Vatican
City, 31 July 2013 (VIS) – The Pope celebrated Mass at 8.00 a.m.
today, the feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of
Jesus, the order to which he belongs, with Jesuits in the Roman
Church of Jesus, where the saint's reliquaries are preserved.
It
was a private, like the Mass celebrated each day at the Santa Marta
guesthouse, attended only by priests of the Society of Jesus,
friends, and collaborators. However, the Pope was received by
hundreds of people who wished to greet him and who waited until the
end of the celebration to do so.
Archbishop
Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, S.J., Secretary of the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith, and the Superior General of the
Jesuits, Fr. Adolfo Nicolas, concelebrated with the Pope, as well as
members of the Council and more than two hundred Jesuits.
In
this homily, the Pope proposed a reflection based on three concepts:
putting Christ at the centre of the Church, allowing oneself to be
conquered by Him to serve; and feeling the shame of our limits and
sins in order to be humble before Him and before our brothers.
“The
symbol of the Jesuits is a monogram, the acronym of 'Iesus Hominum
Salvator'”, said Francis. “It reminds us constantly of a fact we
must never forget: the centrality of Christ for each one of us, and
for the entire Society, that St. Ignatius chose to call 'the Society
ofJesus' to indicate its point of reference. … And this leads us,
Jesuits, to be 'decentred', to have 'Deus semper maior' before us …
Christ is our life! The centrality of Christ also corresponds to the
centrality of the Church: they are two flames that cannot be
separated. I cannot follow Christ other than in the Church and with
the Church. And also in this case, we Jesuits and the entire Society
are not in the centre; we are, so to say, removed; we are in the
service of Christ and of the Church. … To be men rooted and
grounded in the Church: this is what Jesus wants. We cannot walk in
parallel or in isolation. Yes, there are paths of research, creative
paths, yes: this is important; to go out to the peripheries … but
always in community, in the Church, with this belonging that gives us
the courage to go ahead”.
The
path to live this dual centrality is found in “letting oneself be
conquered by Christ. I seek Jesus, I serve Jesus because he sought me
first. … In Spanish there is a very descriptive phrase, which
explains this well: 'El nos primerea', He is always first before us.
… To be conquered by Christ to offer to this King our entire
person, all our effort … to imitate Him also in withstanding
injustice, contempt, poverty”. The Pope recalled the Jesuit Fr.
Paolo dall'Oglio, missing in Syria for days, and added “being
conquered by Christ means forever striving to reach what is before
you, to reach Christ”.
Francis
also recalled Jesus' words in the Gospel: “those who want to save
their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake
will save it. Those who are ashamed of me … will be ashamed when He
comes in His glory” and compares this with the shame of the
Jesuits. “Jesus invites us not to be ashamed of Him, but to follow
Him for ever with total dedication, trusting in and entrusting
ourselves to Him”.
“Looking
to Jesus, as St. Ignatius teaches us in the First Week, and
especially looking at Christ crucified, we feel that sentiment, so
human and so noble, that is the shame of not being able to measure
up; … and this leads us always, as individuals and as a Society, to
humility, to living this great virtue. Humility makes us aware every
day that it is not we who build the Kingdom of God, but rather it is
always the grace of the Lord that acts in us; humility that urges us
to give ourselves not in service to ourselves or our ideas, but in
the service of Christ and the Church, like clay vases – fragile,
inadequate, insufficient, but inside which there is an immense
treasure we carry and communicate.
The
Pope confessed that when he thinks of the twilight of a Jesuit's
life, “when a Jesuit finishes his life”, two icons always come to
mind: that of St. Francis Xavier looking to China, and that of Father
Arrupe in his final conversation at the refugee camp. “It benefits
us to look at these two icons, to return to them, and to ask that our
twilight be like theirs”.
Finally,
Francis encouraged those present to ask the Virgin “to let us feel
the shame of our inadequacy before the treasure that has been
entrusted to us, to live in humility before the Lord. May the
paternal intercession of St. Ignatius accompany our path and that of
all holy Jesuits, who continue to teach us to do everything with
humility, ad maiorem Dei gloriam”.