August 15, 2025 — After two years of learning to live, serve and pray as Jesuit novices, Mike Mateo-Sebastian, SJ, and Corey Trujillo, SJ, professed first vows of poverty, chastity and obedience on August 9, 2025, at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
Fr. Andrew Rodriguez, SJ, Jesuits West’s director of novices, delivered the homily, focusing on how “teamwork makes the dream work,” a mantra he heard the novices repeat often during their time in the novitiate. He went on to highlight some of the team members who helped form Mateo-Sebastian and Trujillo—most importantly God himself.
“First and foremost, it is the Lord who has animated your hearts, Corey and Mateo,” Fr. Rodriguez told them. “The Lord planted fervor in you to dream to serve him and his people. The Lord ignited that fire in you but didn’t dictate or coerce you into a choice. Rather, the Lord lets you discern how best you can actualize this big desire of yours for service, for doing good. The Lord invites you to listen intently to your heart, to your yearnings and longings, and then respects your agency and your freedom to decide which of all the many good options you have that you try. The Lord puts that fire in you, and then it’s your turn to act on it.”
He also stressed that Mateo-Sebastian and Trujillo themselves are important members of their formation team.
“You will have to do all the interior work of formation. As you have come to know over these last two years, formation involves a lot of self-abdication,” Fr. Rodriguez said. “All this requires a lot of humility. … It includes being open to correction and to being led, so that ultimately, you too can be sent on a mission, just as Christ himself was sent on a mission from the mercifully heart of the Father.”
Their families formed them into the good men they are, Fr. Rodriquez said. “From them, you have first known love, compassion and goodness. God’s love was incarnated in the tenderness of your parents, your siblings and your friends.” Because of them, “God’s love wasn’t just textbook knowledge but a real, felt experience.”
Mateo-Sebastian and Trujillo’s partners in ministry were also an important part of their formation team, according to Fr. Rodriguez. “Many times they affirmed you and expressed appreciation for your vocation. You shared with them laughter and moments of sadness. They mentored you, served as role models and at times, a lot of times, challenged you.”
The men and women they were missioned to serve—patients, students, migrants, former gang members—are also an indispensable part of this team, Fr. Rodriquez said.
Finally, Fr. Rodriquez touched on their Jesuit brothers. “I’d like to think that we contribute to your formation by exemplifying for you what it means to be sinners called by God to serve under the banner of the cross.
“I hope that we, your Jesuit brothers, have helped deepen, animate and inspire your desire to be sent to those geographical and spiritual places where the Lord sends us to continue the good work that was begun in St. Ignatius and his companions—a legacy of which you’re now charged to help carry forward.”
Fr. Rodriquez told them that their formation team—God, themselves, family and loved ones, partners in ministry, the people they serve, and their brother Jesuits—all play a significant role “in shaping you to be the Lord’s companions, companions who are poor and humble, chaste, and obedient men, ready to be sent on a mission.”
As novices, Mateo-Sebastian and Trujillo spent the past two years at the Jesuits West novitiate in Culver City, California, learning about the Society of Jesus, participating in local ministries, living in community and completing the 30-day Spiritual Exercises retreat.
Now that they have professed first vows in the Society, the next step in their mission will be philosophy studies at Saint Louis University.
Watch a recording of the Mass below.
