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Meeting of the Czech Province.

At the beginning of the New Year, from 2nd to 4th January, almost thirty Czech Jesuits from different communities all around the country gathered for an annual meeting of the province. It was hosted in a Jesuit Centre for Spirituality and Spiritual Exercises called the Cologne Monastery (Kolinsky klaster). Also a pilgrimage to the Czech capital Prague was included in the programme.

At the beginning Father Provincial Josef Stuchly gave an introduction about the state of the Czech province, about the restructuring process of the Society and the current topic of merging of the Czech and Slovak provinces. Discussions and reflections on the concrete steps to be taken continued in small sharing groups, followed by plenary talks.

Next morning, at the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus (Wednesday, January 3rd), a titular feast of the Society, the group moved to Prague for a small pilgrimage for vocations. The participants celebrated the Holy Mass at the altar of St. Stanislaus Kostka, a saint patron of youth and Jesuit novices, in the Church of the Most Holy Saviour in the complex of Clementinum, near the Charles Bridge in the city centre. The Mass was presided by the Jesuit chaplain of a local academic parish, Jan Regner, who spoke about  God´s call and the Jesuit vocation. Then there was a time to visit the Clementinum, the first Jesuit college in the Bohemian lands, and the National Library of the Czech Republic, today housed in the historical building. The Jesuits were welcomed by the director general of this most important Czech library.

Besides the restructuring process, the universal preferences of the Society were another current topic of the meeting to which an other part of the programme was dedicated. The preferences most frequently mentioned by the Czech Jesuits were the Spiritual Exercises and the intellectual apostolate, especially the pastoral care of the university students, which already has a long tradition in the Czech province.

The meeting was closed by the Holy Mass with the renewal of vows of young Jesuits. The sermon was given by the master of the Czech and Slovak novices Jan Adamik (from the noviciate in Ruzomberok) who spoke about two questions that all of us have to ask. The first concerned our identity – who we are, and the second one related to our vision – to where we are going. And the Jesuit spirituality helps us to answer both questions adequately.

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s2smodern