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.