Fr. General’s Homily
May 23, 2004

The entire contemplation of the Kingdom is filled with the word of the Lord: "Go into the whole world and proclaim the good news to all creation." To fulfill this word of Jesus, Saint Ignatius dreamed of his mission of making the Risen Christ known to non-Catholics and non-Christians.

For Saint Ignatius a Jesuit, a companion of Jesus, could not but speak of the "good news" of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and hence ought to declare himself ready to be sent anywhere the Vicar of the Lord thought it good to send him. Saint Ignatius speaks of apostolic availability--like that of an apostle-- to go even among the Turks, which at that time symbolized the end of the world and men difficult to convert.

Because the first companions of Saint Ignatius willingly imitated the apostles, they saw a difference in mission between the task of Peter and the vocation of Paul. Saint Peter in the name of the Lord must confirm his brothers, guarantee the unity of the Christian community, and watch over the assembly of the Church of the Lord. Saint Paul, on the contrary, was to traverse the world of his day, to dialogue with Greek and Roman cultures, and to initiate new churches. This is the mission of the Apostle Paul which Saint Ignatius recognized as the particular vocation of the Society.

The first companions willingly said their home was the entire world and, especially where there was an apostolic urgency, they manifested an eagerness to help. Even today the Society remains profoundly apostolic, sharing with the Apostle Paul a great variety of witnesses to the Gospel. For Saint Paul was not only the great preacher and world traveler; his life had known the silent witness of those who suffer in Christ Jesus imprisonment or sickness, reduced to silence or living in total lack of understanding.

Thus it is that many Jesuits preach more by their lives than by their words. Of other Jesuits the Lord of the Vineyard demands a witness clear and courageous, without a flush of shame, as Saint Paul says, confessing by love for men and for the salvation of the world, visibly by our actions, explicitly by our words that "Christ is risen", that "Jesus Christ is Lord", that "the Lord lives", that "God is love." It is for this witness that the Lord stands at the door of human hearts, knocking to enter.

So many Jesuits are called to a hidden testimony, to share with competence and with passion all human efforts to render humanity more true, more just, more peaceful, more free, but with the apostolic desire to develop and to announce what the Lord reveals about the future of humankind.

The difficult testimony of dialogue with cultures, with science, with ideologies and with the great religions of the world is carried on with the passion to reveal to unbelievers-- and sometimes also to believers-- a Christ in all His dimensions, in all His richness. Often this testimony shows that we must plant and water, but the Lord of the vineyard alone gives the fruit at the proper moment.

Saint Paul himself gives the example of another witness which more and more we are recognizing in the Church. He was convinced that the true witness of Christ is finally the witness one dares to give by how one lives as a companion of Jesus. We hesitate to surrender our personal history, for we measure the difference between what we say in beautiful words and what we do even in our intimate relations with God in so far as we are Jesuits. We are afraid that the people will call on us and ask personal questions.

Nevertheless the truest witness is that which engages our persons and which echoes the testimony of Saint Paul: "I am the least of the apostles; I do not even deserve to be called an apostle because I persecuted the Church of God. It is by the grace of God that I am what I am."

This litany of witness would not be complete without mentioning all those companions whom the Lord invites and calls to witness by a violent death, by martyrdom. All this apostolic activity has only one motivation: the love of God for men. We can only say to all men that God loves them. All this apostolic activity has only one source of fecundity, and that is the love of God.

With Saint Ignatius we profess that the means which unite the human instrument, which we are, with God and so dispose it that it may be wielded dexterously by His divine hand, are more effective than those which equip it in relation to men. In union with all our companions, let us pray that we may become what we are called to be: those sent into the vineyard of the Lord to witness to this love.

May this Eucharist celebrated over the world be our pledge.

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