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s2smodern

“Pilgrims in our common home, a journey with the universal apostolic preferences”: this was the title of Ejif 2020, a three day meeting due to the extraordinary circumstances that have changed the times and ways. I will give a brief summary of the topics touched, then I will conclude with what surprised me about the experience: the form.

The conference was opened by Fr. General Arturo Sosa SJ who helped us to look at apostolic preferences as a single element: like four fingers of one hand, the fifth finger of the hand is collaboration, necessary to implement any project. The General reminded us of the next Ignatian year, Ignatius and his first companions were able to listen to each other and try to move as a body. The Society is large, it has a complex structure that needs to be efficient. The word "collaboration" cannot remain just a word, we understood this from the speech of Fr. Franck Janin SJ, President of the Conference of European Provincials. Fr. Janin showed us the many and different initiatives of the Society in Europe.

In the following time, day after day, we journeyed with the apostolic preferences, through the perspectives of the speakers: the theologian Theodora Hawksley, Fr. Augusto Zampini (who currently works at the Dicastery for integral human development) and the Jesuit economist Fr. Gael Giraud SJ. Overall, a picture was made up, a single image. Youth ministry, our interventions in areas of poverty, the current environmental emergency, the necessary predisposition to contemplation in order to be free to make decisions: everything appeared to be deeply interconnected. How can we call young people to conversion without being converted, without being authentically rooted in the need to defend Creation, and with it the weakest? How can we do all this without the conversion of the Spiritual Exercises?

But now I would like to go back to the beginning, the form of the meeting. The structure that EJIF 2020 was given by its coordinating committee was a synodal method. What does it mean? Fr. Zampini replied: the synodal method is the method of dialogue, there is dialogue where there is listening. The synod is listening. The speakers had a relatively short time, immediately afterwards a personal prayer time for participants was scheduled, and after that a small group conversation, with each group having a moderator.  What was said was listened to by the others in prayerful silence and finally, as the fruit of each group, questions emerged which were proposed to the speaker, in the conference again, gathered in full. Collaboration between Jesuits can arise from listening, but the ability to listen in this way is a capacity that comes from a life of prayer.

Thanks “Co-Co” (Coordinating Committee), thanks to Christopher Brolly SJ, Bartłomiej Brzóska SJ and Janez Gorenc SJ, as well as Carlos Chuquihuara SJ (their technical support). The emergence of the pandemic led us to a successfully done streaming of the meeting, combined with our ancient spiritual traditions. All this has shown us something of the future rooted in the past.

Nello Brunelli (EUM Province)

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