Growing up in a
small city in the south-west of Ireland
in the 1960s, it never struck me to ask who I was, or who we were. In a society
largely without (evident) diversity, in a community of shared values and close
ties (too close at times), it did not dawn on many of us to question our
identity.
Forty years
later, the opposite is the case. Ours is an age of multiple images and stimuli;
of re-makes and makeovers; of diverse communities, religions and languages; of
widespread air travel; and of a sense that we possess endless possibilities for
choice (so that choosing itself becomes our main problem). This context of the
manifold and the multiple raises questions of identity for everyone today: who
am I and who are we? Jesuits, who are not sheltered from the winds of the age
in which we live, have therefore had to speak anew about our identity and to
reach into the depths of Jesuit life and tradition in order to present, in an
utterly changed, global context, what Jesuit identity is today.
The Identity
decree attempts to spell out the story, the experience of God, the Ignatian
faith-vision that lies at the heart of Jesuit mission. The main concern in the
identity decree remains this issue of what it is that makes the mission
specifically Jesuit, Ignatian and centred on the call of Christ, the Lord, to
which we wish not to be deaf, but enthusiastically responsive.
Saint Ignatius's
experience of God and manner of proceeding (arising out of this experience) are
at the heart of the text, which argues that, as it was in his life, so will it
be in ours-although our context is different. Thus the story that began with
Ignatius and the first companions and that led to the founding of the Society
of Jesus is what may be called the larger narrative, or collective story, into
which the stories of those who meet it subsequently can be inserted and can
find meaning and direction. It is a matter of individual histories finding,
without losing their particularity, a ‘home' in what has become the Society's
history; and this ‘home' sends them out, offering them wider possibilities and
participation in an ongoing adventure, in companionship, of finding God in
Christ active at the heart of the world. It is to be expected that those called
into this adventure will be shaped by God as Ignatius was. And so the text
recalls God's gentle, but thorough, moulding of Ignatius on his sick bed, at Manresa and especially on the banks of the Cardoner, and
at La Storta on his way to Rome.
Then it highlights the developments that occurred in the wake of the La Storta
vision, in which the first companions centred their lives on following the Lord
bearing his cross, and on doing so in the Church and for the world as a single
apostolic body. Thus the moulding of Ignatius's person for the mission that was
to be the founding of the Society for the ‘good of souls' is recalled so that
those reading the text will become attuned anew to their own moulding by God
for mission-for becoming, as we say since GC34, servants of Christ's mission.
Here it is
already clear that identity and mission are inseparable. The decree seeks to
highlight this in a vivid way by showing that it will not be enough to go on
mission-to observe even generously all that GCs 32 to 34 have put before
us-unless we go on mission as Ignatius did: on fire with the love of God that
sent him into the world, to love it with that same love. At a time when people
frequently admire what Jesuits do, although without knowing why we do it, it is
important to indicate that none of our Jesuit schools and universities, nor any
of our pastoral, social or spirituality centres, nor even the Jesuit Refugee
Service, is understandable unless the ‘polarity' of being with Christ and at
the same time being active in the world is expressed and made visible in them.
Living ‘polarities' is central to Jesuit identity. The decree highlights a
number of these that are rooted in the experience of Saint Ignatius.
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