Over the past weeks, Jesuits have met in Rome for the order’s 35th General Congregation. They’ve elected their new Superior General, discussed lots of issues, heard from the Pope and other Vatican officials, etc.
This morning, as the GC draws to a close, the Jesuits met with the Pope.
The Father General’s remarks (a Word document. Lord.)
Here’s the text on Zenit.
What inspires and impels us is the Gospel and the Spirit of Christ: if the Lord Jesus was not at the centre of our life we would have no sense of our apostolic activity, we would have no reason for our existence. It is from the Lord Jesus we learn to be near to the poor and suffering, to those who are excluded in this world.
The spirituality of the Society of Jesus has as its source the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius. And it is in the light of the Spiritual Exercises – which in their turn inspired the Constitutions of the Society – that the General Congregation is in these days tackling the subjects of our identity and of our mission. The Spiritual Exercises, before becoming a precious tool for the apostolate, are for the Jesuit the touchstone by which to judge our own spiritual maturity.
In communion with the Church and guided by the Magisterium, we seek to dedicate ourselves to profound service, to discernment, to research. The generosity with which so many Jesuits work for the Kingdom of God, even to giving their very lives for the Church, does not mitigate the sense of responsibility that the Society feels it has in the Church. Responsibility that Your Holiness confirms in Your Letter, when You affirm: “The evangelizing work of the Church therefore relies a lot on the formative responsibility that the Society has in the fields of theology, spirituality and mission”.
Alongside the sense of responsibility, must go humility, recognizing that the mystery of God and of man is much greater than our capacity for understanding.
It saddens us, Holy Father, when the inevitable deficiencies and superficialities of some among us are at times used to dramatize and represent as conflicts and clashes what are often only manifestations of limits and human imperfections, or inevitable tensions of everyday life. But all this does not discourage us, nor quell our passion, not only to serve the Church, but also, with a deeper sense of our roots, according to the spirit of the Ignatian tradition, to love the hierarchical Church and the Holy Father, the Vicar of Christ.
“En todo amar y servir”. This represents a portrait of who Ignatius is. This is the identity card of a true Jesuit.
And so we consider it a happy and significant circumstance that our meeting with You occurs on this particular day, the vigil of the Feast of the Chair of St Peter, a day of prayer and of union with the Pope and His highest service of universal teaching authority. For this we offer You our good wishes. And now, Holy Father, we are ready and willing, to listen and attend to what You have to say to us.
And what was it that Benedict had to say?
His address to them, iln Italian, is here.
Zadok has read it and characterizes it as “fairly strong” and excerpts a paragraph:
I know and I understand well that this [the call to defend Catholic doctrine in difficult areas] is a particularly sensitive and demanding point for you and for some of your confreres, above all those charged with theological research, interreligious dialogue and dialogue with contemporary culture. Precisely because of this I have invited and again I invite you today to reflection in order to rediscover the fullest sense of your characteristic “fourth vow” of obedience to the Successor of Peter, which does not only involve readiness to be sent on mission to far-off lands, but also in the most genuine Ignatian sense of “thinking with the Church and within the Church”, to “love and serve” the Vicar of Christ on earth and with that “effective and affective” devotion which should make you his most precious and irreplaceable collaborators in his service for the universal Church.
Speaking to them the Pope underlined that the Congregation takes place in a period of great social economic and political change:” a time of accentuated ethical, cultural and environmental problems, when we see every nature of conflict take place. And yet he remarked, it is also a time of intense communication between peoples, of new possibilities in awareness and dialogue, of deep rooted aspirations for peace”.
These, said the Pope, “are situations which call to the very heart of the Church and its capacity to announce words of hope and salvation to our contemporaries. A mission which over four and a half centuries ago gave birth through the Holy Spirit to the Society of Jesus”. Pope Benedict told the Jesuit priests gathered before him Thursday: “the Church needs you, it counts on you and continues to trust in you to reach those physical and spiritual places where others fail to or have difficulty in reaching”.
The Holy Father said that on the one hand there is a world that is a “theatre where the battle between good and evil is waged”. An evil that hides behind the individualism of ideas which relativise the sacred, an evil that is propagated through a “confusion of messages”, which make it increasingly difficult to hear Christ’s Message, an evil which lies within “those situations of injustice” and conflict of which the poorest are the victims.
On the other hand there is “a religious order which in the course of its five hundred year history has been capable of challenging cultural historical adversities to bring the truly bring the Gospel to all corners of the world”.
Today, noted the Pope, “the obstacles challenging those who announce the Gospel are no longer seas and vast distances, rather they are the boundaries of a superficial vision of God and of man, which place obstacles in the way of faith and human knowledge, faith and science, faith and the commitment to justice”. Faced with these boundaries, continued Pope Benedict, Jesuits must “witness and help create the understanding that there is instead true harmony between faith and reason”, a harmony that must be translated into the defence of those “central issues which today are increasingly under attack from secular culture”. In short marriage and the family, sexual morality and the question of mankind’s salvation in Christ:
Here the Pope invited the Jesuits to renewed reflection on the meaning of their characteristic “fourth vow” of obedience to the St Peter’s Successor, which he said “does not only imply readiness to be sent on mission to far off lands, but also in true Ignation spirit – to feel themselves “with the Church and in the Church” – to love and serve the Christ’s Vicar as precious and irreplaceable collaborators at the service of the Universal Church”.
Pope Benedict XVI also expressed his deep gratitude for the Jesuits emphasis of aid to refugees. “Our choice to serve the poor is not an ideological one, but it comes from the Gospel. There are numerous dramatic situations of injustice and poverty in the world today, and if there is a need to fight against the structural causes of such situations, then there is also the need to fight the very roots of such evil found in the hearts of man, that sin which separates him from God, without forgetting to come to the aid of those who are in urgent need of help in the spirit of Christ’s Charity”.
The Holy Father concluded with praise and encouragement of the “precious and effective” instrument of Ignatian spiritual exercises”, and invited the gathered group to recite together with him the prayer composed by the Order’s founder, a prayer so great said the Pope, that I almost do not dare recite it: “Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will. All I have and call my own. Whatever I have or hold, you have given me. I return it all to you and surrender it wholly, to be governed by your will. Give me only your love and your grace, and I am rich enough and ask for nothing more”.
For the record:
Pope Benedict’s letter to the Congregation at its opening
The homily of Cardinal Rodé, Prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life at the meeting’s opening Mass
The new Superior General’s homily at the Mass of Thanksgiving
(All of these are pdf files)
Also note that Fr. Frederico Lombardi, S.J. head of the Vatican Press Office, was elected one of four Assistants ad providentiam to the Society’s Superior General.
Photos of today’s meeting are here.
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