In collaboration with the Emmaus Mission Study Centre, the EUM Province is underway to embark on a transformative journey with the objective of restructuring the Province in response to emerging needs.

The process of reorganising the Province continues in collaboration with the Emmaus Mission Study Centre. 36 Jesuits and 12 lay people are involved. After interviewing some members, the work continued in presence in 6 discernment groups, all of which worked on the  theme of “forms and figures of government”, and on one of the following themes: strategic planning, people and  community, communication.  

“I report two simple dynamics that we experienced, Jesuits and lay people" Fr Paul Pace SJ said. "The first dynamic was the viewing of the video about NASA’s first space mission in which the man was able to see the earth as seen from the moon for the first time. The provocation of the video was precisely in this “reversal of gaze” from the moon, which was the starting goal of the space mission, to the new vision of the earth that was the real novelty that the mission left in human history. So, we are invited too not only to focus on a goal but also to discover “collaterally” how the journey (the EUM province journey) changes our perception of identity, as individuals and as an extended Ignatian family.  

The second dynamic was a geometric exercise: in a sheet of dots that looked like a starry sky, we were told that there were isosceles triangles of the same size for each quadrant of the sheet. It seemed impossible to connect the dots in such a way as to find such recurring and equal figures, yet slowly, in blind faith that these triangles actually were there, we managed to find and draw them, at least some of them. It seems to me that this provocation explains well the role of “unconditional trust” in seeking and finding in a galaxy, again our apostolic body, recurring regularities, ways of being together in a coordinated and institutional way. The atmosphere in which we worked was serene, knowing that ours was a small contribution in a much larger journey, the EMMAUS Project, and that it was still difficult to understand, in its modalities and vague in the results, what we can expect in the future”. The discernment will continue for each circle in May with an online meeting. The results and the reorganisation proposals will then be delivered to the Provincial by June. 

Jesuits EUM