Paris? Great! That was what I thought when I was told a year and a half ago that I was sent to Paris to study philosophy and theology. After all, I knew that city as a popular holiday destination....

Meanwhile I have been living and studying there for eighteen months.

I live in a large community that consists mainly of co-scholastics (= Jesuits in training). Our house is in the 15th arrondissement, a beautiful and (for Parisian terms!) quiet neighborhood in the center.

Personal conviction

I study at the Jesuit faculty of Centre Sèvres and follow the 5 years program that combines philosophy and theology. The subjects are taught fascinatingly with a great deal of attention to developing a well-founded personal conviction. There are many opportunities to deepen my understanding of topics that I find interesting.

A major advantage of studying here is that there are many scholastic students from all over the world. It is a great opportunity to get to know the universality of the Society. In my own community alone, there are twenty-five scholastics, half of whom come from different countries. National superiors from different parts of the world regularly visit to see how their scholastics are doing and tell and pass by about the Society in their country. I am not only learning a lot about the French Jesuits, but also about Jesuits worldwide.

Prison

Besides the study I have two apostolates. Twice a month I go to a prison just outside Paris to help with a biblical group. With a group of around thirty or forty prisoners we read together the texts of the coming Sunday. It is wonderful to see that people in prison are looking for God and it is possible to think about Bible texts together.  After the Bible group, the ugly gymnastics hall where we are is converted into a chapel with a beautiful altar where the Mass is celebrated the following Sunday.

I also accompany a CLC group. A community of Christian life is a group of people who meet monthly to see together where God was present in their lives over the past month. As a guide, I listen to their experiences and try to help identify where God was present. It is very nice to discover that I can now use the knowledge about the Ignatian spirituality that I have acquired in recent years to help other people.

Real life

Both apostolates are good opportunities to learn Paris and its many inhabitants better. In the CLC group I see how French families live and in prison I learn to understand how difficult life can be in Paris. This is how I see more and more faces of the metropolis of Paris. Not only the Paris of large squares and great museums, but also the busy Paris of workers and poorer suburbs.

Now, after one and a half years of living and studying in Paris, it is still a great place to live and study in Paris, which also has many problems. No more a holiday place, but a city where I come home and feel at home.

Paris is and remains a great city and it is a great privilege to study here, the city where Ignatius also studied himself!