Reflection

Introduction

Since 1981, when I entered the novitiate in Spain, I have observed the community aspect developing among the Jesuits in various ways. I have engaged with the Society of Jesus, exploring each of these ways as they were introduced and evolved. I sense that this process continues. Practicing the community aspect in our Jesuit environment depends on factors both within and outside the Society, which are constantly changing: church and secular contexts, new and unique theological and ecclesiological emphases, input from General Congregations, influences from other spiritualities, and so on. Community life and its concrete expression have always been shaped this way and still are.

Communitas ad dispersionem was the motto given by General Congregation 32; the watchword which described the peculiarity of our life together since my initial formation. Looking back, I must admit that we did not always interpret ad dispersionem coherently and that we were not entirely attentive to the implicit balance it required. To put it simply, in adopting that motto, two processes took place at the beginning:

· On one hand, for many years, we prioritized ad dispersionem over communitas, justifying it with a strong sense of apostolic urgency. As a result, community life lost significance amid unquestioned activism.

· On the other hand, since the start of this century, I feel that the community aspect has been valued for its own sake, and undoubtedly its own charismatic significance has grown.

After these processes, we are now at a later point in time. The General Congregation 36 introduced a new synthesis between community and dispersion. Since then, discernment and synodality have been and continue to be the channels toward a challenging yet better understanding that we are communitas ad dispersionem. By discerning together, within our apostolic ad dispersionem, we can become more of a true communitas. As we grow in our sense of belonging to a ‘global’ and networked apostolic body, we can better embrace our ad dispersionem.

I will now dwell on each of these three stages.

1. Ad Dispersionem, first stage

We all know our history: immediately after the Second Vatican Council, community life in the Society began an arduous journey toward a different setup. This was clear in formation, from the novitiate to the third probation. In Spain, the large formation communities that existed or were being formed had to be drastically reduced. We left behind large buildings designed for many students in formation. Many students were moved to urban areas. From big, isolated houses, they moved to apartments in apartment buildings. Community life adjusted to the city's pace. The goal was to promote inculturation as much as possible amid increasing secularity.

When I joined the Society of Jesus, that model had already been tested for over a decade. Its benefits were clear. Community life became less formal but more meaningful. The smaller communities allowed for better interaction among those in formation. The process of joining the Society could be much more personalized, despite the mass departures at the end of the 60s and the beginning of the 70s. The formation stages were adjusted to meet the real needs of the Jesuits and their more specific apostolic vocations. The Jesuits' pastoral activities in formation were strengthened to better connect their training processes with the apostolic realities of the provinces.

In that model, the 'ad dispersionem’ part of the GC formula was accepted without much fuss for the sake of the mission. If this aspect was explained clearly enough, it was possible to wholly or partly omit ‘communitas’ events for the sake of apostolic activities. This showed the importance of apostolic life, preventing the community from seeing itself in a self-focused way. It was the mission, with this element of ad dispersionem,that provided a structure for the apostolic religious life. Our formation confirmed that, essentially, we were apostles and, depending on the situation, we were members of this or that community.

However, this process also faced challenges. The improvements it brought to community life—such as individuation, strengthening of community bonds, and greater integration into the environment—weren't enough to outweigh the fact that the community was undervalued. The lengthy initial formation process within the Society of Jesus, which lasts 10 to 15 years, tends to focus too much on the Jesuit's personal and spiritual journey. In my view (even in communities of Jesuits already formed), there were still signs that something was missing within the community. Personal agendas often led to ministries that hadn't been properly discerned. To some degree, community meetings seemed like mere formalities, lacking spontaneity and depth. As if that weren't enough, community life was often conflated with purely social life, and the emotional climate within the communities was taken as a measure of its quality. The community became more like a space for mental relaxation than a framework for apostolic innovation.

In that situation, local community membership played only a subtle role. Our generation failed to break free from the deep-rooted inertia within the Society of Jesus: a Jesuit was always more recognized for his mission and apostolic work than for his presence in a community or team. Personal names (not group names) were associated with cases of apostolic success. In short, our ad dispersionem was actively present during this period, but perhaps the unintended consequence was that less attention was given to communitas.

2. Changing perspective: balancing identity, community, and mission

It is only now that I realize the significance of how we commemorated the fifth centenary of the birth of St. Ignatius, St. Francis Xavier, and the then Blessed Peter Faber in 2005-2006. The anniversary was planned not as a celebration of each one, but as a celebration of all three together. It was not so important to remember and praise the founders separately; the goal was to highlight their shared connection. The three founders lived what Hélder Câmara expresses so well: "When you dream alone, it is only a dream. When you dream with others, it's the beginning of reality." St. Ignatius, St. Francis Xavier, and St. Peter Faber dreamed that together they could give the world something that would help it receive what God deeply desired. Their shared dream was to establish the Society of Jesus to serve the Church.

By then, the slogan communitas ad dispersionem had lost its relevance and was giving way to three elements: identity, community, and mission. GC 35 embraced these, doing justice to Fr. Kolvenbach's contributions to community life after GC 34. The idea was simple: mission cannot hijack either the life in the Spirit or the community; the community must not weaken apostolic zeal or diminish the necessary personalization when embracing the charism; finally, inner life cannot confine apostolic and community dynamism to an inward dimension.

In my experience, those three elements highlighted the gaps caused by the excessive emphasis on the ‘ad dispersionem’aspect in our understanding of our religious community life. Then, it became more widely accepted that being a Jesuit is defined by the mission of the Society of Jesus, but it is also something more than that. Spiritual and religious life, both personal and in community, are at the core of apostolic life, not on its margins. Without support, it is seriously undermined. We then began to see that community life is also a mission. The focus on our identity was not solely on mission, but on its complementarity with inner/religious life and community.

This increased awareness of the balance between personal life, community, and apostolic action enabled the inclusion of two significant contributions on the value of community.

a) One contribution helped better match communitas and ad dispersionem. It emerged in the 70s and influenced later times. I'm referring to the reemphasis on the expression' friendship in the Lord,' as Saint Ignatius described his fraternal bond with his early companions. I was fortunate to see how this vision, both charismatic and kind, was positively reused to build community among us. More than once, I wondered whether the dominance of ad dispersionem over communitas in our Jesuit identity stemmed from the difficulty of fully understanding the nature of our community. "Friends in the Lord" helped me overcome that challenge somewhat. Since we are centered on the Lord, our community ties are not threatened by the ad dispersionem element. Our ongoing participation in communities and apostolic works throughout our lives in the Society fosters relationships strong enough to sustain coexistence amid incredible diversity. It’s rare to find yourself in an international organization that combines economic and missionary cohesion, crosses cultural and political boundaries, and shares a common spiritual homeland. Friendship in the Lord offers a compelling way to explain this. I believe this expression has succeeded, even though for some Jesuits, the call to be friends in the Lord sounded vague, more emotional than practical.

b) When we started feeling the effects of the sharp decline in apostolic religious life, the distinction between mission and tasks became more evident. It became clear that we could not judge a mission that arises from a specific charism of religious life solely by a set of tasks. For a community overwhelmed by urgent apostolic needs and unable to attend to them all effectively, rescuing the concept of mission and contrasting it with that of tasks helped ease our stress. It also allowed us to see the challenging situation of decreasing numbers from a different angle. Conversely, tasks do not fully encompass the mission potential inherent in charism. Putting tasks into perspective helped set boundaries and renew the meaning of ‘ad dispersionem,’ emphasizing the community aspect. It was unhelpful to be identified solely through actions; instead, a reconciliation with the sense of belonging to a community was necessary. We understood that community exists not just for functional benefits to the mission, but that communitas in itself is not the mission. We focused more on the identity of the Jesuit, which is not just as a vocation but as a convocation. In other words, we rediscovered the image of Jesus with his disciples as that initial visual impact experienced by those who first began to know them.

3. A road ahead

My impression, along with that of other brothers, is that with GCs 35 and 36, there was a shift in the Society toward the community aspect of Ignatian spirituality. This was evident in both spirituality and governance. The Society of Jesus became more horizontal, involving a broader range of actors and connecting them to pursue a more complex mission. The reasons for this change vary. It is partly due to the reorganization of the provinces, which led to new forms of governance, and partly because we now have a much more global understanding of missions.

Today, at least on paper, a community must see itself as connected to apostolic platforms and sectors; linked to other communities and apostolic works within the same mission territory; as well as in relation to the laity who collaborate in the mission; and to the supra-provincial levels of assistance, conferences, and networks. Community life has expanded and become more dispersed, adopting new and broader frames of reference and internalizing the different expressions of the universal apostolic body that the Society embodies. In a sense, and using analogies, we can say that we are communitas ad dispersionem in another way: more communitas,with a greater need for interaction at various levels of the Society of Jesus, and, at the same time, more ad dispersionem, because we aim to carry out a more complex mission.

There have been two accelerators in that process:

a) One is the impulse that common discernment has received. There is nothing new in this; discernment has always been practiced in society. But it is also true that the real practice of communal discernment has been uneven over time. It was weakened at the local community level when the unity between the community and apostolic work was broken, while it was strengthened in the governing bodies. A brother who has a great sense of humor, ironically, confessed to me that he could not understand how he could be a Jesuit until now, without having discerned in common. My personal experience, however, is that the current emphasis on discernment in common, with remarkable results such as the Universal Apostolic Preferences (UAP), has also strengthened communities. And that is, to a certain extent, a novelty. When a group of Jesuits discerns a critical issue, their discernment solidifies their fraternal relationship. The collective community memory is a record of experiences of discernment. In each of these experiences, a community, or a similar version of it, was forged. By discerning in common, co-responsibility emerges. When discernment is properly planned, it is possible to go beyond common character traits and the ideological and affective affinities that hinder the free search for God's will. Discernment grants citizenship to those who take part in it. It allows everyone to express themselves and listen to others. Therefore, it dignifies them. It renews the laws of the community game by neutralizing implicit leadership. Through discernment, a community deepens its commitment to its core mission and, at the same time, sees itself as more of a community.

b) GC 36 did not issue a decree on the community, but its decree on the government was, in fact, a new declaration of community intentions. Discernment, collaboration, and networking were the main focuses of reimagining the apostolic body. In essence, these were not new missions; they were new ways of leaving communitas. The proverbial dispersion of our lifestyle was thus encouraged to evolve into a community connection at another level. We still must learn to live with this renewed sense of community. We need to understand better what it means to belong to supra-community bodies or to be present in a network, and how to carry out the mission alongside many other actors in the Church.

All this means continuing to move toward a concept of community that embraces our initial dispersion so that we can ultimately become what we are: communitas ad dispersionem.