Caring for the mission of the Society of Jesus post COVID
On Wednesday, 29 April, and again on Thursday, 30 April, Father General led a virtual meeting with hundreds of Jesuits and partners of the Society. It was the second time he made use of this communication channel, live online. The theme of the encounter, “caring for the mission”, was inspired by the letter he had sent to the whole Society a month earlier, entitled: “Care (cura) in the governance of the life-mission of the Society in this change of the eras.”
In the first part of the webinar, Father Sosa delivered a message to his audience. He recalled the essential elements of his letter of 25 March. In this text, he wanted to give some answers to the challenge of figuring out how to put together the attention or care of persons, the cura personalis, and the attention or care to be given to the apostolic ministry, the cura apostolica. Thus, a significant part of his talk allowed for a better understanding of what is implied in these two Latin expressions of the Ignatian tradition.
Everything is a question of “care”. In our relationships with one another, with our environment, with the natural and the human environments, everything rests on the care we give to our relationship with God.
The Superior General has twice explicitly linked the theme of care for mission to the Universal Apostolic Preferences. Just as, in the first webinar, he had urged us to understand and live the UAPs as a whole, connected to each other, this time he insisted that cura personalis and cura apostolica should not be understood independently of each other, but should be the objective of the common goal of carrying out the mission of the Society today.
And of course, as the title of this webinar announced, Father Sosa encouraged us to make the link between the mission of the Society and the unique situation we are living in the world because of the COVID-19 pandemic. He sees this as an invitation to take care, even more and better, of our relationships with one another in order to fulfill our mission.
Read Father General’s text in English.
To view the webinar in English, click here.
To view the webinar in Spanish, click here.
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