Opening of the Tertianship in Dublin.

Greetings from the European tertianship in Dublin. This is the fourteenth year of the tertianship in Ireland, and once more we have a group of 11 tertians, from 10 different countries, and provinces, from four different continents: the Czech Republic, France, Poland, Slovakia, Syria, Canada, China, Guyana, Indonesia, and the United States.

The ministries they come from are equally varied: some were university professors or researchers, others involved in Jesuit formation, in direct pastoral ministries in parishes and chaplaincies, others with CLC and JRS. Now they will be spending 8 months in the ‘school of the heart’: after the long years spent at the school of the mind, and a few years of ordained ministry, they will have the opportunity to have a good look at their Jesuit life and vocation in the light of their experience as Jesuits.

The most important experience of tertianship is certainly the Spiritual Exercises, which will start on November 18th: do keep us in your prayers. During the weeks before the retreat we are having another look at the writings of St Ignatius, and after the retreat the tertians will go for a ten week experiment, mostly in situations that are new to them.

This is a time of great blessing and insight for the tertians. As someone once said, every group of tertians refounds the Society of Jesus anew, and this sounds even more true in these times of profound change. Do keep us in your prayer from time to time.