Rev. Mr. Paul Grubb walks with pilgrims in France.
Sentinel photo by Gerry Lewin
SEATTLE — A 1991 graduate of Jesuit High School will be ordained a Jesuit priest here next weekend.
Rev. Mr. Paul Grubb had a vocational epiphany amid tragedy. It was November 16, 1989. Then a junior at Jesuit High, Grubb was called out of class with his peers and guided to an outdoor plaza. There, school officials explained that in El Salvador, six Jesuit priests and two lay workers had been executed by those who did not like the Jesuits’ advocacy for the poor.
“I just knew what I was going to do with the rest of my life,” says Rev. Mr. Grubb, 36.
For his first assignment, he will return to Jesuit as a teacher and campus minister and intends to advance knowledge of church social teaching.
Born in 1972 in Eugene, he moved to Portland with family and attended St. Pius X School. After another move, he attended a Jesuit-run high school in Sacramento, Calif. for two years before coming to Portland. He then got a psychology degree at Gonzaga University, where he was a leader in the dormitories. His mother had grown up a member of St. Joseph Parish in Seattle and the family had many Jesuit friends.
“Being around happy Jesuits meant that when I thought of what I wanted to do with my life, being a Jesuit was always a possibilty,” he says. “When I talk to younger people, religious life is not in their world view. For me, it was always a viable, happy option.”
In the Jesuit tradition, he was deliberate in his discernment. After finishing at Gonzaga, he went to Juneau, Alaska as a Jesuit Volunteer, serving as a case worker for people with severe mental illness.
He then traveled around the continent for two years in a 30-year-old Volkswagen bus, including a stop in El Salvador, where he prayed at the graves of the Jesuit martyrs.
“That was the final straw,” he recalls. “God let me know it would be alright and I could live a happy life in the Society.”
He entered the Society of Jesus in August 1998. During novitiate the first two years of formation, he lived a quasi-monastic life and also went on trips called “experiments” as assigned by his superiors. He worked with jail inmates in Tijuana, served in a soup kitchen in Denver and trekked to the bush of Alaska where hosted a radio program.
He professed vows of poverty, chastity and obedience in 2000 and then began studies in philosophy and theology in Chicago and Toronto. For part of his formation, he taught English at a Jesuit school in genocide-scarred East Timor and theology at Gonzaga Prep in Spokane. His Spokane students raised money to bring one of his Timorese students to the U.S. to study. The girl will be a junior at Gonzaga University next fall and she will attend the ordination.
During studies in the U.S., he spent some of his time protesting the Iraq war, even being arrested once in Chicago.
“Wherever I go, people want to talk to me about this crazy thing I’m doing and about God,” says Grubb, who finds that his peers cannot fathom a life commitment, especially a vow of celibacy.
“I am happy,” he responds. “And when you are happy commitments are not that hard.”
In the future, he sees himself working with indigenous peoples in Alaska or the Pacific Northwest. He is an outdoorsman who loves kayaking, backpacking and hiking. He also sews.
He attended a recent pilgrimage to France, led by Archbishop John Vlazny. The holy shrines and landscapes were wonderful, he says, but the people were the best part. Many of his fellow pilgrims were older, deeply-committed Catholics who understood and lauded his life choice.
He will say his first Mass at noon on Sunday, June 22, at St. Hubert Church in Langley, Wash. He is scheduled to offer a Mass of thanksgiving in Portland at 10:30a.m. on Sunday, July 6.
Three other Jesuits will be ordained along with Rev. Mr. Grubb at the rite, set for 10 a.m. Saturday, June 21, at St. James Cathedral in Seattle. Seattle Archbishop Alex Brunett will preside. The other Jesuits to be ordained are Rev. Mr. Charles Barnes, Rev. Mr. Stephen Kieta and Rev. Mr. Thao Nguyen.
Barnes earned a master’s degree in health care ethics and will begin his new work as assistant to the superior of the Regis Jesuit Community in Spokane, where he will serve senior Jesuits, and as a parochial minister at St. Aloysius Parish.
Kieta, who has been studying at the University of London, will be a history and religion teacher at Gonzaga Prep in Spokane.
Nguyen, a native of Vietnam, will begin doctoral studies in theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif.
