In December 2024, the Province of Colombia will celebrate its 100^th anniversary. In preparation, and to make this event an opportunity for a spiritual journey, a program has been drawn up which began on 24 June 2023, the feast of St John the Baptist. Jesuits and all those who are associated with them in their various ministries will therefore enjoy a year and a half of celebration, prayer and encounters.

The decision to launch the jubilee year now was made to take advantage of the visit to the Province of Father Arturo Sosa, Superior General of the Society of Jesus. He came to take part in the Assembly of the Conference of Provincials of Latin America and the Caribbean (CPAL). He also took the opportunity to visit part of the Province of Colombia and to learn about its centenary history, as he emphasized in the homily he delivered at the end of his visit. Here are some excerpts from that homily.

The vigorous and austere figure of the prophet John the Baptist inviting his people to conversion, a radical movement towards the God of the Covenant, brings us today the challenge of a constant movement towards the Lord and towards reality, following the great Ignatian reference to SEEK AND FIND GOD IN ALL THINGS. We are making this search in the context of the great homeland that is Latin America and the Caribbean, as we concluded the plenary assembly of CPAL, with all the Provincials of the region. We examined in judicious discernment the best way to scrutinize God’s will for our continent, so diverse and rich, full of good people and great cultural values, but also marked by the sin of poverty, inequality and violence. All of these are challenges for our Society of Jesus, following the Universal Apostolic Preferences, welcoming all the goodness of the continent and striving for an ever more generous missionary presence to meet the expectations of these countries of the great homeland. Jesuits and lay people united in the mission that the Lord has entrusted to us.

Today is also the beginning of the commemoration of the centenary of the creation of the Colombian Province of the Society of Jesus. During the next year and a half, this beloved Province will celebrate this reality. It will recognize in grateful memory so many Jesuits and lay people who already enjoy the fullness of the Lord, so many generous benefactors, and so many families who have fostered with their Christian coherence the vocation of their children, who have become part of the body of the Society in Colombia.

The mission has been exercised in a traditionally Catholic country, deeply attached to the Church, a welcoming situation that has also been favorable to the apostolic action of the Order. However, there were times when a strong political-ideological polarization seriously damaged the social fabric of the country. There were years of very serious partisan violence, which will leave its mark on the future of the country, with successive outbreaks of guerrilla warfare, paramilitary groups and drug trafficking. Faced with this panorama, the Society of Jesus in Colombia has always demonstrated its apostolic vigour and its capacity to influence the social fabric and the ecclesial communion. This painful reality has new and disturbing manifestations for contemporary Colombia, which, of course, the Society of Jesus takes into account in the exercise of its mission of reconciliation, peace and justice.

This good and humane Colombia continues to expect from the Jesuits and from the Ignatian laity a commitment of a very special evangelical and human quality. Looking back over these 100 years of apostolic history is, first of all, a reason for gratitude to the Lord and to so many Jesuits and lay people who have given themselves generously to the mission, giving their lives up to the very end. It is therefore a recognition of this activity that has been carried out by Jesuits and lay Ignatian laity alike. It has been present with evangelical influence in the field of direct pastoral work, in the diffusion of the Exercises of St. Ignatius and in the promotion of Ignatian spirituality, in educational action from pre-school to higher education, in the social apostolate, through specialised research in social and human sciences and in direct intervention in vulnerable communities, for the promotion of human dignity; in the media and in publications, in the formation of Jesuit companions.

Like the prophet John the Baptist, we are men and women of God and for God, entirely devoted to all our neighbours who cross our path, attentive to cultivate in all of them the sense of their dignity in the key that has been revealed to us by the Father in Our Lord Jesus Christ. We do this with the extraordinary generosity that inspired Saint Ignatius and the first Jesuits to found this institute, alive in the world and in this beautiful Colombian homeland.