Pope Tells Jesuits: "The Church Needs You."

Yesterday, February 21, 2008, the delegates of GC 35 experienced with much consolation the personal support and affection of the Holy Father for the Society of Jesus, and received with deep gratitude the directions for mission he outlined for us.

Already the secular press has distorted the nature of our encounter with the Roman Pontiff. “Pope tells Jesuits: avoid confusion on sensitive issues,” one headline puts it. The story gives the impression that the tone and content of yesterday’s audience was one of stern reprimand on the part of the Holy Father (and presumably sullen or shamefaced silence on the part of the Jesuits). Nothing could be further from the truth.

One gets a far more adequate picture of what took place when one reads the entire message of the Holy Father, available on the Vatican Website, in the original Italian. It is an extraordinary message of appreciation, affection, and call to mission. The following summary from the Vatican Radio also gives a good sense of the Holy Father’s words to the Congregation and to the Society:

(21 Feb 08 - RV) Pope Benedict XVI addressed the Society of Jesus Thursday at the end of their General Congregation.

Father Adolfo Nicolas, the newly elected superior general of the Society of Jesus, headed the group as they met with the Pope at the end of their General Congregation.

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 relativize 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 defense 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 Ignatian 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.”

It is difficult to convey something that goes beyond the words of the Holy Father’s allocution. I refer to what the Spanish speakers among us call the sentido of this encounter: the sense of warmth, kindness, affection on the part of the Holy Father, and its return in kind by us. When he prayed the Sume et Suscipe at the end of his talk, one felt that he was not simply reading a text, but truly praying it from some deep place within, and many of us found this the most moving part of the encounter. As we had greeted the arrival of the Holy Father in the Sala Clementina with warm applause, so we received his inspiring speech with a spontaneous standing ovation and with applause that lasted for several minutes.

All through lunch and into the afternoon session, we found ourselves consoled and grateful. The Holy Father understands and appreciates the Society in a profound way. We welcomed his calls and challenges to mission with gratitude and readiness: his calls to renewed mission “to the frontiers,” to more serious formation of our members, to deeper fidelity to the Church, its pastors, and its teaching in the spirit of our Fourth Vow, to more courageous commitment to the dialogue between the Gospel and contemporary culture, to continued commitment to excellence and depth in our intellectual work in the service of the Church, to more effective service of the poor and displaced peoples, to more dedicated sharing of the riches of the Spiritual Exercises. Some of us even opined (only half jokingly, actually) that there was no need for us to write any further documents: the Pope had said it all for us!

The only error in the Vatican Radio report quoted above is to say that we met the Pope “at the end of [our] General Congregation.” We’re near the end, but not quite there yet! The inspiration and the encouragement of the Holy Father, however, has given us renewed energy, and we will get there!