Message (post-mortem) that the Pontiff had to address during the audience to the representatives of the Company of Jesus on September 30th, 1978.
Very dear Fathers of the Company of Jesus!
Three years ago since the conclusion of the XXXII General Congregation, you have come from all the Provinces of the Order to Rome to reflect together, to consult each other, to make a conscience examination, together with your General Superior, about life and apostolate of the Company, according to whatever the Constitutions prescribe.
I wish to show you, mainly, my joy for this my first meeting with a so qualified group of St. Ignatius' children and, besides, to show you and, in you, to all your brothers spread in the world, the Church appreciation for all the good that your Order, since its foundation, has built in the Church: a united and compact group, almost a company of luck, willing to put itself, not at the mercy of big sirs of he Earth political ambitions, but 'sub crucis vexillo Deo will militate, et soli Domino et Ecclesiae Ipsius Sponsae, sub Romano Pontifice, Christi in terris Vicario, servire'. The small initial group, reunited around Ignatius of Loyola, did not let itself be discouraged by any difficulty, but, expanding its own horizons, it was sent, 'ad maiorem Dei gloriam', to different ways of apostleship, as they have already been described in the 'Formula Instituti', approved by my Predecessor Paul III, in 1540, and confirmed by Jules III, in 1550.
The Company of Jesus, open from its origins, to the complex spiritual problematic that comes from the Renaissance culture, appeared solidly compact and united with a special bond to the Roman Pontiff and obeying him “sine ulla tergiversatione aut excusatione illico” to all disposition that concerns the spiritual progress of the souls, the propagation of the faith and the missions.
The Popes have constantly and punctually wanted to show their confidence. I cannot, at this moment, not to remember my immediate and venerated Predecessor, the late Paul VI, who has loved so much, has prayed so much, has worked so much, has suffered so much for the Company of Jesus. I mention, between his several documents, testimonies of his paternal solicitude for your Order - the Letter of September 15th, 1973, written in view of the convocation of the XXXII General Congregation; the admirable speech of December 3rd, 1974, just at the beginning of the same General Congregation, in which, also speaking in his quality of 'Supreme Superior of the Company', he gave some precious instructions as an expression of his hope in the works that were about to begin; and, finally, the Letter of February 15th, 1975, in which, supporting his deep respected and his enthusiastic love towards the Company, he reaffirmed that it had a spirituality, a doctrine, a discipline, an obedience, a service, an example to be kept, that to be attested. I have proved a calm consolation in knowing that, between the subjects you will have to treat in your reflections in common, it will also be what it talks about to the application of the observations made by Paul VI.
I am joined to my Predecessors, too, when I tell you about the love I feel for your Order, among other things, also for the long relationship that has bound me to Father Felice Cappello, my countryman and a far relative, whose memory is always blessed, but because you, in these days of retreat and prayer, must come to an examination about the state of the Company, by means of a sincere evaluation, realistic and brave about the objective situation, making an analysis, if it is necessary, on deficiencies, lagoons, zones of shade, I want to trust to your responsible meditation, some points that are particularly in my heart. In your apostolic work, always remember the own aim of the Company, 'mainly created in defence and propagation of the faith and for the benefit of the souls in the life and Christian doctrine. (Rules of the Institute). Every other activity is subordinated to this spiritual and supernatural aim and it will have to be exercised in an proper way for a religious and priestly Institute. You know well and you worry rightly about the big financial and social problems that today are afflicting humanity and they are very connected with Christian life. But, in the solution of these problems, may you always know to distinguish the tasks of religious Priests from those that belong to lay people. Priests must inspire and animate lay people to fulfil their duties, but they does not have to replace them, putting aside their own specific task in the evangelization action.
By this evangelization action, St. Ignatius demands to his children a solid doctrine, acquired by means of a long and careful preparation. And it has been a characteristic of the Company, the attentive care of introducing in the preach and the spiritual direction, in the education and publication of books and magazines, a solid and sure doctrine, totally according to the Church teaching, by which the abbreviation of the Company constituted a guarantee for Christian people and deserved the particular confidence to you from the Episcopate.
Try to keep this commendable characteristic; don' t let Jesuit teachings and publications can cause confusion and disorientation in the middle of the faithful; remember that the mission the Vicar of Christ has trusted to you is to proclaim, in a way rather according to the present mentality, but in its integrity and purity, the Christian message, contained in the deposit of revelation, of which authentic interpreter is the Teaching of the Church.
This, naturally, means that in the institutes and faculties where Jesuit young people are trained, a solid and safe doctrine can also be taught, according to directives contained in the Council decrees and in successive documents of the Holy See that talk about the doctrinal training of the candidates to Priesthood. And that is as much more necessary as your schools are open to numerous seminarians, religious people and lay people, who go there just for the hardness and sureness of doctrine that they hope to pick up there.
Together with doctrine, religious discipline must be particularly in your heart, which has also constituted a characteristic of the Company and has been indicated by someone as the secret of its force. Acquired through the severe Ignatian ascetics, fed by an intense spiritual life, supported by the exercise of a mature and virile obedience, it naturally showed itself in the austerity of life and in the exemplarity of religious behaviour.
Don' t let these praiseworthy traditions fall down; don' t let secularizing tendencies be going to penetrate and disturb your communities, to dissipate that retreat and prayer atmosphere in which the apostle tempers, and to introduce secular positions and behaviours, that are not suitable for Religious men. The due apostolic contact with the world does not mean assimilation to the world; rather, it demands that differentiation that safeguards the apostle identity, in such a way that he really can be salt of the world and leavening capable of making the mass ferment.
Be faithful for that reason to the wise norms contained in your Institute; be equally faithful to the Church prescriptions that talk about religious life, the Priestly ministry, the liturgical celebrations, giving the example of that loving docility to our Holy Mother hierarchic Church – as St. Ignatius has written on the 'Rules for the right feeling with the Church' – because it is the true Wife of Christ, Our Lord. (cf. Exerc. Spirit., nr. 353). This, St. Ignatius' position towards the Church, must also be typical of its children; and I like, with this intention, to remember the same Saint' s letter to St. Francis Borja, on September 20th, 1548, in which he recommended: 'Humility and reverence towards our Holy Mother Church and towards those who have the task of governing it and teaching it'. ( Epist. et Instruct., 11, 236).
Take these my paternal recommendations with the same spirit of sincere charity with which I address them to you, only wishing that yours and my Company still today totally corresponds to the Founder' s intentions and to the hope of the Church and the world. May Superiors precede with their example 'Forma facti gregis ex animo' (1 Pe. 5, 3) and with their paternal action, but steady and in agreement, conscious of their responsibility in front of God and the Church. May they cooperate, all the Fathers and Brothers, remembering the sacred duties that have assumed with their religious profession in this Order, together with the Vicar of Christ with a special bond of love and service.
It is the Vicar of Christ who is speaking to you; it is the new Pope who is expecting so much and expects from the Company, from its big and brave apostolate, and he repeats with confidence to the present General Superior that saying, attributed – if I remember well - to Pope Marcel II and addressed to St. Ignatius: 'Tu milites collige et bellatores instrue; nos utemur'. (N. Orlandini, History Societatis Iesu, p. I, I. XV, n. 3)
The Church today is also needing faithful and generous apostles who, as so many children of the Company, know to undertake and support the most serious and urgent apostolic enterprises. Everywhere in the Church - as my venerated Predecessor Paul VI said - even in the most difficult and advanced fields, in the crossings of ideologies, in social trenches, it has been and it is the confrontation between the ardent exigencies of man and the perennial message of the Gospel, there have been and there are the Jesuits. (Speech on December 3rd, 1974).
But the most arduous and most difficult are the apostolic enterprises to which you are called, as much greater is the necessity of intense inner life and constant union with God, of which St. Ignatius has left you a so luminous example. As a simple Bishop, how many times I have taken St. Ignatius to my Priests as a model to imitate! 'May each one of you be like Ignatius: in contemplatione activus et in actione contemplativus', I said. And I emphasized St. Augustinus had already written: 'Nobody has to be neither so contemplative not to think about the utility of the others; nor so active not to look for the contemplation of God ( From Civ. Dei , Xix , 19; PL 41, 647).
In order to fulfil this ideal, it is necessary to live intimately the own consecration to God, to observe in fullness the religious vows, to be faithfully in accordance with the rules of the own Institute, as the Saints of your Company have done. Just in the day of his religious profession, the Jesuit St. Peter Claver subscribed the document with the words: 'Peter, slave of the black for ever', giving himself, during his last forty years of life, to the black-slave trader ships holds, to the port and the cabins of Cartagena, real brother of all the miserable ones who were taken to work as slaves in America from Africa. But also him, in this colossal work, as St. Ignatius, was 'in actione contemplativus', very faithful, in the letter and in the spirit, to the Company Rules.
In this way, the fervour of works, together with the holiness of the authentically religious life, will make effective and fecund your apostolic action and will be a magnificent example, that will have a beneficial influence in the Church and specially in many religious institutes, that watch the Company of Jesus like a constant point of reference.
With these wishes, I invoke on your workings, a wide effusion of the Holy Spirit light and in all sincerity I give you and all the Fathers and Brothers of the Company spread world wide, my Paternal Apostolic Blessing.
