Rome, Italy, Oct 24, 2016 / 10:52 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Bringing all people the lasting joy of the Church should be the focus of their service, Pope Francis told representatives of the Jesuits on Monday, as he urged them to shun pursuit of worldly leadership and position.
“The service of good courage and discernment makes us men of the Church – not clerical men, but churchmen, men ‘for others,’ without our own thing that isolates but placing everything we have in communion and service,” he said Oct. 24 to the 36th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus at the order's general curia in Rome.
“We walk neither alone nor comfortably; we walk with ‘a heart that does not rest, which does not close in on itself, but which beats to the rhythm of a journey that takes place along with all the faithful people of God,’” he said, quoting a homily he gave in January 2014.
“Let us walk, making ourselves all for all.”
After praying Morning Prayer together, the Pope – who himself joined the Jesuits in 1960 – spoke to the delegates at the general congregation about the future of the order.
Reflecting on the existence of obstacles to “fervor in the mission” by the “enemy of human nature”, Francis offered three points for combatting this, having to do “with joy, with the Cross and with the Church, our Mother.”
Afterwards, Pope Francis met privately with the new Superior General of the Jesuits, Fr. Arturo Sosa.
Fr. Sosa, 67, was elected Oct. 14, marking the first time a Latin American has led the Society; moreover, he takes the helm under the Church’s first Jesuit and Latin American Pope.
“When, in the service of God, we go climbing better and better,” the Pope told the Jesuits, they must “ask insistently for consolation” in order to bring consolation to others, because the Gospel cannot be proclaimed in sadness.
“This ‘service of joy and spiritual consolation’ is rooted in prayer,” he said. It consists in encouraging everyone to “seek earnestly the consolation of God.”
“Practice and teach this prayer, for to ask and beg for consolation is the main service of joy,” Francis noted. “Joy is constitutive of the gospel message … good news cannot be given with a sad face.”
Secondly, he said they need to allow themselves to be “moved by the Lord on the cross.”
“The Jubilee of Mercy is a propitious time to reflect on the mercy of the services,” he said. “I say this in the plural because mercy is not an abstract word, but a way of life, which puts the word in concrete gestures which touch the flesh of others and are institutionalized in works of mercy.”
“The Lord, who looks at us with mercy and chooses us, sends us” to bring the same mercy “to the poor, the sinners, the rejected and the crucified of the world today who suffer injustice and violence.”
“Only if we experience this healing power to the heart of our own wounds, as individuals and as a community, will we lose the fear to leave.” Then we will be able to “walk patiently with our people,” he said, “learning from them the best way to help and serve.”
The Pope also emphasized the rule of “thinking with the Curch”, which he said is the grace to discern, not just to think “or arrange for the good.”
“You have to perform it with the good Spirit,” he said. “This is what roots us in the Church, in which the Spirit acts and distributes the diversity of its charisms for the common good.”
Focusing on being “ecclesial” rather than “clerical,” means that the Society “has and will always have the face, the accent, and the way of being of all peoples, of every culture, fitting in all, specifically the heart of every people, to make the Church there with every one of them, inculturating the Gospel and evangelizing every culture.”
Francis encouraged the members in their work, reminding them that the works of mercy were the “daily bread” of St. Ignatius and his first companions.
“The Jesuit priest is a servant of the joy of the Gospel,” he said, “both when he works ‘by hand’ in conversation and giving retreats to one person,” and when working “in a structured way by organizing works of training, of mercy, of reflection.”
Article Archive
Be 'men for others', not wrapped up in clericalism, Francis tells Jesuits
Related Articles • More Articles
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee speaks during the signing of the ELVIS Act to Protect Voice & Likeness in Age of AI event at Robert's Western World on March 21, 2024, in Nashville, Tennessee. / Credit: Jason Kempin/Getty Images for Human Artistry CampaignWashington, D.C. Newsroom, Apr 18, 2024 / 14:15 pm (CNA).The first English-language translation of the Bible in the United States will become an "official state book" in Tennessee on July 1.Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, signed a bill on Tuesday that names the Aitken Bible and nine other texts as official state books in the Tennessee Blue Book (an official manual on the state government). This is the first time Tennessee has formally recognized any official state books.The Bible translation was published by Philadelphia printer Robert Aitken in 1782 and received an official endorsement from Congress. The American Revolution, which began in 1776, halted trade with Great Britain and cut off the supply of Bibles, which prompte...
Cardinal Wilton Gregory speaks at an interview in Rome on April 11, 2024. / Credit: "EWTN News Nightly" screen shotRome Newsroom, Apr 18, 2024 / 15:00 pm (CNA).As the Catholic Church's first African American cardinal was honored at a U.S. seminary in Rome, he recalled the legacy of faith and perseverance of Black Catholics in America, including at a time when they were not accepted by U.S. seminaries. Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the archbishop of Washington, received this year's Rector's Award at an April 11 banquet at the Pontifical North American College, where seminarians from across 99 dioceses in the U.S. live while studying for the priesthood in Rome.In an interview with CNA before the award ceremony, Gregory pointed out that in the 19th century, African Americans who had a vocation to the priesthood were sent to study in Rome and then to serve as missionaries in Africa because at the time they were not allowed to enter U.S. seminaries."Being in Rome reminds me also tha...
Chaldean Patriarch Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako presides over the dedication ceremony of the altar of the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Mosul, Iraq. April 5, 2024. / Credit: Fadi Dinkha/ACI MenaCNA Newsroom, Apr 18, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).When the altar of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Chaldean Catholic Church was consecrated earlier this month in Mosul, Iraq, a former parishioner now living in the United States said she was moved to tears."My eyes were filled with tears as I watched my church and my school return to the beautiful picture engraved in my memory," said Georgena Habbaba, who used to attend the parish and study at the parish school with her brothers. Her own children studied there, too, before the family had to flee Mosul amid worsening violence in 2007. (Note: Habbaba also writes for ACI Mena, CNA's Arabic-language news partner.)"I remembered the wonderful days I spent studying at this school and praying in this church. Very close to my family's house," she t...