This month marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of my return to the world. In Feb-ruary 1975, I signed papers by which the pope released me from the priesthood and, at the same time, the Jesuit order allowed me to depart from its ranks. During that month I began living on my own the way I had never done before.

This double departure brought to an end an ecclesiastical career that had also lasted twenty-five years. My Jesuit years featured many experiences still precious to me: the euphoria of discovering a deeper spiritual life in the novitiate; teaching in Jesuit schools and in adult education settings; living in European countries; and, most of all, ordination to the priesthood and the ministry that flowed from it.

On occasion, people still ask me why I left. When they do, I usually give them the short answer – “I changed.” A more satisfying answer takes several hours of conversation or hundreds of pages of memoir. Just tracing the changes in me takes a long time; when you add the startling changes that took place in church and society during my quarter of a century among the Jesuits, the answer becomes much more complicated.

The leaving itself took place in an atmosphere of mutual respect and affection be-tween Jesuit officials and me. I then felt greater respect for the Jesuit society than I ever had before.

My ties to former colleagues remain strong and I count many members of the clergy as good friends. I feel fortunate that the church had changed enough that my de-parture could happen without the animosity and secretiveness of previous practice.

Despite the satisfactions and joys of my first career, I have never regretted leav-ing. Returning to the world has brought me great blessings. Among them, marriage and fatherhood rank highest, but the opportunity to experience life from new angles has con-tinued to feed my soul. Ordinary experiences that have palled by now for some of my college classmates have remained fresh for me, starting late in life as I did. Just being a householder, for instance, is something that I still enjoy.

To have been given world enough and time for multiple careers and a variety of experiences as a lay person gratifies me greatly. That’s why I’m celebrating in my heart this month’s anniversary.

There does remain one catch, however. Despite serious efforts, I have not been able to escape ministry entirely. The Hound of Heaven, it seems, has not yet done chasing me. Last winter in Florida, I returned to the pulpit after a twenty-four year lapse, to preach about the spirituality of aging, an exercise that I am repeating several times this winter.

Still, I welcome the identity of layperson. This vantage point of not being an offi-cial spokesman has given me a freedom to “experiment with truth,” as Gandhi put it, and to take my place as an ordinary member of society. The mystery that characterized my early career has not disappeared, fortunately. But the mystique has, and I feel freer to ex-plore the world anew.

Aging gives a perspective that increasingly seems precious to me. The accumula-tion of years enables me now to see patterns in my life that previously remained obscure. I can discern a providence at work that has guided me toward fulfillments that I had never expected to experience.

Tentatively at least, I have been enabled to answer for myself various questions. One such question that used to trouble me goes this way:  “Was my entering the Jesuit ranks a mistake, one that I should have escaped from much sooner?

This issue now seems to me artificial, one that does not require an answer. That was simply what I did with my life;  this course of action helped make me who I am. My entering was a good, though mixed, thing; so was my leaving.

For me, it is important to cultivate both continuity and discontinuity in life. That’s why, when celebrating my return to the world, I cherish many experiences from the time when I was living outside the world.

But I also place high value on my breaking with the disciplines of my first career. Doing things that I had never done before, starting in middle age, was welcome to me and I am glad that my life course broke into two parts.

Two peak experiences, one from each half, stand out in memory for their iconic character. The first was my ordination to the priesthood in June of 1962. When Cardinal Cushing laid hands on me, I felt ecstatic with a joy that stayed with me for weeks.

Similarly, when I stood nearby at the birth of my daughter in January 1980, I felt a joy that swept over me along with a mix of other emotions so intense as to bring tears to my eyes.

Both events remain vitally important to me. They help define a life lived in two different spheres of being.

Richard Griffin