~ at the very heart of the Church and the Society

When the Jesuits came together in Rome in early 2008, we experienced a new awareness of the Spirit active in our world. We wrote the following:

“To find divine life at the depths of reality is a mission of hope given to us Jesuits. We travel again the path taken by Ignatius. As in his experience so too in ours, because a space of interiority is opened where God works in us, we are able to see the world as a place in which God is at work and which is full of his appeals and of his presence. Thus we enter, with Christ who offers living water, into the dry and lifeless areas of the world. Our mode of proceeding is to trace the footprints of God everywhere, knowing that the Spirit of Christ is at work in all places and situations and in all activities and mediations that seek to make him more present in the world.”

The Spirit of Christ, proceeding from the Father and the Son, is at work everywhere. Our is to proclaim this by our very lives. To find God in all things is to look for Him in all things. It’s a vocation of being drawn into continual relationship with God in the world.

“Our deep love of God and our passion for his world should set us on fire – a fire that starts other fires! For ultimately, there is no reality that is only profane for those who know how to look. We must communicate this way of looking and provide a pedagogy, inspired by the Spiritual Exercises, that carries people – especially the young – into it.”

This is our identity. It’s who we say we are in the world. It’s how we’re in relationship with each other and all the people of God.

Reread the Documents of General Congregation 35.