Discreta Caritas: “To See All Things New In Christ”

On 20 May, 500 years since the injury suffered by Iñigo de Loyola in Pamplona that led to his conversion, we begin the worldwide celebration of Ignatius 500.

Our troubled times compel us Jesuits (and our mission partners) to re-examine the fidelity of our way of life, to return to the Lord’s call in GC36 for renewal of Jesuit life and mission, and together to beg for God’s grace to fulfill it.

Community pantries are expressions of solidarity motivated to mitigate the poverty and hunger exacerbated by a poor systemic response to the COVID pandemic.

For some people there will be no Christmas this year. As St. Oscar Romero puts it bluntly, “The self-sufficient, the proud, those who, because they have everything, look down on others, those who have no need even of God — for them there will be no Christmas…”

Thanks to this pandemic, it’s going to be a very different kind of Christmas… But it is precisely why–more than ever–we need Christmas!

When I made the leap of faith more than 10 years ago to join the Society of Jesus, it was the terminus of many years of searching and asking, of life’s many twists and turns, of a journey of finding and losing.

What I keep in my “Retreat Guide’s Backpack” of course depends on the notion I have of a good retreat. And for this my most important guide is really St. Ignatius of Loyola himself.

God will show that our promises are not simply a bunch of no’s. God will eventually gently lead you to a place where our vows re-emerge as yeses. And those yeses bring us closer to people and the world, not apart from them.

The youth are counting on us. They need us to believe in them and to take a chance on them. Jesus is with them, waiting for us, to love him in the powerlessness and vulnerability of the young. Yes, the spiritual path lies before us.