Established in 1909, the California Province of the Society of Jesus is celebrating its Centennial this year. As part of the celebration, more than 500 Jesuits and apostolic lay partners gathered on August 7 at Santa Clara University for the Province's Centennial Convocation. See the links or text below for prayers, addresses, and homilies during the Convocation. Photographs of Convocation activities and the First Vows ceremony on August 8 are posted in the Photo Gallery located on the home page.
California Province film debuts at the Centennial Convocation
To view the film Responding to the Call of Christ: 100 Years and Beyond, produced by Loyola Productions, visit the "California Jesuits" show page on Blip.tv: http://jesuitscalifornia.blip.tv/
Welcome, Rev. Jack Treacy, S.J., Rev. Michael Engh, S.J., Very Rev. John McGarry, S.J., August 7, 2009 To read a PDF copy of Fr. McGarry's address, go to http://www.jesuitscalifornia.org/NETCOMMUNITY/Document.Doc?id=355 To listen to an MP3 audio recording, go to http://www2.calprov.org:81/files/01_ConvocationWelcome_McGarry.mp3
Opening Prayer, Liturgy Subcommittee Members, August 7, 2009
To listen to an MP3 audio recording, go to http://www2.calprov.org:81/files/02_Convocation_Opening_Prayer.mp3
"Beyond This Rich Harvest, We Are Called to Respond," keynote address by Ms. Barbara Busse, August 7, 2009
To read a PDF copy of Ms. Busse's address, go to http://www.jesuitscalifornia.org/NETCOMMUNITY/Document.Doc?id=350 To listen to an MP3 audio recording, go to http://www2.calprov.org:81/files/03_Convocation_Busse.mp3
"Work, Solidarity & Integral Human Development," keynote address by Rev. Jon Fuller, S.J., M.D., August 7, 2009
To read a PDF copy of Fr. Fuller's address, go to http://www.jesuitscalifornia.org/NETCOMMUNITY/Document.Doc?id=357
To listen to an MP3 audio recording, go to http://www2.calprov.org:81/files/04_Convocation_Dr_Jon_Fuller_SJ.mp3
"Jesuits as Bridge Builders: A Global Mission," presentation by Rev. Jerry Martinson, S.J., Jesuit Community Day, August 8, 2009
To read a PDF copy of Fr. Martinson's presentation, go to http://www.jesuitscalifornia.org/NETCOMMUNITY/Document.Doc?id=351
To listen to an MP3 audio recording, go to http://www2.calprov.org:81/files/05_Convocation_Fr_Jerry_Martinson_SJ.mp3
Homily for Centennial Convocation, August 7, 2009
Very Rev. John McGarry, S.J., Provincial, California Province of the Society of Jesus
Deuteronomy 4: 32-40; 1 Corinthians 12: 3b, 12-13; Matthew 16: 24-28 God is God, and you and I are not. Thank God! As we celebrate our centennial, this reading from Exodus appropriately reminds us, as our history does too, to be humble; humble about who we are and how we serve, both as individuals and in our institutional ministries, and not be distracted by other god’s out there--whether that be our own egos, or too much stuff, or disordered attachments, or our willfulness. There is only God! We know from our experience, don’t we, that if we try to control our lives or our ministry in a way that we forget that God is God and we are not, things can get complicated and messy, even sinful. But rather, remembering God’s love and action in our lives leads to gratitude, which inspires a sense of hope in God’s promise. When we are grateful people, then we are more available, and free, and ready. And…we are God’s chosen instruments, God’s hands and feet, God’s voice. We can’t just sit around, and we don’t, thank God. We are God’s people, the flesh and blood God has chosen down through the ages, the people through whom God wants to be made more known as the God who passionately desires justice and peace for all people. So we name God’s action in our lives as a blessing today. The signs and wonders are so vivid, and we remember the good we have tried to do in the Lord’s name. History. What have we done for Christ? We have identified and celebrated our centennial of striving to do for Christ, and we give thanks. “Know and fix in your heart, that the Lord is God in the heavens above and on the earth below, and there is no other.” Many gifts, one body. We are diverse. We are inclusive. We are faithful. We are one. First Corinthians reminds us that remembering also points us to the truth of the present. At the 35th General Congregation, Pope Benedict said very clearly to the delegates, to the Society, and to the whole Church about the Society: “The Church needs you.” That is at once affirming and challenging if we truly take it to heart as I know we do. There is so much good and so much need in the world. The Pope has affirmed that our Ignatian charism lived through our Jesuit life and Ignatian partnership is needed, valued, and desired by the Church for the Church. So how do we live this gift? In the recent retreat of the Provincials, Dean Brackley spoke to us about “collective desolation” and “contagious consolation.” In striving to fulfill our mission, we are either encouraging people and helping them journey forward, or we are a source of division and we bring others down. We are either contributing to an increase of faith, hope and love, or we are not. There is opportunity for collective desolation in the Church today, and there is equal opportunity for contagious consolation too. What an obvious choice, a clear opportunity! When I visit communities and apostolates around the province, and I experience the passion you all have for your mission, for serving the needs of the people, I experience contagious consolation. I catch it all the time, and I am grateful that I do! “Where you stand determines what you see,” is a challenge I have heard a few Jesuits in this province use before. Where you put your feet, your body, your gifts, your energy, determines with whom you will stand and what you will do and how you will do it. Contagious consolation, born of our faith, even in midst of conflict and uncertainty, helps us to stand with the Lord, and the poor, and each other, in the Church and for the world. Through our many and diverse gifts as a province--Jesuits and Ignatian Partners together--and through our tremendous apostolic works, we serve the Church today. Here and now. What are we doing for Christ? Our presence and action and reflection in this celebration today helps us to be more aware of what we are doing, and we give thanks. “As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ.” Follow Jesus. In the gospel, Jesus lays down the conditions of discipleship, conditions with which we are all too familiar, and conditions with which we may vary in our level of comfort at one time or another in our lives. As Jerry McKevitt said in one of his retreat talks this week, “Jesus is a teacher. We are learners, not simply disciples who have it all figured out.” We learn to be disciples as we follow Jesus, through the twists and turns, and inevitable bumps in the road of our own experience, through the cross, to find life. Courage and conviction are needed to face the future, as Bill Maring said in the film, not fear. As we celebrate our history and our here and now, we also look, with hope, to the future. We must continue doing our part to keep the vision of Jesus and Ignatius alive. Be creative, as Fr. General told us when he was here, be imaginative. Be prayerful. We celebrate our Centennial Convocation on the anniversary of the restoration of the Society of Jesus, August 7, 1814, when Pope Pius VII reversed the suppression of the Jesuits. Imagine the hope that must have kept Jesuits and those who supported them and worked with them, alive through the suppression! Our vision, born of that same hope, is what will carry us into the future for the next 100 years and beyond. Creativity and imagination. Holy boldness. Prophetic witness. Faithful stewardship. Jesus consoles us and we must make that consolation contagious. Jesus sends us out on mission to the frontiers wherever those may be, and we must serve. God joins the procession of all humanity and we walk that journey together in solidarity with the least and with all, especially those at the margins, so that eventually there are no margins left. Hope for the future. What will we do for Christ? In our celebrating and reflecting today, we have gotten in touch with dreams and desires, and we are thankful. “Whoever wishes to come after me, must deny self, take up his or her cross, and follow me.” Conclusion God is God and we are not. Thank God. Many gifts, one body. We are diverse. We are inclusive. We are faithful. We are one. Follow Jesus. We have come to this house of the Lord, rejoicing. May we go forth from here renewed and inspired, grateful and generous, humble, available and free to keep responding to the call of Christ who loves us more than we could ever ask for or even imagine. St. Ignatius Loyola. Pray for us.
Homily for First Vows Mass, August 8, 2009
Father Michael Weiler, S.J., Director of Novices, California Province of the Society of Jesus
[The homily refers to three Jesuits who pronounced their First Vows: Roberto Carlos Durán, S.J.; John T. Tanner, S.J.; and Thomas Flowers, S.J.]
When we gather, as we are now to celebrate the Eucharist of the Lord, we always come with thanksgiving for all the ways God blesses our lives, but especially today we give thanks to God that three young brothers in our Society will commit themselves by vows to share our life and our work. Carlos, J.T., Thomas, it is an act of enormous generosity, and it is wonderful to see this love of God made manifest in you. We must remember that their vocations to the Society, their desire to serve God by being of service to others, began long ago with family and friendships that gave them the capacity to love and to trust. On behalf of my brother Jesuits, I thank all of you, families and friends of these men who in your faithful love of them have made this day possible. Some of you might worry that you are losing them. Not so. There are about 390 Jesuits in the California Province, maybe 2,800 in the U.S., and roughly 18,500 throughout the world--any one of us might stop by unannounced for dinner…You think I’m kidding.
God is sometimes hard to see. Mysterious. Glimpsed in fleeting moments of awareness. So the Church gives us signs, sacraments--like Eucharist, marriage, baptism--that help us see beneath the surface, beyond our senses.
On occasion we are gifted with sacrament-like moments that open up our reality and deepen our awareness. This past June, the novices, Chris Nguyen, and I were in Spokane, Washington, for the ordination to the priesthood of five Oregon Jesuits. There must have been 200 Jesuits at the big feast that night in the Gonzaga University cafeteria, and Gonzaga students were about to serve the dessert. A shout went up for Pat Conroy, S.J., high-school teacher and formation assistant, to get his guitar and lead us all in some songs. He walked up the steps of the stage holding his guitar by the top of the neck, sat down on a chair before a microphone center stage and tuned up his guitar. Song books appeared from nowhere. In the California Province, we excel at fiesta and siesta, but man can they sing in Oregon. And the very first song he played was a classic, made famous by The Everly Brothers long before any of the novices were born, but I’m sure some here have heard it. It goes like this: “Bye bye love
Bye bye happiness
Hello loneliness
I think I’m gonna cry.”* Well, the Gonzaga students waiting table halted in their tracks--a few almost dropped their load of dessert dishes: here was a room full of celibate men, lungs filled with a song of lost love--but this was the shocker: that every face in the room was full of joy. Those Oregon Jesuits--from 22 to 92--were happy and obviously full of life; they radiated the kind of joy that could only come from lives filled with love. So that sad song about lost love became a revelation of lives filled with love and radiant with joy. That is the future that awaits these three men. Often the popular imagination is so impoverished that it cannot see the possibility of love or meaning in a life without spouse or children. But I promise you, my brothers who take vows today, that lives full of love and joy lie before you--“I have told you this so that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be complete.”
But love must be more than a feeling or sentiment because “love ought to manifest itself in deeds rather than in words.” It must reach fulfillment in deeds and commitment and service, otherwise it fades like the sentiment on an old Hallmark card.
Today these three men speak words that are in themselves deeds; a commitment to service as religious, service to Christ “lovely in limbs and lovely in hands not His,” service as Jesuits with vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. They are not alone in making such commitments. Each of us, every human being, must do something similar because in the deepest fabric of our humanity is sewn the truth that we can only find fulfillment in giving ourselves to another in love. The theologian Sandra M. Schneiders says this quite well when she writes on religious life: “the specific dignity of the human being...lies in the human capacity for self-transcendence, for reaching beyond oneself toward the other and, finally, toward the ultimate Other who is God, not in order to possess but...to give oneself in love...every significant life is the expression of a great love and, conversely, no matter how striking its effects on history, the absence of love marks any life as a failure.”** To those who don’t see clearly, the gift of self can look like loss--what you can’t have or what you can’t do--but it is the opposite, it is the fulfillment of self and its transcendence because love is its motivation and freedom its necessary condition. “Hands always open,” Thomas said to me a long time ago, “being religious means that I must always have my hands open, never closed to grasp or made into a fist.” The Scripture reminds us of this same truth: “Unless you lose your life…unless the grain of wheat dies...unless you take up your cross.” Commitment tests our courage and our trust, as it should. At some point love to be authentic must find enough faith to jump willingly into the void. As in all things, Jesus, faithful companion, Captain of our band, goes before us, showing us the way: “into Your hands I commend my spirit.” The gift of self becomes real in commitment and service: “the lover gives and shares with the beloved what he possesses” and, ultimately, the only real thing we have to give is ourselves.
We honor such commitment with solemn words: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president;” “I…will do no falsehood nor consent to the doing of any in court;” “I...will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;” “For better, for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health...from this day forward.” And today--“Almighty and Eternal God…I am moved by the desire to serve You.” All great loves move one to the gift of oneself in service to the beloved whether that be to spouse or country, or profession or to Christ Himself. God is sometimes hard to see. Mysterious. Glimpsed in fleeting moments of awareness. And so we look for moments of clarity, experiences that show us beneath the surface of things. Months ago, in a shabby room in Tijuana, with the noise of the street blaring through the windows, J.T. said to me, “The only thing I’m sure of, is that I just want to serve, and I can figure out all the rest.” The moment he said that, it was clear to me that J.T. had already figured out what was most important. Today, as these men pronounce vows, commit themselves to service of the One we call Creator and Lord, they present us all a moment of clarity, a reminder of our own commitments--and a glimpse into the mystery of love. A few days ago, the first-year novices told me that Roberto Carlos was so eager to pronounce vows that they thought he was going to burst, so we better move along. Barbara Busse reminded us yesterday [August 7] in her keynote address to the Convocation that vocation starts with hearing the call of the other, so I’d like to finish with a poem by Thomas Flowers, a reflection on today’s first reading, the call of Samuel: Upon Being Awoken Sometimes it’s hard to answer the phone
In the middle of the night.
For one thing, I usually don’t know
What the ringing is.
And when I figure it out on some late ring,
It’s hard to find the phone. But I’ve been called out of sleep before
And today it makes me think of Samuel,
Though it’s hard to believe that voice
On the other end of the phone
Belongs to the Lord.*** *From “Bye Bye Love” by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, 1957
**From Selling All: Commitment, Consecrated Celibacy, and Community in Catholic Religious Life by Sandra M. Schneiders, I.H.M. (Paulist Press, 2001)
***From Walking Humbly: Scripture Meditations in Verse by Thomas Flowers (Paulist Press, New York, 2009)
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