While on an immersion trip to El Salvador and Honduras, Dearborn Heights native began a deeper friendship with God
DETROIT — Newly ordained Jesuit priest Fr. Matthew Ippel, SJ, started his journey toward becoming Catholic while on an immersion trip to Honduras and El Salvador when he was a rising senior at University of Detroit Jesuit High School.
As it turns out, he was also beginning his vocation toward becoming a Jesuit Catholic priest.
Fr. Ippel, who is spending this summer working with refugees in Sudan, was ordained June 14 alongside six other priests for the Midwest Jesuits province.
Raised in a devout, faith-filled Lutheran home, Fr. Ippel had been drawn to the Catholic all-boys high school four years earlier because of the strong academics and the immersion experiences offered through the school’s Christian service team; students were allowed to take missionary trips in Central America.
Fr. Ippel, from Dearborn Heights, had grown up surrounded by people who selflessly devoted time to the Peace Corps or missionary work, so the idea of taking a trip abroad solely dedicated to the service of others was appealing to him.
The trip to Honduras and El Salvador was his second immersion trip with his classmates. While in El Salvador, Fr. Ippel said the seeds of his conversion and vocation were planted.
“The people we were working with in Honduras were from a largely forgotten, very marginalized community, and their faith struck me,” Fr. Ippel told Detroit Catholic. “The way they say it in Spanish is sencillo, which means simple. That makes it sound like it is not as developed, but it’s nothing like that. There is a simplicity to their faith.”
Amid dehumanizing poverty and day-to-day struggle, Fr. Ippel was struck by how he complicated faith in his own life, and yet for the people in El Salvador, their simplicity of faith grounded them.
“It was an anchor for hope and drove to inspire them, animated them to work for greater justice in their communities, to partner in solidarity with their neighbors who may be having a greater struggle than they were at the time,” Fr. Ippel explained.
His time in El Salvador introduced him to the life and sacrifices of St. Óscar Romero and his associates, who were martyred during a time of political unrest in the country.
“That just really struck a chord with me,“ Fr. Ippel said. “Those were examples of men and women who gave their lives for others. There was something about this witness of faith: faith calls us to deep love and friendship with God, and the God of life calls us to offer ourselves fully and completely.”
Fr. Ippel completed his senior year at U of D Jesuit with the seeds of his conversion percolating in his heart. While his relationship with Jesus grew in earnest following the immersion trips, he had spent the last four years of high school talking about Catholicism with his friends, attending Mass, theology classes and asking questions about the Catholic faith and the Jesuit spirituality.
“I found myself drawn to the Jesuit charism, and the sense of mission captured me,” Fr. Ippel said. “Rooted in the experiences of Honduras and El Salvador was this sense of mission and being called not only to the mission itself, but also that God was calling me as well to partner with him and with so many others in bringing about God’s kingdom.”
Fr. Ippel graduated from high school and began attending Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in the fall of 2009. One of his first moves in college was to join campus ministries and the RCIA group. He became Catholic during the Easter vigil in 2010.
Newly Catholic, Fr. Ippel entered his sophomore year of college ready to discern his academic path forward. As a student in the School of Foreign Services, he worked his way through general courses and began taking a class with a Jesuit priest focused on comparative political systems. When the curriculum reached the discussion about development and inequality, Fr. Ippel said he felt something stir in his heart.
“I was grappling with this new interest and trying to understand what was taking place within me, and I sought out a Jesuit whom I had made a retreat with earlier in my freshman year, who was also the person who received me into the Church six months before,” Fr. Ippel said. “We were talking one evening, and I was sharing about classes and wondering if he wanted to study diplomacy or go into the foreign service. Out of the blue, he said, ‘Matt, have you ever thought about a Jesuit?’”
Time froze for Fr. Ippel. His parents, who were still Lutheran, had visited him a month before and posed the same question, and just two years before, as a senior in high school, his campus minister had also asked him whether he had considered the Jesuits.
“These three people who knew me well at those particular moments were asking a very personal and deep, intimate question, and I wondered if maybe I should ask the question to myself as well,” Fr. Ippel said.
Fr. Ippel started on a path of more active discernment while continuing his studies and reached out to the Midwest Jesuits' vocations office the summer before his junior year in college.
During his junior year, he studied abroad in Jordan and El Salvador and continued to seek guidance from the Jesuits.
“In both places, I had a Jesuit spiritual director and was able to participate in Jesuit ministries in those places,” Fr. Ippel said. “All along, I was growing in this deepening relationship with God and trying to understand better how God is calling me to be in this world.”
His discernment continued through his senior year, and, in the fall following graduation, he applied to the Jesuits and entered in 2013.
Following his ordination last month, Fr. Ippel is spending the summer in Maban, Sudan, working with the Jesuit Refugee Service to accompany refugees and displaced people in the region. In the fall, he will return to Georgetown to complete a Master’s in Refugee Migration Studies, which he began during his diaconate.
Fr. Ippel said his education at Georgetown, both as an undergrad and now with his master’s, gave him the skills needed to be an asset to the humanitarian organizations run by the Jesuits worldwide.
Between his academic knowledge and his increased knowledge of the Church’s doctrine and Catholic social teaching, particularly related to migration and refugees, Fr. Ippel hopes to bridge the gap between the Catholic perspective and the academic, secular one.
“Sometimes I think we say the same thing, except we’re speaking in ways that we don’t understand each other,” Fr. Ippel said. “The value of Catholic social teaching can be understood well and fully from a humanitarian perspective — in the end, human dignity is at the core (of both).”
Fr. Ippel hopes to participate in life-giving work, helping bring people together across divides and working toward reconciliation among communities. His work allows him to interact with people from all different backgrounds and experiences.
“It has been wonderful to share and learn about all parts of the breadth of the Catholic Church, and I feel like I am always learning something new,” Fr. Ippel said. “That is something I am excited for as a young priest, and these next couple of years in particular, to be able to deepen what it means to be a Jesuit priest as well as being a priest in the Catholic Church and ministering alongside so many other people.”
