Main excerpts of the Pope's powerful address to the 35th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus, yesterday:
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As you well know from having made the meditation "on the Two Standards" under the direction of Saint Ignatius, our world is the stage of a battle between good and evil, and there are powerful negative forces at work, causing those tragic situations of material and spiritual enslavement of our contemporaries, a situation against which you repeatedly declared your intention to fight, striving for the service of faith and the promotion of justice.
These forces occur today in many ways, but particularly clearly through cultural trends that often become dominant, such as subjectivism, relativism, hedonism, practical Materialism. That is why I have asked [in the letter to the Congregation] for your renewed commitment to promote and defend Catholic doctrine "particularly on the focal points today strongly attacked by secular culture"... . The issues today continually discussed and questioned, the salvation of all people in Christ, sexual morality, marriage, and the family, must be deepened and illuminated in the context of contemporary reality, but keeping in harmony with the Magisterium, in a way which avoids causing confusion and doubt among the People of God.
I know and understand that this is particularly sensitive and challenging for you and several of your brothers, especially those engaged in theological research, in inter-religious dialogue and dialogue with the contemporary culture. Precisely for this reason, I have asked and I invite you to reflect again today, to find the fullest sense of what your characteristic fourth vow of obedience to the Successor of Peter, which does not only imply readiness to be sent on mission to far off lands, but also in true Ignatian spirit – to feel themselves “with the Church and in the Church” – to "love and serve" the Vicar of Christ on earth with that "effective and affective" devotion which shall make you his precious and irreplaceable collaborators at the service of the universal Church.
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In this spirit of obedience to the will of God, in Jesus Christ, which also means humble obedience to the Church, I invite you to continue and to complete the work of your congregation, and I join you in a prayer taught by Saint Ignatius at the end Exercises – a prayer I always pray, which seems too big, almost to the point that I dare put it in words, however, we should always repeat it again: "Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my intellect and all my will, everything that I have and hold, you have given them to me. O Lord, I return them to you as yours, to be governed by your will. Give me your love and your grace, and that is enough for me."(Spiritual Exercises 234).
