A word from the Superior General

I think the Pope Francisco has liberated the Second Vatican Council. But what I find even more astounding is that the Pope Bergoglio has liberated the Gospel, by making it a priority in his life and preaching. He wants it to be the same for the Church (the mystery of communion and mission), and for each one of us. The person of Jesus, his actions and liberating words are important. The relationships of every Christian community are based on the experience of encounter with Jesus, who is the manifestation of the Father's love for humanity

How difficult is fidelity to community life in institutes of apostolic life! We have left behind, thank God, the style of observance in which we were treated as children. But we have yet to find adult relationships, freely chosen yet demanding, based on our experience of a personal encounter with Jesus Christ, who has saved us from our individualism and opened for us the indispensable relationship with God and our fellow men.

How easily we find excuses in frantic missionary activity to avoid relationships with our brothers. But we all know very well that the real obstacles to deep relationships with others are on a psychological level: fear of showing ourselves as we really are, with our strengths and our weaknesses, our dreams and our fears; and of accepting others as they are too, with their qualities and defects, wealth and poverty. We have no idea what we lose by not having a mature relationship with others!

According to the anthropology of Pope Francis we have received life, not to extinguish it but to share it. This basic gospel principle teaches us that if we are closed in on ourselves we are impoverished and die, but if we are open up to others we will be enriched, and find fulfilment (Mk. 8 35 ff).

The life of each one of us does not find fulfilment on its own but in relationships with others. So we commit to ongoing discernment of the positive influences of others that I accept, or negative influences that I reject.

This anthropology of openness requires us to be generous with the gifts we have, sharing them with others, because they need them to grow. It also requires humility on our part, because we are not self-sufficient and need to accept the gifts that others share with us in order to grow ourselves.

The other element of this anthropology is the experience of the encounter. Firstly this is faith as the experience of meeting the person of Jesus (EG. 7; DCE. 1). But secondly we are challenged to experience our relationships with others as a faith encounter. Neither the encounter with Jesus, nor the encounter with others will leave us untouched. On the contrary they will move us towards conversion, give a new direction to our lives and allow us to become more authentic and profound. Meanwhile, the Gospel invites us constantly to run the risk of a face-to-face encounter with others, with their physical presence which challenges us, with their pain and their pleas, with their joy which infects us in our close and continuous interaction. True faith in the incarnate Son of God is inseparable from self-giving, from membership in the community, from service, from reconciliation with others. The Son of God, by becoming flesh, summoned us to the revolution of tenderness. (EG. 88).

I think that living these Gospel values is as important as all the pastoral activities we can devise, and with them our pastoral activities are so much more effective This will make interior demands on us internally while externally we will gain neither prestige nor recognition so often unconsciously sought.

How much more effective would be our mission if we lived these values in the community before going out on mission! It would be a great witness and would force some to wonder why we live so happily and would appeal to the thirst of seekers of authenticity, true love and a solid foundation for life.

This is the cry of Pope Francis: It always pains me greatly to discover how some Christian communities, and even consecrated persons, can tolerate different forms of enmity, division, calumny, defamation, vendetta, jealousy and the desire to impose certain ideas at all costs, even to persecutions which appear as veritable witch hunts. Whom are we going to evangelize if this is the way we act? (EG, 100).

When fraternal life in community is authentic and lived in truth and charity, it becomes the right place to share the wonders that God works in our lives: the communal praise of the Lord for his goodness and mercy, the mutual support both human and spiritual, the planning, implementation and evaluation of mission based not on the efficiency of human resources, but on the efficiency of greater knowledge, love and following Jesus in the people. When this happens the community will grow in both quantity and especially quality.

And with this community style, we can acquire the capacity of discernment "to love and serve in everything" our Creator and Lord.

In mature communities like these it is possible to practice this evangelical discernment proposed by Pope Francis as the ‘approach of the missionary disciple who "is nourished by the light and power of the Holy Spirit"’ (EG. 50) This will free us from fixed ideologies, sociological or psychological: Each Christian and every community must discern the path that the Lord points out, but all of us are asked to obey his call to go forth from our own comfort zone in order to reach all the marginalised in need of the light of the Gospel. (EG. 20)

Gaspar Fernández Pérez, scj
Superior General