If we follow Christ, persecution will come, as we have discovered through experience in so many countries when we try to serve faith and promote justice. Not all of us will witness to Christ by shedding our life’s blood in sacrifice, but all of us should unreservedly offer him our whole lives. The essential thing, the Jesuit thing, is to always confess him before people. As I said to the General Congregation in December 1971, “The thing that counts is that we really resolve to follow Christ even without knowing what sacrifice this following of him will certainly demand of us.”
To be able to carry out this vocation of ours, the Society today must count on men and on communities imbued with the “mind of Christ” who serve Christ without limit or reservation, who joyfully lead lives of evangelical simplicity and continuing self-sacrifice, thus offering to our contemporaries an ideal for living, and to the generous youth of our day a model and way of life.
This is the real secret of success in our mission in the Church. This will be the source of new vocations: “the blood of martyrs is the seed of vocations.” This is the Jesuit that St. Ignatius, that the Pope, and above all that the Eternal King wishes today to find in each one of us.
No comments:
Post a Comment