Our Vow of Poverty in the Following of Jesus Poor and Humble

31st Superior General of the Society of Jesus Reverend Father Arturo Sosa SJ—during his visit to the Philippines (Picture taken at Sto Niño Cathedral, Cebu City)

Letter of the Superior General Reverend Father Arturo Sosa SJ to the whole Society of Jesus (September 27, 2021—481st Founding Anniversary)

D

ear companions:

[1] The love for the person of the poor and humble Jesus that leads to following him is expressed in a very special way in the vow of poverty, a constitutive dimension of the charism of the Society of Jesus that grounds our life-mission. To show the way to God requires us to adopt Jesus' way of proceeding. A poor and humble human being, Jesus of Nazareth, is the one who makes known the unconditional love of God-with-us and invites us to live out the evangelical poverty that prompts us to walk with the poor and to place ourselves at their service.

The Spirit moves us to a serene examination of our poverty

[2] Recently, the 36th General Congregation (GC) and the discernment in common of the Universal Apostolic Preferences (UAP) became a strong invitation to conversion for the Society of Jesus. In addition, the celebration of the Ignatian Year 2021-2022 is a new source of inspiration for the process of vital transformation to which the Holy Spirit is leading the Society.

[3] As I have experienced these processes of discernment over the years, I have felt frequent and constant motions of various kinds to invite the Society to calmly undertake an examen of how we live our vow of poverty. I am aware that an Ignatian examination of this dimension of our life always unsettles and shakes us internally. It invites us, on the one hand, to give thanks for so much good received through the desire to embrace Jesus' way of proceeding and, on the other hand, it reminds us of the challenges that a sincere examination represents for our daily life. I am sure, moreover, that opening ourselves to this discernment can be the way to unleash those inner energies that we need to change whatever we have to change today in order to remain faithful to our charism according to the circumstances of persons, times and places.

[4] So I would like to invite the whole Society—every Jesuit, every community, every Province or Region—to examine how we live our vow of poverty. I would like the fruit of this examination to bring about in the Society the necessary disposition to give substance to the fulfilment of the mandate of GC 36 to revise the Statutes on Poverty and the Instruction on the Administration of Goods (IAG) (GC 36, d. 2,18). I am convinced that soberly discerning how we are living our vow of poverty, with its deep spiritual meaning, is the best preparation for the Society to receive the updating of the norms regarding our religious poverty.

[5] The vow of poverty is one of the most effective means for identifying ourselves with Jesus, the way to the Father, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Living it in the 21st century requires us to deepen the spiritual experience that we are called to incarnate in today's world in keeping with the charism received by Ignatius and the first companions. Therefore, to begin this examination, I invite you to return to the fundamental elements of our experience of consecrated poverty.

Following Jesus poor and humble

[6] It is not in the lack of many material goods that we recognize Jesus as poor and humble. He became poor in order to enrich us with his poverty (2 Cor 8:9-15). Jesus' poverty is the fruit of his generosity, of his total gift of himself, so that, in fellowship, we may all live in dignity as daughters and sons of the same Father. This evangelical poverty is what we desire when we pronounce the vow of poverty, aware that living it is only possible if we receive the grace of the Lord himself who invites us to follow him (Mt 19:16-28). Our way of proceeding includes "becoming poor" as a dimension of Jesus' way of life, which we too wish to live as a radical expression of love capable of voluntary self-emptying, of the humiliation required to obey the Spirit and of self-gift even unto death on the cross (Phil 2:5-8). We have heard the call, we have chosen this path which we manifest through our vow.

[7] Ignatius decides to become poor out of love for the poor and humble Jesus, under whose banner he wants to serve. The second week of the Spiritual Exercises (SE) clearly traces the path for following Jesus. For those who hear the call and know how Jesus became incarnate in human history (SE 116: ...The Lord is born in the greatest poverty…) it begins with poverty (spiritual and material) and continues with the acceptance of reproaches and scorn leading to the humility that opens the way to all the other virtues (SE 91-147. The prophet Zephaniah [3:12-13] refers to the “remnant of Israel” as a “poor and humble people”). Ignatius does not intend a reflection on poverty as such, but chooses to become poor because Christ chose it. This is the reason for the vow of those who make their profession to live like Jesus poor and humble in consecrated life. A poverty that allows us to communicate the Jesus of the Gospel in radical obedience to the Father.

[8] For this reason, "becoming poor" as a dimension of following Jesus Christ means freeing oneself from that which prevents one from making oneself available to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. "Becoming poor" is a step towards placing one's trust in God and in Him alone. It is poverty as a stripping away and detachment that frees one from the tendency to possess wealth as the basis of one's security. Whoever "becomes rich" convinces himself that he can then control his life and secure it against all kinds of risks (Lk 12:13-21). The way of evangelical poverty, on the other hand, leads us to live in the open, puts us into the hands of others, into the uncertainty in which we place our hope in the Lord.

[9] The poverty of the humble Jesus of Nazareth is associated with his redemptive mission for which the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (Jn 1:14). Therefore, the poverty of the followers of Jesus is apostolic, aimed at helping souls, at making present in history the Good News of the reconciliation of all things in Christ (Col 1:15-23; 2 Cor 5:17; Rom 5:10). To be incarnated poor among the poor was God's chosen way of revealing himself. Accepting the invitation to participate in the Lord's mission requires acquiring the perspective of the poor as the "place" from which reality is perceived. Acquiring the perspective of the poor is necessary to "preach in poverty" as Jesus and the apostles did, as the founders of the Society of Jesus wanted, and as those who intend to announce the Good News are also invited to do today.

[10] Binding ourselves to the dispossession that evangelical poverty entails unites us to people who suffer all kinds of need, makes us grow in our desire for greater justice and inserts us into spaces of authentic solidarity. It is a poverty that "engenders creativity and protects us from what limits our availability to respond to God's call" (GC 36, d. 1,6). Poverty then as a dimension of the way of proceeding of the followers of Jesus is not an end in itself but a step towards liberation from the "vain honor of the world" and acceptance of the possibility of humiliation ("reproaches and contempt") leading to the humility characteristic of the Master's way of life, as well as a door to all the virtues, as opposed to wealth that leads to all the vices (SE 136-147—Meditation on the two standards). The vow of poverty disposes us to ask for and receive the grace of the third degree of humility (SE 164-168—The three degrees of humility). The vow of poverty is, therefore, associated with the choice to follow Jesus poor and humble, growing in the love of poverty as his way of life.

The vow of poverty in the Society of Jesus

[11] Each one of us, during the Spiritual Exercises, has experienced the call of the poor and humble Lord who invites us to work with Him and, chosen, to follow Him in the Society of Jesus. Inspired, no doubt, by the spiritual experience of Ignatius and the first companions, the Formula Instituti (Paul III, Apostolic Letter Regimini militantis Ecclesiae, 27 September 1540, n°7, in The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus and their Complementary Norms, The Institute of Jesuit Sources, Saint Louis, 1996, p. 10), states:

From experience we have learned that a life removed as far as possible from all contagion of avarice and as like as possible to evangelical poverty is more gratifying, more undefiled, and more suitable for the edification of our neighbors. We likewise know that our Lord Jesus Christ will supply to his servants who are seeking only the kingdom of God what is necessary for food and clothing. Therefore one and all should vow perpetual poverty, declaring that they cannot, either individually or in common, acquire any civil right to any stable goods or to any annually recurring produce or fixed income for the sustenance or use of the Society. Rather, let them be content with only the use of necessary things, when the owners permit it, and to receive money and the sale-price of things given them that they may buy what is necessary for themselves.

[12] In choosing to serve under the banner of Jesus, the Society commits itself with others in a mission of reconciliation and justice (Core of Decree 1 of GC 36) that leads us to accompany the outcasts - most of them young people - of this world in their struggle to overcome that poverty which is not God's will, but the consequence of structural injustice in the economic, social and political relations of the world, which keeps most of humanity in inhuman living conditions and threatens the balance of the natural environment. We take the vow of poverty in order to acquire the necessary sensitivity to approach those who suffer the inhuman consequences of that poverty, to accompany their lives from the perspective of the Gospel and to join in their efforts to eradicate that poverty, efforts which include, today more than ever, the commitment to care for the planet and its environment (UAP 2019-2029).

[13] Consistently living the vow of poverty in the Society of Jesus therefore implies permanent tensions and discernment of spirits. The history of the Society, since its foundation, shows these tensions. As we see in the surviving fragments of the Spiritual Diary of St Ignatius and in the Deliberation on Poverty of 1544, it cost him a long exercise in the discernment of spirits to establish in the Constitutions the specific way that Jesuits would live the vow of poverty. He confirms the deepest motives: to resemble the way of life of Jesus and the apostles; to renounce goods from one's own family, profession or the nation in which one lives; the gratuity of ministries; to put everything in common and to depend on religious superiors; closeness and service to the poor. At the same time, the standard of living of the "honest clerics" is set as a parameter and funds are established to guarantee resources for the apostolate, the formation of scholastics and the care of the sick and elderly (Constitutions pp. 81, 816).

[14] The tension between the life of poverty in the houses of the professed and the need for resources to "help souls", care for the sick and support scholastics has always been present in the life of Jesuits. We also find tensions between personal poverty and the tenor of community life in which we live with others. There are also tensions arising from the cultural and social environment in which our life-mission unfolds. It is therefore proper to the Society to link the vow of poverty to the magis rather than to compliance with some standards, however sensible they may be (SE 98). For this reason, discernment based on the circumstances of persons, times and places is always necessary.

[15] In this sense, the words of Pope Francis in his dialogue with the members of the 36th General Congregation are inspiring and challenging: “I think that on this point of poverty St Ignatius has gone far beyond us. When one reads how he thought about poverty, and about that vow that requires us not to change poverty unless to make it more strict, we have to reflect. The view of St Ignatius is not just an ascetic attitude, as if to pinch me so that it pains me more, but it is a love of poverty as a way of life, as a way of salvation, an ecclesial way. Because for Ignatius, and these are two key words that he uses, poverty is both mother and bulwark. Poverty nurtures, mothers, generates spiritual life, a life of holiness, apostolic life. And it is a wall, it defends. How many ecclesial disasters began because of a lack of poverty, including outside the Society, I mean in the whole Church in general. How many of the scandals which I, unfortunately, have to find out about, are born of money. I believe that St Ignatius had a very great intuition. In the Ignatian vision of poverty we have a source of inspiration to help us” (Francis to GC 36a: “To Have Courage and Prophetic Audacity,” 24 October 2016).

[16] The credibility of what we are and what we do will therefore be strengthened the more we embody in ourselves humility and poverty in the style of Jesus. To this end, I invite the whole Society to examine how we currently live the vow of poverty and, allowing ourselves to be led by the Spirit, to renew the commitment to the Lord that we express through the vow of poverty. A renewal that revives the love of poverty as the mother of our coherent life-mission and as the wall of our institute (Constitutions pp. 287, 553).

[17-22] The road to travel (Omission)

[23] Mary of Nazareth shared a poor and humble life with her son Jesus and her husband Joseph. To her we entrust ourselves so that she may accompany us in this examen of our vow of poverty and we may become better followers of her Son.

Arturo Sosa SJ
Superior General

Rome, 27 September 2021
481st anniversary of the foundation of the Society of Jesus

(Original: Spanish)