FACING our future

It’s easy to let big news stories dominate my memory of my five and half years as Provincial: the pandemic, the economic crisis, the war in Ukraine... Yet the occasion of a fourth centenary offers a different perspective. We don’t tell the Province’s story by recounting the execution of Charles I, the Great Fire of London and the ‘Glorious Revolution’, all of which figured large in the lives of the Catholics and the Jesuits of the seventeenth century. Instead, we notice the birth of a mission, its gradual evolution as a key part of Christian life in this country, and a series of ebbs and flows as the mission expands and contracts as history goes one way and then another.

Centenaries help us to concentrate not on ephemeral events but on things that endure. And as we take in that slower rhythm we notice that what looks like a seamless fabric is in fact made of many threads woven together. In this story, all Jesuits and their friends find our place, we all make our unique contribution.

What does that tell us about how the Province responds to its current challenges? Most importantly, we move forward in a spirit of gratitude and confidence in God, not fear and anxiety about an unknown future. What Jesuits offer is not ourselves but the Word and sacraments of God. God will always sustain the Church, no matter what trials she has to endure, no matter how apparently small she may be in a given region of the world. St Ignatius of becoming familiar with Jesus, who shapes our tastes and desires, and by keeping an eye out for what God is doing in the Church and in the world around us. Right now, it looks as though the Church is being shaped afresh. Lay people are bringing their gifts to the life of the Church in new ways and taking more responsibility for its leadership. We are becoming a Church of people who listen intently and compassionately, and speak freely and boldly. We are learning painful lessons about what happens when the powerful abuse their position.

Loyola stressed that it was not human beings who had founded the Society of Jesus, but God. Only God could sustain such a body through so many centuries. That conviction is a source of encouragement and strength.

If we put our trust in God then it means we mustn’t place it where we can be tempted to: material resources, human capacities, conspicuous success and fine repute. Such things come and go. What is constant is the presence of a few hundred Jesuits and friends doing their best under changeable circumstances to serve the people of God. To some it fell to dazzle with their brilliance, to others simply to carry the flame for a while before handing it on. This is how life is in a religious order. We really are all in it together. So when we face our future, we need to make our own that freedom to serve which, to paraphrase St Ignatius at the start of his Spiritual Exercises, does not necessarily prefer success to failure, fame to ignominy, honour to dishonour...

What comes after gratitude and indifference? We seek not our own will but that of the Lord, and we find it by

There is a counter-swing in our culture too, an impulse to trample on the dignity of the poor, indigenous people, refugees, women and children. Some want us to consume our way out of our problems, trusting that economic growth will be a panacea. To many, encounter and dialogue look like weak solutions; so much better to trust in authoritarianism, the cancellation of those we disagree with and, ultimately, war. These factors make it hard to follow the path which the Lord is indicating we need to take. They mean that the faithful disciple will suffer.

Such is the challenge for our Province: to help people discover for themselves the demanding gospel of tenderness and synodality. We can only do that insofar as we are authentically women and men who live and pray that way ourselves, so there is a prior need for conversion of heart. This centenary can help us on our way by reminding us of the gentle constancy of so many Jesuits, friends and benefactors, directing our gaze away from the travails of a turbulent world to the glory of God which fills our lives.