yet knowledgeable about past thinkers and contemporary intellectual issues, then there was a witness value in my teaching and a real message given to the students. This corresponded to what I really thought myself, so I decided to go with it.