A Place of Possibility

How SLUH helped me discover my vocation and follow a path from student and teacher to Jesuit priest.

By Dan Fr. Dan Finucane, SJ ’06

I still remember going with my parents and my younger brother to the Open House at St. Louis U. High when I was 13 or 14 years old. I knew very little about the school; no one in my family had ever gone there. Yet my parents knew about the school’s reputation for great academics and had brought my brother and me to a few plays in the Schulte Theater while I was in middle school.

As we made our way through the hallways, I grew increasingly excited, imagining myself walking the halls as a student. But it was when we finished the tour, in the old gymnasium (now the Si Commons) that I saw several dozen tables representing various student clubs and co-curricular activities that my imagination truly lit up. SLUH felt like a place of possibility, and I wanted to be in that place, to try new experiences and explore new interests.

When I think of my time as a student at SLUH, I think of it as a time when some of my interests deepened and where others were awakened. I had always loved creating art as a child and found in Ms. Joan Bugnitz a wonderful teacher and mentor. I learned techniques that enhanced my ability to draw, but Ms. Bugnitz also taught me how to see the world I was trying to render. To put it another way, she helped me become a more contemplative person. Mr. Jim Linhares was another teacher who, with Ms. Bugnitz, co-taught a humanities course during my senior year, in which we considered art, architecture, music and literature through the lens of faith. I am indebted to both of them for expanding my vision of faith and the world. 

It was at SLUH that I was first confronted with the gritty reality of poverty in weekly visits to Karen House, the Catholic Worker house in North St. Louis. It is also where I discovered God’s love in a profound way when I attended a Kairos retreat my junior year. To this day, I continue to ponder these experiences, and I think it is clear that they were significant steps toward discovering my vocation to the Jesuits. 

After graduating from SLUH in 2006, I attended Saint Louis University where I earned a dual degree in Philosophy and Theological Studies. I remember feeling incredibly prepared for college academic work upon arriving at SLU, because of my formation and education at SLUH. My experiences at SLUH also led me to Micah House, an intentional living community at SLU whose members served marginalized communities while studying urban issues, theology and philosophy. I discovered a love for community life and an intellectual life that was in conversation with the social reality around me. 

It was at SLU that I first felt called to the priesthood. Before attending SLU, I’d grown up around the Jesuits. My dad, a professor in the Theological Studies Department at SLU, had several Jesuits as colleagues who were often over for dinner. I had gotten to know the Jesuits who served at SLUH during my time in high school. And I’d spent my Senior Project, in January 2006, serving the elderly Jesuits of Fusz Pavilion, an infirmary that was housed at Jesuit Hall down at SLU at the time. 

But at SLU, I learned more about the mission of the Jesuits in the world, especially as they conceived it in the aftermath of Vatican II: a mission that consisted of a faith that does justice. I learned about the Jesuits who were killed in 1989 in El Salvador; their bold witness on behalf of and alongside the oppressed inspired me. Plus, I had Jesuits like Fr. JJ Mueller, Fr. Jim Voiss and Fr. John Kavanaugh as theology and philosophy professors and loved their intensity and passion. 

Nevertheless, it was not until my junior year, on a four-day Ignatian silent retreat, that I felt a profound and unmistakable call to priesthood. Though I felt a sense of deep joy in that moment, fear quickly crowded out the joy and all kinds of questions surfaced: do I really want to do this? Won’t I be lonely? What about marriage and family life? Is my life decided for me? 

These questions plagued me for years. But even still, the various places I ended up during those years always kept the question of priesthood and the Jesuits close at hand. After I graduated from SLU in 2010, I attended the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry and earned a Master of Theological Studies in 2012. After a year abroad as a lay missionary with the Conventual Franciscans in 2012 – 2013, I returned to SLUH as a theology teacher and campus minister. 

It was during my four years at SLUH that I discovered my love of teaching and the gift of collaboration. I loved — and often struggled with — the challenge of drawing students into questions of faith and reason. Teaching engaged both my creativity and compassion: lesson plans became less like ironclad instructions and more like maps for exploring questions and content, while my relationships with students taught me to see them as complex young men still developing. I drew inspiration from teachers I’d had and admired, and who still worked at SLUH, folks like Jim Linhares, Craig Hannick and Rob Garavaglia.

But perhaps the biggest gift I received was in the Campus Ministry Department, with Nick Ehlman, Brian Gilmore, Simonie Anzalone, and Meg Beugg (as well as a few ASC volunteers and Chris Kellerman, SJ). We collaborated on our various programs and retreats and I loved getting to figure out how to work with different personalities, to get different opinions on how to proceed, and to draw upon one another’s insights. All of this was at the service of helping young men discover their faith and deepen it through prayer, retreats, service, and social justice. And, in the midst of all of our work, those four folks became some of my closest friends and have been a great support to me in my life since. 

Yet the question of priesthood never completely left. Finally, during the summer of 2015, I met with Fr. Ralph Huse, SJ to get his advice on what I should do. I’ll never forget what he told me: “Well, Dan, if you like your job, keep doing it. But when you get bored, then begin to discern the question about priesthood again.” I had no idea what he meant; how was I going to get bored working at SLUH? Yet a few months later, I was sitting in my office, and the thought occurred to me: I love my job, but I think I want something more than just a career. I want something more than this. More and more, I began to let go of the fear that had plagued my discernment and kept me from really engaging the vocation question for years. Further conversations with Jesuits, like Orlando Portalatin, SJ and Michael Mohr, SJ, who were young Jesuits in formation at the time, fired my imagination and revealed deep desires to be with Jesus in the ways they were with him: out in the world, among the marginalized. Those conversations led me to initiate the process of applying to the Jesuits in the fall of 2016.

I entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus in August 2017 in Grand Coteau, Louisiana and took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience as a Jesuit two years later on August 10, 2019. I completed studies in Chicago at Loyola University Chicago and more recently in Berkeley, California at Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University. I also spent two years as a prison chaplain and junior college instructor in Belize City, Belize, from 2021–2023. 

This past summer, I was ordained to the priesthood on June 13 at St. Francis Xavier College Church. So many different people from the various points of my life converged that weekend to celebrate and it was the best weekend of my life. Among the people who attended were great friends and mentors from SLUH, many of whom had supported me in my application process and who have been companions since. During the month that followed, I was missioned to College Church where I had the great joy of presiding at liturgies, hearing confessions, having spiritual conversations with parishioners, and doing a couple events on Ignatian spirituality and the Jesuit mission today. 

I am now beginning a new mission as assistant to the novice director in the Novitiate for the US Central and Southern Province of the Jesuits in Denver, Colorado. Working in the novitiate essentially means that I get to accompany young men who have entered the Society of Jesus as they continue to discern whether to take vows as a Jesuit. I will also serve part-time as a chaplain for University Ministry at Regis University. 

As I begin this new mission, I remain grateful for the place of possibility that first captured my imagination at 13 — and for the people at SLUH who helped me discover where that imagination might lead.