The Jesuit Order: Click here for the website.
Sent to serve. St. Ignatius left no doubt from the beginning. The Order he founded has no other specialty than “helping souls”. It respond to the needs of the Church and society, that has been the aim of the Jesuits throughout the centuries. Work was and is often done where others are absent or at the borders. The privileged bond with the one Ignatius liked to call “Christ’s substitute on earth” means that the Pope, to this day, regularly gives special missions to the Society.
Companions of Jesus: The Jesuits are a religious Order within the Roman Catholic Church, founded by Ignatius of Loyola in 1540. An “Order” is a community of fathers (men, who are ordained priests) and brothers (men, who are not priests), who live and work according to their own rule and with their own spirituality. The Society of Jesus currently numbers some 17,000 Jesuits, spread over 127 countries. They work as teachers, physicians, journalists, parish priests, astronomers, spiritual directors, student pastors … Religious life: In religious life, the vows are central. The evangelical councils, as they are also called, do not only give an external shape to the life of the Jesuit. Above all, they are a continuous call to graft our apostolic life, down to the smallest detail, onto the person of Jesus Christ. Again and again and more and more. The great texts from our tradition provide a common direction. But in the experience of each Jesuit individually, different emphases are placed in the search for this ever fragile balance, for this ever unpredictable path to joy … Spirituality: Ad majorem Dei gloriam, Ignatius’ motto that everything must be done “to the greater glory of God” indicates his preference for growth, for process: more is always possible, greater depth, more intense love, more complete surrender to God. You will never reach the highest, but you can progress and become an increasingly better servant of God. This is not about performance through great willpower, but about a way of life that expresses the desire and will to be open to the influence of God’s spirit on human action. Prayer and life touch and nourish each other then continuously. TheSpiritual Exercises are the heart of the spirituality of the Jesuits and of the wider Ignatian family. Seeking, finding and serving God in all things and people, in the middle of a beautiful but broken world. And this together with and for many other people.