Mutationes: Moving Out

It's been a full week: our Guidelines for the National Crisis have been finalized and released; the new novices have been accepted; the Status (the list of new assignments for Jesuits for the coming school year) has been published; and the Ateneo de Manila Baccalaureate homily has been written and delivered. My work as Provincial is winding down. Deo gratias.

I now have to face a more mundane concern: moving out of De la Costa House. I have about two months to do this, which seems like a lot of time, but is really not, considering all the things I will have to attend to still in my last two months as Provincial.

From one point of view, I have been practicing mutationes (moving out of one's room), a typical Jesuit exercise of detachment, since novitiate. On the other hand, this time, I am not just moving out of a room and an office, but out of the country. And for an assignment of no determinate time-period: I may be gone for two years or ten years. It will therefore be much more difficult, not to mention expensive, to take things with me.

Part of me really welcomes this invitation to detachment. I have, over the years, accumulated many, perhaps too many, things. Most of the stuff has "apostolic justification": it's needed for my work (or for keeping me sane enough to do my work). Still, there's an awful lot. And most of it cannot accompany me to Rome.

So, what to do? What to do with the albums, pictures, journals and letters that are the repository of twenty eight years of memories? What about the folders of notes, class lectures, retreats, spiritual conferences given over the past twelve years? What about the about three hundred theological articles, each stored in a separate folder, that I have collected from the years when I used to teach? What about the CD's that have kept me sane since graduate studies twenty years ago, but which, in fact, I hardly have time to listen to anymore (which include operas of Purcell, Mozart, Donizetti, Bellini, Verdi, Puccini and Gilbert and Sullivan)? What about the books--mostly justified as aids to my "learned ministry," to use a Jesuit phrase--in my office and bedroom (not to mention the two cabinets of books in the library of Loyola School of Theology)? Most of these are in the areas of theology, spirituality, homilectics and Scripture, but also include my "special/personal interest books": a collection of Victorian authors (Dickens, a lot of Trollope, George Eliot, 19th century or early twentienth century editions of Ruskin and Matthew Arnold) that has crossed oceans (from England to the United States to the Philippines) with me; my books on Byzantine history and culture; my books on leadership and management; a few volumes of poetry (T.S. Eliot, Edna St. Vincent Millay, R. S. Thomas, Hopkins, Chesterton, Christina Rossetti, Matthew Arnold); newer novels such as the "academic" novels of David Lodge, the complete No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency Series, Tolkien's Lord of the Ring trilogy, the Narnia chronicles (dating back to college days), and the complete Harry Potter.

Our new General spent much of the Paschal Triduum moving out of his rooms in EAPI, tearing up a lot of stuff, including pictures and notes. Is that the way to go?

Should I give my books away to a library or some libraries? Which libraries would need or benefit from such an eclectic collection? Or would there be individuals out there who would benefit from some of this stuff--that is, be able to put to "apostolic use" some of the things I might hand on to them?

Maybe a garage sale?

Suggestions are welcome: how do I dispose of things that have, honestly speaking, been helpful or beloved companions in the last two decades of my life and ministry, so that I can emerge, lighter, less encumbered, freer?

Epiphanies: Reflections on my Twentieth Anniversary as a Priest

Last Tuesday, March 25, 2008, I celebrated the twentieth anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood. Strangely, as I looked back on the past twenty years (has it really been that long?), what came to my mind were five passages that, in recent years, really stopped me in my tracks, as it were, when I read them.

Everyday, I read an enormous amount of words—in addition to all the “official words” I have to read in correspondence and reports and newspapers. My bedroom is filled with books, on shelves, beside my bed, on the floor. So, when, amidst all the prose that passes before my eyes each day, something strikes me so strongly that I have to stop, put down the book, savor or reflect or just be struck dumb, it usually means that those words have leapt out of a printed page to connect with something deep and real for me.

On my twentieth anniversary as a priest, these are five passages that I remember as “stopping me in my reading tracks” in the past five years.

1. Reading an introduction by Tobias Wolff to a marvelous set of essays by the unbelievable Andre Dubus entitled Broken Vessels, I found these words:

“All this parading on the high road has nothing to do with the real possibility of the personal essay, which is to catch oneself in the act of being human. That means a willingness to surrender for a time our pose of unshakeable rectitude, and to admit that we are, despite our best intentions, subject to all manner of doubt and weakness and foolish wanting.”

It was particularly the last series of words: “doubt and weakness and foolish wanting” that made me put down the book in self-recognition.

2. On one of many plane trips, I forget now where to, I was reading Kate Atkinson’s multi-layered detective novel Case Histories. The character Rosemary, a harried mother of three daughters, is watching her children play, and in a moment of clarity and self-realization, she admits to herself that she loves only one of the three:

“Olivia was the only one she loved, although God knows she tried her best with the others. Everything was from duty, nothing from love.”

Trying to survive amidst the many demands of my job, I felt the second sentence hit me with the force of an epiphany.

3. My favorite sermon writer is a woman, an Episcopalian priest named Barbara Brown Taylor, who writes/preaches with such humanity, in such gorgeous, flowing prose and with such a deep and often surprising grasp of the essential meaning of the Gospel. I was reading her recent memoir entitled Leaving Church, an account of the external and inner events that led her to decide to leave parish ministry. She describes her experience of ministerial burn-out:

“It was the wild geese that were calling to me. When I heard them coming, I hurried to the window, straining to see them through the branches of the tall pines overhead. Sometimes all I caught was a beating wing or an outstretched neck, but even that was enough to set me weeping again. No thoughts went with the tears. The tears simply fell out of my eyes, and it was not until the geese were gone that the words formed in the empty air. Take me with you.”

Those words, especially that last spontaneous, surprising prayer to a departing flock of wild geese, actually made me gasp quietly, and, for a while, sit with book lowered on my lap, unheeded.

4. I was reading myself to sleep in Rome a few weeks ago, with the help of a book I picked up in the Hongkong airport, just because its first part was set in Rome. Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love turned out to be an entertaining, insightful, engagingly written account of a woman’s search for wholeness and spirituality in Rome, India and Bali. While I know that that description makes it sound dangerously like lugubrious chick-lit, it really isn’t: the New Yorker and GQ gave it rave reviews, for goodness’ sake. Before I go off further in this defensive vein, let me identify the sentence that was a book-shutter for me.

Gilbert is explaining why she ends up in an ashram in India. She writes:

“The Yogic path is about disentangling the built-in glitches of the human condition, which I’m going to over-simply define as the heartbreaking inability to sustain contentment.”

“The heartbreaking inability to sustain contentment.” The phrase arrested me with its truth.

5. On the evening of Holy Thursday this year, I was reading excerpts from Pope Benedict XVI’s homily for that morning’s Chrism Mass, the Mass in which priests renew their priestly promises. I always look forward to Benedict’s homilies. He is, in my opinion, one of the great intellectuals of Europe today, and his writing is always characterized by grace, elegance and spiritual depth. His Holy Thursday homily was no exception.

Benedict describes the priest as one “who stands before the Lord”:

“The priest must be somebody who watches. He must remain on guard before the relentless powers of evil. He must keep the world awake to God.”

“He must keep the world awake to God.” In recent years, I had not read anything that so simply and purely captured what I felt my priesthood was for. I have carried that sentence with me, as a mantra, as a motto, as something one returns to in prayer.

Looking at these five passages, I realize that they were epiphanies of a sort for me, experiences of revelation, mostly of self-revelation. Part of me is embarrassed by the “weakness” that they lay bare, the ragged, struggling, unquiet state of my humanity they make manifest.

And yet, on my twentieth anniversary as a priest, I thanked God for these epiphanies of incompleteness and search as a human being. If I have been a priest of any worth at all, if I have been able to speak words that connect with others, if I have been able to respond to other’s sufferings with compassion, if I have been able, over the course of these twenty years, to do some little bit of keeping the world awake to God, it is surely partly because of this incompleteness and struggle.

I can only imagine how much more insufferable I would have been, if all I had, or at least saw in myself, was strength and efficiency and completeness.

The epiphany on my twentieth anniversary was the realization that my weakness and struggle have contributed to my being a better priest, and the awakening of a deeper desire to continue keeping the world awake to a God who can be experienced as mercy and faithful love, in the midst of our ongoing struggle to become human.

Gratitude, Responsibility, Faith: Homily for Ateneo de Manila Loyola Schools Baccalaureate Mass

Dear members of the Class of 2008:

As I was thinking of you and what to say to you this morning, I remembered two things: a song and a cartoon. The song is from a musical some of you are familiar with, Avenue Q, sung by the fresh college graduate, Princeton:

What do you do with a B.A. in English,
What is my life going to be?
Four years of college and plenty of knowledge,
Have earned me this useless degree.
I can't pay the bills yet,
'Cause I have no skills yet,
The world is a big scary place.
But somehow I can't shake,
The feeling I might make,
A difference,
To the human race.

The second thing I remembered was a cartoon strip from the popular series Cathy. Cathy, filling up a job application, is telling her friend Andrea: “How about if I put down that my goal is to be president of a major corporation and make a $100,000 a year?” Andrea, looking puzzled, asks: “I thought you wanted to get married and live in a little white house with 2 cute kids?” Cathy answers with rising enthusiasm: “That’s my goal too! I want everything Andrea! I’m going to do it all!” The last image shows Cathy, suddenly coming down to earth, saying: “All I need now is a job and a date.”

Friends, I remembered this song and this cartoon because I think they capture the mix of feelings many of you are probably feeling on this very important day in your life. I suspect that many of you feel at least three feelings. First, relief (which, incidentally, I believe your parents, who had to pay all the bills, feel this even more than you do!): tapos na!; wala nang exams; wala nang projects; most importantly, wala nang Dacanay! Second, hope: like Cathy or Princeton, a sense of “Now I can make my dreams come true! I’m going to make a difference! My life is about to start!” Third, fear or at least anxiety: “Yes—but first, I’ve got to pay the bills, I need to find a job—and maybe find a date, too. Baka pagkatapos ng lahat ng philo orals at Bobby Guevara exposures, ang bagsak ko call center agent pa rin!”

Relief, hope and anxiety: not abnormal emotions at all, because today something is truly ending in your life and something else beginning. On this day then, when your life is changing, perhaps more than you know, we pray for you. We pray that you go “down from the hill” with three gifts for your life ahead, three gifts inspired by today’s Gospel reading.

First, we pray that your relief may deepen into gratitude. Yes, it’s all over. You made it. But if you look more deeply, you might recognize, like the disciples in today’s Gospel, that the achievement of these past four years was not simply the result of your striving, but a gift much like the miraculous catch of fish that surprised the unsuspecting disciples.

I certainly see this more clearly from the perspective of twenty-eight years after my own graduation from the Ateneo. For the past week, I have been working quite intensely with our Jesuit Commission on the Social Apostolate, analyzing our present national crisis and searching for ways to respond. What struck me most the other day was how so many of us in that committee, both Jesuits and lay, were products of the Ateneo and were doing what we were doing precisely because of what the Ateneo gave us beyond our expectations. Dr. Jing Karaos was our president in AtSCA; Fr. Bobby Yap was president of CLC and one of the co-founders of SOA; Dean Antonio La Viña was our classmate in philosophy and fellow member of ACIL; Dr. Benjie Tolosa was one of the freshmen we senior members of the Sanggu eyed as promising leadership material. Here we were almost three decades later, all middle-aged; yet the capacity to think critically and in a nuanced way, the passion to serve our country, the Christian faith that motivates that passion to serve, and our friendships that have endured over the years were all gifts of the Ateneo to us, things we received rather than achieved. I look at you and I am sure you have received the same gifts we did: rigorous intellectual formation, a passion for nation-building, deepened faith and spirituality, and really life-giving friendships. Thus, our first prayer: may your relief deepen into gratitude.

Second, we pray that your hope be broadened by responsibility. What do I mean? I’m glad that what you have received from the Ateneo will enable you to fulfill your hopes and dreams for yourself and your loved ones. But, as Pope Benedict has reminded us in his recent encyclical: “Our hope is always essentially hope for others. . . . we should never limit ourselves to asking: how can I save myself? We should also ask: what can I do in order that others may be saved and that for them too the star of hope may rise?” (Spe Salvi, 48). Thus, our second prayer: that your hope be broadened by responsibility; that you expand your dreams to include always a deep sense of responsibility for the future of our country and our people, especially the poor. The disciples in today’s Gospel began fishing for themselves and for their own livelihood; they ended up becoming fishers of men and women, drawing in the net for the Lord. So, we pray, it may be with you.

Just think of this last dramatic year of your life in college. For a while, so much attention was taken up by the sometimes silly and self-absorbed debates about the dress code. These gave way, thankfully, to larger and more real concerns. So many of you supported the Sumilao farmers, marching with them into the Ateneo from Cubao, applauding them as they entered our campus, walking with them to Malacanang, visiting them at the DAR offices. So many of you were moved by how their heroic sacrifice of walking thousands of kilometers in scorching heat or in the midst of a terrifying typhoon, was inspired by the simple but profound dreams of the poor: land, security, a better life for their children. Many of you too found yourselves in the midst of yet another national crisis, found yourselves moved to rally for truth along Katipunan or in the streets of Makati, sharing the shame many of us feel that Ateneans are among the forces of deception and self-interest that have caused the suffering of our country, sharing the pride too that other Ateneans have been on the side of truth and reform. I believe that all of this has been part of your Ateneo experience to remind you that our lives, in the end, are not about ourselves, and to invite you to dream and hope not just for yourself, but in responsibility for the future of our country and our people.

Finally, we pray that your anxiety may be tempered by faith, a faith that is really a deep trust in the One who is always near but whom we often don’t recognize, as the disciples in the Gospel did not recognize him as he stood by the shore at daybreak.

Your anxiety and fear are all too human, and, I am afraid, justified, I wish it were not so, but we are sending you off today into a world that is complex, often crazy, shot through with darkness and danger. You’re graduating into a world of unstable financial markets, of global terrorism and fear, of political instability and corruption. The days when you could just put down “Ateneo” on your resumé and be assured of a job are, I’m afraid, over. There are so many more choices before you, and commitments will be harder to make or maintain. And yet, whatever lies ahead of you, we pray that you walk in the confidence of faith. The great German Jesuit theologian, Karl Rahner, said it very simply: Keine zufall, nur gnade. “There are no accidents; only grace.” How you ended up in the Ateneo, from one point of view, is the result of sheer chance and contingency: your family background, your ambitions, a lucky break. But from the point of view of faith, your having been part of the Ateneo is part of a provident, caring plan for your life; a plan of love, divine love. I guess that’s really what I want to say to you: there is a plan for your life, even if you don’t see all the succeeding steps so clearly now. Whatever lies ahead of you beyond the hills of Loyola, then, you can walk without fear, for if you but open yourself to your God and seek to listen to his voice speaking in the everydayness of your life, you will be led to your deepest happiness and your greatest fruitfulness.

Dear graduates of the class of 2008, relieved, hopeful, anxious friends, these then are our prayers for you as you leave the Ateneo today: may your relief deepen into gratitude; may your hope broaden into responsibility; may your anxiety be tempered by faith. Grateful, responsible, faithful Ateneans, may you thus be for our world and our time truly Lux in Domino, Light in the Lord.

Before I end, I wish to name a final feeling that I believe some of you feel and that I have not mentioned till now: sadness. Last night, I read a poem of one of your batch mates on his Multiply site, and it seemed to me a very sad poem. Of course. The Ateneo has been more than a school for many of us; it has become a home and it is always sad to leave home. I don’t think there’s anything I can say to take away that quiet sadness: it’s just there; college is over. Allow me to address that sadness though with a scene from a novel.

I began with Avenue Q and Cathy; allow me to end now, hopefully with a little more intellectual respectability, as befits the Ateneo, with Dostoyevsky. In the final chapter of his great novel, The Brothers Karamazov, the monk Alyosha, the good and gentle brother, says goodbye to a group of boys he has befriended and mentored. They are sad because they must part. In their sadness, Alyosha invites his young friends to remember: to remember always the days of their friendship and camaraderie. I ask you to remember always, he tells them. Because, he says in a memorable phrase, a good memory is the best education. We will leave each other and go our separate ways. Life will happen to us and change us, sometimes, not for the better. But, Alyosha adds, if life tempts us to become cynical or bitter or cruel, if we remember these golden days of our friendship, if we remember how we dreamed together, how we were kind to one another, how we were good, then maybe, just maybe, that memory will save us, and draw us away from the forces of darkness that are always threatening to vanquish and capture us.

“A good memory is the best education.” This then is the final wish of all of us here in the Ateneo who bid you farewell and Godspeed today. Remember. May you always remember the “joys and tears, the laughing years,” the friendships and dreams of your days at the Ateneo. May these memories bring you joy, bring you salvation, take you back home. God bless you always.

A Preview of the Decrees of GC 35

“Where do you wish to take me, Lord?” This was the question St. Ignatius asked himself in the Spiritual Diary. This might be the question we Jesuits might ask ourselves at the end of GC 35. Where does GC 35 wish to take the Society of Jesus in the next few years?

It is, of course, still too early to make a definitive statement about the directions the 35th General Congregation has set for the Society of Jesus. The official decrees have yet to be edited, approved by the Holy See, and officially promulgated by Fr. General. On the other hand, an initial report on the subjects and contents of these decrees might help prepare us to receive the decrees more appreciatively when they are finally released. This then is a preview of the six decrees of GC 35. I hasten to add that the following schema is entirely personal and has nothing official about it!

Six decrees, two divisions

It was clear from the start that we all felt that few decrees were needed. Since GC 31, the Society has produced many fine decrees, which remain relevant and continue to call for implementation. We chose instead to focus only what on what new things we felt we needed to say to help the Society in its life and mission today. In the end, we produced six short decrees.

I find it helpful to look at the six decrees of GC 35 in the following way. For me, three decrees articulate the substance of our identity and mission today. The other three, no less important, indicate the paths we need to take, if we are to be true to live out that identity and mission in our world today.


The substance of Jesuit identity and mission today

Three decrees belong to what I have called the “substance of our mission and identity today.”

1. “A Fire that Kindles More Fires”: Rediscovering our Charism:
This title of the decree is a quotation from St. Albert Hurtado. The decree is unique: unlike the more discursive, rationally organized decrees of the past, this is a poetic meditation on the meaning, the relevance, and the beauty of our Jesuit charism in the Church today. It is a decree that is intended to be received in prayer, and hopes to articulate, not just who we Jesuits are in the twenty-first century and what we do, but more importantly, why we are what we are, why we do what we do.

2. “With Renewed Fervor and Dynamism”: The Society of Jesus Responds to the Invitation of the Holy Father: This second decree is the shortest. Its title is taken from the profoundly appreciative yet challenging address of the Holy Father to the Society of Jesus through the General Congregation. The decree recounts the consoling experience of encounter with the Holy Father, expresses our grateful sense that the Vicar of Christ has confirmed us in our mission, and generously outlines a concrete response to Pope Benedict’s invitation. We renew our commitment to be men “sent to the frontiers” by the Church, but always united in heart and mind to the Church and with a special affection for the Vicar of Christ.

3. “Sent to the Frontiers”: Challenges to our Mission Today: This decree, in a sense, builds on the previous two. Confirmed in our sense of identity and renewed in our sense of our place in the Church, we confront the many challenges of the world today in mission. GC 35 embraces the mission orientations of GC 32 and 34 but realizes that the new and challenging context of globalization calls for new, more creative responses from the Society of Jesus. In this globalized world of secularism, marginalization and environmental devastation, this decree calls on Jesuits then to help live out, with Jesus, the Biblical meaning of justice, i.e. the building of “right relationships” with God, with others, and with creation. All of these point to global preferences for the entire Society of Jesus: Africa, China, the intellectual apostolate, inter-provincial institutions in Rome, and migrants and refugees. All of the above also calls for new planning on the part of the central government of the Society of Jesus, so that we respond as a global body to global challenges.


Paths to living out our mission and identity today

The next three decrees can be seen, I believe, as clarifying concrete paths which will make it possible for us to live the substance of our identity and mission today. How must we live so that we can deepen our Jesuit charism, renew our ecclesial sense of belonging, and respond in new ways to the new “frontiers” of mission? The next three decrees indicate a response: we must live in obedience, collaborating with others, with more responsive and universal structures of governance.

4. Apostolic Obedience in the Life of the Society of Jesus: We can only live our identity and mission today if we deepen what Ignatius always felt was our distinctive mark as a religious order in the Church: our obedience to superiors, and our obedience to the Holy Father through the Fourth Vow. In the light of our contemporary context, this decree reflects on the Ignatian and theological roots of our obedience and provides practical implications for our daily Jesuit life.

5. Collaboration at the heart of Mission: We can only fulfill our mission today if we continue to deepen GC 34’s commitment to collaboration with others: lay people, priests and religious, even those of other faith traditions. This decree, confirming GC 34, addresses new challenges that have arisen in our pursuit of collaboration: the sustaining of Jesuit identity of apostolic works, the need for formation for collaborative mission, the building of new networks of cooperation.

5. Governance at the Service of Universal Mission: With our changing demographics and with the global challenges we face, we can only respond effectively if the structures of Jesuit governance are renewed. The title of this decree is important. While it discusses governance on the Province and local levels, its key novelty, it seems to me, is in its emphasis on the renewal of Central Governance, for the sake of a more universal, more agile response to global challenges. The General is asked to restructure central governance in a radical way, and the roles of Conferences of Major Superior and their Presidents are outlined more clearly. Behind all this is a vision that, while provinces are our accustomed unit of governance in the Society, there is a need for structures that will allow us a more coordinated, more inter-provincial response to the great challenges of our day.

Other documents of interest

In addition to these six decrees, the official documents of GC 35 will include, among other things, at least three other significant documents:

• first, the consoling and challenging allocution of Pope Benedict XVI to the General Congregation;
• second, a narrative history of our discussion of about fifteen “Ordinary Governance” topics, ranging from globalization, youth ministry, communications, indigenous peoples, religious fundamentalism, ecology, formation, community life, etc, which resulted in suggestions to the new Fr. General;
• and finally, a letter of appreciation from the General Congregation, in the name of the entire Society, to Fr. Peter Hans Kolvenbach.

A Call to Reception and Implementation

Where does the Lord wish to take us through GC 35? Will these decrees bring about renewal in the life and mission of the Society of Jesus?

At the session in which we approved the final decree of the Congregation, Fr. General made a final remark that many of us found liberating and challenging. He called all the Provinces and Assistancies not to remain simply with the letter of the decrees, but to feel free to “rewrite” and translate each document into our own situations, with concrete steps towards implementation. In other words, these decrees will only be truly instruments of the Lord’s leading Spirit if, beyond reading them, we in the Philippine Province together discern what they will concretely mean for our personal lives, our lives as communities, and our apostolic planning.

Will these decrees bear fruit in our Province? That depends on us. The work of GC 35 continues.

Communion in Dispersionem: The End of GC 35

Would we finally get a unanimous vote? That was the crucial question that accompanied us into the aula yesterday morning, Thursday, March 6. We hoped to end the General Congregation that morning, but our ability to end the congregation depended on a unanimous vote of the aula.

Why the need for a unanimous vote?

According to the law governing General Congregations, after a decree is passed by the Congregation, there is a three-day period for what is called “intercessions. “Intercessions” are last minute requests from any member of the Congregation that something in the approved decree be modified.

We approved the final decree, on “Challenges to our Mission Today,” on the afternoon of Wednesday, March 5, 2008. (Incidentally, our own Fr. Ben Nebres was part of the 5-man drafting commission for that decree). I chaired the final laborious session in the aula during which we studied and voted on a record high of 46 proposed amendments to the decree. The applause at the end of the process of delivering (as it were) our sixth and final baby of the Congregation (having approved five previous decrees) was rapturous with relief. The work of the Congregation was done.

BUT, there remained the mandatory period of three days of intercessions. If we had followed the letter of the law, we would have to wait till Saturday, March 8, for the final session. There was no more business to attend to. After two months, people were eager to go home. What to do?

GC 34 gave us a precedent. On the last day of that much longer General Congregation, the Congregation voted to waive the three days of intercession. We proposed to do the same for GC 35.

The problem was our discovery, quite late, that the vote to forego the three days of intercession had to be unanimous. Since the right to make an intercession was the right of each member of the Congregation, each member therefore had personally to waive his right. Given our diversity and voting history, this was a real concern. A single dissenting vote would mean that we could not end the Congregation.

At our meetings of the Coordination Commission, and informally over meals, all sorts of proposals—canonical, procedural, psychological—were animatedly discussed. The most ruthless was to vote with a simple show of hands. That would make whoever was thinking of voting against the proposal aware that he would be identified and therefore, very probably, risking his life! Another was to wear the opposition down by continuing to vote until we got a unanimous vote. Although admittedly tempting options, both of these, were, of course, rejected as being coercive.

Thus, our uncertainty when we filed into the aula yesterday morning, March 6, 2008.

Unexpected tears

Despite the uncertainty, the session had been planned as the final session, (with the prudent preparation of a Plan B, if the required vote failed to receive the unanimity required.) Despite the uncertainty, then, there was certain poignancy to the morning’s prayer.

The theme of the prayer was “Communion in dispersionem,” deeply appropriate for a group of men that had prayed, dreamed, argued, and voted together for two months in a profound experience of Jesuit community, and was now on the verge of being sent off once again to our various places of mission. The Gospel reading chosen was the end of Matthew’s Gospel, with the risen Lord commissioning his friends to “go and make disciples of all nations,” and promising them that he would be with them always, “until the end of the age.”

After the Gospel reading, our Slovakian prayer leader lifted his oboe to his lips and began to play “Gabriel’s theme” from the movie The Mission. And then, one of the older, venerable members of the Curia began to read Francis Xavier’s farewell letter to Ignatius, written on March 8, 1541, as Xavier was preparing to leave Lisbon for India.

The words of the letter were already deeply moving. But what added to the poignancy was the sudden, unexpected breaking of the voice of the reader. For a while, he could not continue, and then he started again, but it was clear to all of us that this man, usually so cheerful but businesslike, not given to drama or any show of emotion, was weeping as he read the following words of Xavier:

“There is nothing more to tell you except that we are about to embark. We close by asking Christ our Lord for the grace of seeing each other again in the next life; for I do not know if we shall ever see each other again in this . . . Whoever will be the first to go to the other life and does not there find his brother, whom he loves in the Lord, must ask our lord to unite us all there in his glory.”

I found the tears coming unbidden to my own eyes. And although my eyes were closed, I could tell from the sounds around me--of sniffling, of blowing of noses--all heightened because of the deep silence of that moment, that many of the brethren were also in tears.

Deep gratitude, renewed generosity

Four brothers, chosen ahead of time, then began to share their prayerful reflection on the graces of the General Congregation. A Cuban poet, a Scripture scholar from India, a Lebanese provincial, and a Jesuit Refugee Service coordinator from Malta shared brief, prayerful, deeply affecting reflections in Spanish, English, French and Italian.

Benjamin Gonzales Buelta began the series of sharings with a quotation I love from St. Ignatius’ Spiritual Diary. At one point in his own discernment on the issue of poverty, Ignatius asks, “Where am I going, Lord?” Ignatius answers his own question immediately: “Following you, Lord, I can never be lost.” This, as Benjamin said, was our experience of the Congregation.

There was a remarkable convergence in what all four shared. They gave eloquent voice to our common experience of these two months together. The sentiment of gratitude permeated everything they said. Gratitude for the presence of the Spirit guiding us in the murmuratio process and the election of a new and inspiring General. Gratitude for the same Spirit making it possible us to remain open to each other in our diversity, and to be transformed in the encounter. Gratitude to the Spirit for leading us, beyond our weaknesses and different perspectives, in our passionate debates and late night writing and translating, to produce six decrees that, we hope, will truly serve our brothers and our partners and help renew our mission. Gratitude for the affection and trust of the Holy Father, and our desire to respond to that trust with magnanimity of spirit. Gratitude for the experience of the universality of the Society, and of the edifying witness of passion, freedom, humility, generosity, and deep and selfless love for the Society and its mission we saw in so many of our companions.

Paul Pace from Malta was the last speaker, and he ended by praying St. Ignatius’ Prayer for Generosity in Italian. Feeling ourselves so blessed by the two months together, knowing that we would soon have to go home to share the graces we have received, praying that our labors would truly bear fruit for God’s greater glory and the service of his people, I know that we all prayed along with him, from our hearts, in a moment of profound and unforgettable union of hearts and minds.

A new beginning

We finally got to the vote on whether we agreed to waive our right of three days of intercession. Eschewing the machines we normally used, for fear of technical mistakes, we wrote our votes down on little slips of paper, and gave them to the Secretary of the Congregation and his Assistants to count.

In the meantime, all decorum vanished in the aula. People started posing for pictures with their seatmates of the past two months. Delegates left their seats to approach drafters of various documents, members of the Coordinating Committee, small discussion group members, to thank them. The provincial of Germany came up to me and surprised with the gift of his own tie, a German Province tie with IHS written on the bottom . . . to complement, he said, the two Australian Province ties I had alternately worn whenever I was Moderator of the Aula.

This atmosphere of happy chaos came to a quick end when the Secretary announced that he had the results of the vote.

The vote was unanimous: every member of the Congregation had elected to waive his right to three days of intercession. The applause was enthusiastic, to say the least.

Four more formally prescribed votes followed quickly. The final vote: did we agree that the 35th General Congregation would declare itself concluded? In the second unanimous vote of the day, we voted to end the Congregation.



Thus ended the 35th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus.

There will be time later to reflect on the substance of the Congregation’s decrees. For now, with much thanks for all who have prayed for and with us, we look forward to home. Last night, we had a concluding Mass of thanksgiving at the Gesù, and near the sanctuary was placed the lovely image of the Madonna della Strada, that haunting image of Mary and the Christ child before which Ignatius and so many early Jesuits prayed before being sent on mission. May our Lady of the Way then keep safe all the delegates as they make their separate ways home, and may her prayers assure that this General Congregation bear abundant fruit in the life and mission, in the joy and generosity, of the Society of Jesus, ad majorem Dei gloriam.

GC 35 says goodbye to PHK

Some of us have started calling him PHK for short, partially so we don't refer to him as "Fr. General," as we have been so used to calling him for almost a quarter of a century. Yesterday, we finally said goodbye to him in the General Congregation.

Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, Superior General of the Society of Jesus since 1983, asked the 35th General Congregation to accept his resignation last January 14. After his request was granted, he took his place among us as delegate no. 207. His complete self-effacement, his easy slipping "into the ranks," as if he had not been our General for 25 years, was profoundly edifying for all of us. It was a bit disorienting to turn around and see him lining up with the rest of us to concelebrate at the Eucharist, or to have him sit at table with us in the refectory. He never spoke in the aula. He never excused himself from any session (although we noticed that he was always one of the fastest to leave when the session was over!). He sat in his place, writing almost without stop. This is the first time in the more than four hundred years of our history that a former General has sat as a delegate of a Congregation that another General presided over.

He sat one level above me in the many-tiered aula, not far to my right, near the main doors of the hall. One day, when I found myself disagreeing with something another delegate was saying, I turned to the right, surreptitiously (I thought) rolling my eyes in disbelief--only to have my eyes meet Fr. Kolvenbach's in mid-roll! I was somewhat embarrassed, but he smiled and, with that familiar way he had of waving his hand, gracefully waved me back in the direction of the speaker. I wasn't sure whether he was telling me to listen to my brother, or whether he was saying he agreed with the opinion my face obviously registered, but I smiled back and tried to behave!

Yesterday was Fr. Kolvenbach’s last day with the General Congregation. When we had originally planned the schedule for GC 35 in the Preparatory Commission, we had aimed at March 1 as the final date. We have had to push back to March 6, but Fr. Kolvenbach had already planned a short visit to his brother in Germany on March 2. He plans to return to the Curia on March 7, have his final dinner with the Curia community on March 8, and return to Beirut on March 9. And so, yesterday, March 1, was his last day as a delegate of GC 35. Sadly, he will not be with us at the closing Eucharist on March 6.

Fr. General Adolfo Nicolas had asked us in the Coordinating Commission to plan a simple session for the Congregation to say goodbye to Fr. Kolvenbach. We knew it had to be a surprise, because if Fr. Kolvenbach knew that there would be something to honor him, he would probably not attend the session.

After a beautiful morning prayer, on the theme of thanksgiving for Fr. Kolvenbach, with a choir from the Gesu and the Belarmino leading the singing, Fr. Nicolas gave a graceful, witty and moving speech of thanks. Since I was the moderator of the day, I was sitting in the presidential table beside the General, and had the privilege of sharing his view of the aula during this historic moment. I could see that Fr. General was speaking, not from a fully written out draft, but from bullet points.

After apologizing for surprising Fr. Kolvenbach this way, Fr. General thanked him on behalf of the Society, on behalf of the Congregation, and on his own behalf.

Fr. General thanked him, first of all, for his deeply inspiring witness of complete dedication to the service of the Society. Fr. General recalled how Fr. Kolvenbach used to share a particular recollection of his boyhood years growing up in pre-World War II Germany. When he was a child, every morning, Fr. Kolvenbach's elementary teacher would ask them, "Children, did you sleep well?" "Yes, we did," they would answer. The next question from the teacher would always follow, "But who did NOT sleep last night?" In unison, they would answer, "Der Fürher!" "And why did he not sleep?" the teacher would continue. "Because he was working for us!" the children would all answer together.

Fr. Nicolas pointed out that we Jesuits could all answer in the same way for the past twenty five years. Alluding to Fr. Kolvenbach's famous few hours of sleep every night, Fr. General thanked Fr. Kolvenbach for not sleeping because he was working faithfully and diligently for us, his brothers in the Society. He went on to say that those years of diligent and faithful leadership of the Society were always marked by wisdom and humor. In a particularly graceful turn of phrase, Fr. Nicolas remarked that "since humor is the daily face of hope," Fr. Kolvenbach sustained his brothers in hope through the good times and the bad times of a quarter of a century.

Fr. General further pointed out that, in all our draft documents, the single most quoted source is Peter Hans Kolvenbach. This is just one indication of how deeply Fr. Kolvenbach's wisdom has marked the life of the Society, a sign of how his influence on our life and mission will endure for many, many years.

At the end of Fr. General’s speech (which I hope will be published in full soon), we all rose to our feet, deeply moved, to give Fr. Kolvenbach a standing ovation that lasted several minutes. Fr. Kolvenbach, usually so emotionally undemonstrative, seemed to me genuinely moved in turn.

Fr. General then apologized one last time. In the East, Fr. General said, one cannot say goodbye without giving a present. And so, although he knew that, with Fr. Kolvenbach's rigorous practice of poverty, he would probably just give our gift to the first person he would meet outside the aula, Fr. General said that we, the Congregation, still wished to offer Fr. Kolvenbach a final memento.

Fr. Mark Rotsaert, the Secretary of the Congregation, stepped down from the presidential table, carrying a box bearing our present. Fr. Kolvenbach graciously stepped forward to receive it. When the box was opened to reveal the icon of our Lady that is the traditional farewell gift given in the Eastern Church, Fr. Kolvenbach kissed it, then lifted it up to show all of us, while we continued to applaud with deep emotion.


I think it is safe to say that in a Congregation that has given us many moments of profound consolation, this goodbye to Fr. Kolvenbach will be one experience that we delegates will always remember with much gratitude.

When we return for our final week of work this coming Monday, the seat of delegate no. 207 will be empty. Fr. Kolvenbach will no longer be with us. We will be comforted though, when we review our draft documents for a final time, and see Fr. Kolvenbach's words and wisdom evidently influence everything we have written in this Congregation. Not a few of us will, I am sure, continue silently to thank God for the gift of this great and unforgettable General.