Pope Tells Jesuits "the Church Needs You"

(21 Feb 08 - RV) Pope Benedict XVI addressed the Society of Jesus Thursday at the end of their General Congregation.

Father Adolfo Nicolas, the newly elected superior general of the Society of Jesus, headed the group as they met with the Pope at the end of their General Congregation.

Speaking to them the Pope underlined that the Congregation takes place in a period of great, social economic and political change:" a time of accentuated ethical, cultural and environmental problems, when we see every nature of conflict take place. And yet he remarked, "it is also a time of intense communication between peoples, of new possibilities in awareness and dialogue, of deep rooted aspirations for peace".

These, said the Pope, "are situations which call to the very heart of the Church and its capacity to announce words of hope and salvation to our contemporaries. A mission which over four and a half centuries ago gave birth through the Holy Spirit to the Society of Jesus". Pope Benedict told the Jesuit priests gathered before him Thursday: “the Church needs you, it counts on you and continues to trust in you to reach those physical and spiritual places where others fail to or have difficulty in reaching”.

The Holy Father said that on the one hand there is a world that is a “theatre where the battle between good and evil is waged”. An evil that hides behind the individualism of ideas which relativise the sacred, an evil that is propagated through a “confusion of messages”, which make it increasingly difficult to hear Christ’s Message, an evil which lies within “those situations of injustice” and conflict of which the poorest are the victims.

On the other hand there is "a religious order which in the course of its five hundred year history has been capable of challenging cultural historical adversities to bring the truly bring the Gospel to all corners of the world".

Today, noted the Pope, “the obstacles challenging those who announce the Gospel are no longer seas and vast distances, rather they are the boundaries of a superficial vision of God and of man, which place obstacles in the way of faith and human knowledge, faith and science, faith and the commitment to justice”. Faced with these boundaries, continued Pope Benedict, Jesuits must “witness and help create the understanding that there is instead true harmony between faith and reason”, a harmony that must be translated into the defence of those “central issues which today are increasingly under attack from secular culture”. In short marriage and the family, sexual morality and the question of mankind’s salvation in Christ:

Here the Pope invited the Jesuits to renewed reflection on the meaning of their characteristic “fourth vow” of obedience to the St Peter’s Successor, which he said “does not only imply readiness to be sent on mission to far off lands, but also in true Ignation spirit – to feel themselves “with the Church and in the Church” – to love and serve the Christ’s Vicar as precious and irreplaceable collaborators at the service of the Universal Church”.

 
Pope Benedict XVI also expressed his deep gratitude for the Jesuits emphasis of aid to refugees. “Our choice to serve the poor is not an ideological one, but it comes from the Gospel. There are numerous dramatic situations of injustice and poverty in the world today, and if there is a need to fight against the structural causes of such situations, then there is also the need to fight the very roots of such evil found in the hearts of man, that sin which separates him from God, without forgetting to come to the aid of those who are in urgent need of help in the spirit of Christ’s Charity”.

The Holy Father concluded with praise and encouragement of the “precious and effective” instrument of Ignatian spiritual exercises”, and invited the gathered group to recite together with him the prayer composed by the Order’s founder, a prayer so great said the Pope, that I almost do not dare recite it: “Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory,   my understanding, and my entire will. All I have and call my own. Whatever I have or hold, you have given me. I return it all to you and surrender it wholly,  to be governed by your will. Give me only your love and your grace, and I am rich enough and ask for nothing more”.