Advisory Board Reflects on Fall Gathering Reports

On Feb. 16 and 17, the Apostolic Planning Advisory Board (pictured here), met to review and reflect on the reports of the discernments from the 17 regional gatherings with Jesuits and lay colleagues, the fall meetings of 34 Jesuit communities, and two day-long gatherings of Jesuits in formation. In the week before the meeting, one board member commented that the experience of reading the reports was rather like an experience of deep listening. In their deliberations last week, the board followed the spiritual conversation model to discern and prepare the key areas of focus around which consoling consensus emerged. The board will soon meet again to further refine their recommendations and begin drafting the apostolic plan.

In March, the board will share with us a summary of the many reports. It will be similar to the recently published summary of the synod U.S. church, entitled National Synthesis of the People of God in the United States of America for the Diocesan Phase of the 2021-2023 Synod, and offer more detail about the timeline going forward.

Jesuits in Formation Gather on Apostolic Planning

The young Jesuits in formation gathered at the Loyola Jesuit Center in Morristown, NJ, for three days of prayer and reflection on December 28-30. Together with Provincial Fr. Joseph O’Keefe, SJ, they had the opportunity to pray and reflect about the future of the USA East Province. Their discussions made an important contribution to the apostolic plan currently in development.

Regional Apostolic Gatherings

This week we conclude our posts of group shots from our Apostolic Planning regional gatherings. This week we showcase the North Carolina gathering above and the Philadelphia and Portland, Maine, groups below. Thanks for all their prayers and input. The information shared at all reginal gatherings and Jesuit community meetings are now helping to create the reports necessary to guide the development of the UEA Apostolic Plan. Check here and on ApostolicPlanning.com for periodic updates and details.

More Regional Apostolic Gatherings

We continue to post a few group shots from our Apostolic Planning regional gatherings. This week we showcase the Boston gathering and Boston Spanish groups above, and the New Jersey-Long Island and New York Spanish groups below. Thanks for all their hard work and input. Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!

Spiritual and Fruitful Regional Gatherings

Over the last two months, Jesuit communities throughout the USA East Province, along with more than 400 lay colleagues from our Jesuit works, organizations, and province staff, gathered to engage with each other in communal discernment regarding our ministries and the future needs of the Church and the people we serve. Each region will soon provide written reports that will help in the development of an Apostolic Plan for Jesuits USA East. We will continue to provide periodic updates on the process and will post relevant links and documents to our Resources page on the Apostolic Planning website.

In late September, we shared pictures of the first three regional gatherings in Buffalo, Bronx-Manhattan, and Gloucester-Weston. Over the next month or so, we will share images from our other regions, in alphabetical order. Today we highlight the Atlanta (above) and Baltimore (below) groups.

Four Dreams Film Competition – Grand Prize Winner

Over the last four weeks, to better understand our context as we engage in our Apostolic Planning journey, we have shared the winning short films of the Four Dreams contest for each of the UAP’s. The judges also awarded a Grand Prize winner that we share today. This short film, Dreaming in a Destroyed Country, was directed by Ziad Tannouri from Saint Joseph University in Beirut, Lebanon. It is a profile of Sr. Caroline El Rai, director of a Sacred Hearts School in Bauchrieh, who despite very difficult challenges, leads others to have faith in tomorrow.

Four Dreams Film Competition – Care for our Common Home

Continuing the series to understand our context as we engage in our USA East Apostolic Planning journey, we offer this week the winner of the Ecology—Care for our Common Home in the international Four Dreams film competition. This video, The Book Smuggler Poet, was directed by João Borges Mesquita Guimarães Santos from Universidade Católica de Pernambuco in Recife, Brazil.

Four Dreams Film Competition – Walking with the Excluded

In continuing the series to understand our context as we engage in our USA East Apostolic Planning journey, we offer this week the winner of the Journeying with Youth video in the international Four Dreams film competition. This video, Guests, was directed by Aldo Isaac Tiscareño Rodríguez from Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente in Guadalajara, México.

Four Dreams Film Competition – Walking with the Excluded

As part of our series to help understand our context as we walk through our USA East Apostolic Planning journey, we offer this week the winner of the Walking with the Excluded video from the international Four Dreams film competition. This video, Angels of the Night, was directed by Ana Beatriz Mota Acioli from Universidade Católica de Pernambuco in Recife, Brazil.

International “Four Dreams” Film Competition

To help understand our context for the Apostolic Planning process underway, we’d like to take the next few weeks to highlight the winners of the international “Four Dreams” film competition open to students of Jesuit colleges and universities. The challenge was to film a 5-minute short highlighting someone living out one of the four Universal Apostolic Preferences. There was a winner for each Apostolic Preference, plus an overall grand prize.

Today we share the winning video for Spirituality, Light in Manuel, by Beatriz Garrido Bellón from Universidad Loyola Andalucía in Spain.

New Document from the United State Conference of Catholic Bishops

The United State Conference of Catholic Bishops has released a document that is the result of a nearly year-long listening and discernment process throughout the Catholic Church in America. Entitled The National Synthesis of the People of God in the United States of America for the Diocesan Phase of the 2021-2023 Synod, this report is the first step for an “apostolic plan” for the Catholic Church across all dioceses in the U.S.. The report is a great example of how through engagement of religious and lay partners, real dialogues can unfold that bring to light where the Holy Spirit is leading those who seek a common solution to providing for the common good. While this is a much larger endeavor than our own Jesuit Province Apostolic Planning process, it may serve as a good example of how the first steps of listening and prayerful collaboration can help pave the way to hope and change. We think you’ll find it interesting, especially those of you who may have participated in some of the conversations within your own parish communities.

Amidst a Changing World, Jesuits Look forward

On Sat., Sept. 17, 2022, the first three regional gatherings took place: the Western New York gathering at the Canisius Jesuit community in Buffalo, the Bronx-Manhattan group at the Province Conference Center in New York, and the Gloucester-Weston gathering at the Campion Center in Weston, Mass. These gatherings revolve around a central question:

Inspired by the Universal Apostolic Preferences, prayerfully recall moments when you have heard the cries and longings of people searching for God, of the poor and excluded, of young people yearning for hope, and of the earth in need of care.

As I reflect on the apostolic works sponsored by the Society of Jesus on the East Coast, how do we as the USA East Province accompany those in need and respond to those cries and longings? In our ministries, what do we need to do differently, more creatively, or with deepened commitment?

Learn more about apostolic planning in the USA East Province from the recent article in JESUITS magazine.

Apostolic Planning and the Journey of Abraham

Please pray for our USA East Jesuits and the more than 300 Lay Colleagues who will join in regional discernment gatherings this fall on the Apostolic Planning process for the province. Father General Arturo Sosa, SJ, often likens the spiritual journey of apostolic planning to the journey of Abraham.

The LORD said to Abram: Go forth from your land, your relatives, and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.

I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. All the families of the earth will find blessing in you.

Abram went as the LORD directed him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran.

Genesis 12:1-4

Three Spiritual Dispositions for Apostolic Planning: Joy, Imagination and Boldness

As Lay Colleagues and Jesuits from across the USA East Province approach our communal discernment about our shared apostolic future, we are happy to share with you a beautiful personal reflection that Fr. Matt Malone, SJ, has prepared for us: Three Spiritual Dispositions for Apostolic Planning: Joy, Imagination and Boldness. Fr. Malone quotes Pope Francis, “The ‘Church’s strength does not reside in herself and in her planning or organizational abilities,’ Pope Francis has said, ‘but rests hidden in the deep waters of God. And these waters stir up our aspirations and desires.’ The process of envisioning the future, in other words, of discerning our aspirations and desires, will come to nothing if it does not proceed from a living faith, from hearts that are seized by the name of Jesus.” Let us offer a prayer for ourselves that we might allow ourselves to be seized “by the name of Jesus.” We are encouraged to read and ruminate over how the dispositions of joy, imagination and boldness are present in our lives.

Phase 1 of Apostolic Planning is set to begin

Over the last year, the recently-founded USA East Province has been preparing for its first Province-wide Apostolic Planning Process. The heritage provinces of Maryland, New York, and New England have not engaged in Apostolic Planning in nearly forty years.

Now, Phase 1 is set to begin. During the fall, each Jesuit community will gather on three occasions to participate in communal apostolic discernment sessions. The Jesuit community at Gonzaga (Washington, DC) will meet for their first session over the Labor Day weekend. Also, the first of fourteen regional gatherings of Lay Colleagues will begin on September 17.

Our Jesuit brothers and priests who are members of the province health care communities will be praying for us through the fall using a special designed prayer guide, pictured here.

Over the next months, updates on progress will be shared with you.

Ignatian Individual and Communal Discernment

In the Letter to the Hebrews, we read: “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; he went out, not knowing where he was to go. By faith he sojourned in the promised land as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs of the same promise; for he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and maker is God.” This passage is quoted frequently by Rev. Arturo Sosa, SJ, the Superior General of the Society of Jesus. He frequently associates the figure of Abraham with the Society of Jesus as we discern the shared apostolic future of the USA East Province.

Let’s pause briefly and continue to reflect and give gratitude for the great gift of Ignatian spirituality and of discernment of spirits in particular. Here are two brief descriptions for each one of these two modalities of Ignatian discernment: Ignatian Individual Discernment and Ignatian Communal Discernment as part of the Process of Apostolic Planning. The senior and informed Jesuits in our health care centers will be praying for the Jesuits and Lay Colleagues participating in apostolic discernment this fall. A beautiful prayer and reflection guide has been developed for them. Its overarching theme is the figure of Abraham. They will be praying that like Abraham, we might be open to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.

USA East Jesuit Planification Apostolica

You may have noticed this Spanish-language version of the apostolic planning logo. Groups of Spanish-speaking lay collaborators will be meeting in four different regions in the fall. This work is being guided by Sindy Collazo of the Office of Ignatian Spirituality of the USA East Province, together with local conveners.

Ignatian Indifference

In this post, we recommend an article to all those who will be participating in apostolic planning in the fall. As Robert Doud points out in in the first sentence of his article, Ignatian Indifference and Today’s Spirituality, “we do not usually think of indifference as a good thing.“ It is hard to imagine a better way to begin a reflection on Ignatian indifference! Doud then takes the reader on a journey that begins with our commonsense view of indifference and proceeds from there toward a full understanding of Ignatian indifference. This is the spiritual quality of those persons who seek to know the will of God and of those who seek to do the will of God. In our regional gatherings and our Jesuit community meetings in the fall, the gift of Ignatian indifference will help us to discover anew the call of Christ and discover anew the will of God for the USA East Province. We are being asked to leave aside our own apostolic preferences and embrace the Society’s Universal Apostolic Preferences. Only the grace of Ignatian indifference can enable us to make this exchange. Is it any wonder that we are taking time to pray and reflect so that all of us can be open to promptings of the Holy Spirit. This is definitely worth a read both for the novice in Ignatian spirituality as well as for the veterans among us.

Jesuit Predispositions Toward Apostolic Planning

A feature of Apostolic Planning is its power to surface a Jesuit’s mindset(s), even toward Apostolic Planning itself. This power is observable in “intellectual critiques” and “emotional reactions” that it can elicit in the participants. These reactions could be fear of change or frustration because of the perceived ineffectiveness of previous Apostolic Plans among many others. For this reason, individual “remote” spiritual preparation (July 2022) and “proximate” spiritual preparation (three weeks prior to the first session of Apostolic Planning) are essential to rediscover our essential individual spiritual predispositions. This document from our Resources page reflects on these productive and counter-productive predispositions for apostolic planning.

While written for Jesuits, lay colleagues will also gain good insights from these as we prepare for apostolic discernment in our regional gatherings.

Listening Actively

Listening actively is a personal quality that all participants in communal discernment should possess or endeavor to possess, especially when the results of that discernment will influence the apostolic future of the Society of Jesus on the East Coast. In the fall, the spiritual conversations in our Jesuit Communities and Regional Gatherings will invite us into the grace that we hear in the Second Note in the Contemplation to "Attain the Love of God in the Spiritual Exercises." There, Ignatius observes that “love consists in a mutual sharing of goods. ”The “good” that we will be sharing in the fall is the fruit of our prayer together. This will require “vulnerability” from all participants.

Damian Zynda from McQuaid Jesuit observed in a Zoom meeting last week that vulnerability does not have to do with speaking; it has to with “allowing ourselves to be influenced by the experience and perspective of another person.” The East Coast Jesuits and Lay Colleagues who will participate in communal discernment next fall will begin a “Summer Spiritual Journey” beginning on July 8. For an effective “mutual sharing of goods,” active listening is required. Read on about “What does it mean to truly listen to the other?”