What Does S.J. Mean?
What Is It To Be A Jesuit?
How Did The Society Of Jesus Begin?
What Is The Jesuit Vision?
What Do Jesuits Do?
What Is The Meaning Of The Vows Which All Jesuits Take?
What Is A Brother?
How Does One Become A Jesuit?
What Is The Cost Of Jesuit Training?
What Do I Do If I’m Discerning My Vocation?
Where And When Are Vocation Seminars Held?
What does S.J. mean?
In Latin: Societas Jesu
In Pilipino: Kapisanan ni Hesus
In English: Society of Jesus (Companions of Jesus)
In Spanish: Compañia de Jesus (Compañeros de Jesus)
Popular name: Jesuits or mga Heswita
The Society of Jesus today has around 25,382 members (72% Priests, 15% Brothers and 13% Scholastics), the largest single order of priests and brothers in the world. There are about 5,226 in North America, 3,588 in South America, 10,203 in Europe, 1,090 in Africa, 5,275 in Asia, and 340 in Australia. In the Philippines, we have around 440 men in Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.
What Is It To Be A Jesuit?
“It is to know that one is a sinner,
yet called to be a companion of Jesus,
as Ignatius was, who begged the Blessed
Virgin to place him with her Son,
and who then saw the Father Himself
ask Jesus, carrying His cross,
to take this pilgrim into his company…”
“It is to engage, under the standard of the cross,
in the crucial struggle of our time
the struggle for faith
and that struggle for justice
which it includes.” - from the 32nd General Congregation Decree on “Jesuits Today”
How Did The Society Of Jesus Begin?
More than four hundred years ago, Ignatius of Loyola, a Basque noble, was seriously injured by a cannonball while fighting to defend the Spanish garrison at Pamplona, against French invaders. As he was recuperating back in the Castle of Loyola, to ease the monotony of being bed-ridden, Ignatius read the only books available in the castle: a Life of Christ and Lives of Saints. As he read these books, the Lord converted Ignatius from a man who hankered for worldly fame and pleasure to a man who desired to distinguish himself in the service of the Eternal King. Upon recovery, Ignatius offered his knightly arms to Our Lady at her shrine in Montserrat.
He was then led by God through almost a year of prayer in Manresa where he grew in understanding of God’s will for him and became a new man in Christ. After a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, he decided he could serve God best by studying for the priesthood. While at the University of Paris, his manner of life, his religious views, and gift for leadership attracted followers. And later, he gathered a group of friends who vowed themselves to poverty and chastity and placed themselves at the disposal of the Pope.
The Pope entrusted various missions to their care and soon they were traveling all over Europe, for the defense and propagation of the Faith. Eventually, they decided that it was for God’s greater glory that they unite themselves into a formally constituted organization by the vow of religious obedience to a superior. They drew up a document outlining the characteristics of the religious order they had in mind. The Compañia de Jesus (Companions of Jesus) would be primarily apostolic, not hidden away in some monastery, but out in the world. Besides the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, they would make a separate fourth vow to go anywhere the Pope would send them.
On Sept. 27, 1540, Pope Paul III approved their petition to form a religious order and also approved their constitution without a single word altered. And so the Society of Jesus was born. Soon, the Jesuits were all over Europe. And by the time Ignatius died in 1556, there were Jesuits who had journeyed to distant lands so that in the Imperial courts of China and Japan, among the swamis of India, in the Congo, Ethiopia, and Brazil, the Word of God could be shared.
Today there are Jesuits in every continent of the world striving to fulfill the mission entrusted to them by God through the Holy Father and their superiors: to be apostles who will bring the Good News to the ends of the earth.
What Is The Jesuit Vision?
Saint Ignatius desired his men to be contemplatives-in-action, men seeking their union with God through active and total service of their fellowmen. He wanted his men to combine a total, personal commitment to Christ and His Cross, with decisive involvement in the transformation and salvation of the world.
Thus, the Jesuit is an apostle: one sent by the Father through Jesus into the world to spread the Good News. The Jesuit then is a man on a mission. He belongs to a community of friends in the Lord who have pledged to accompany Jesus on His mission.
As apostles, Jesuits must be “all things to all men”: men ready to go anywhere, live anywhere, do anything, suffer anything, be anything, in order to be instruments of God’s salvation. Thus, the Society has no one particular apostolate: there is literally no work that a Jesuit may not do, if it is for the greater glory of God.
For the greater glory of God: concretely, that means that the Society must direct its apostolates, firstly, towards whatever reaches more people and does more universal good; secondly, to whatever answers urgent needs which cannot be delayed without endangering the people of God; and lastly, to works that are neglected and that few want to do.
Today, the Society of Jesus, considering these criteria of Ignatius, and aware of the needs and hopes of men to today, focus their service of God and man on “the service of faith and the promotion of justice.”
What Do Jesuits Do?
Jesuits work in parishes, administer the sacraments, do counseling and spiritual direction. Some are engaged in the social apostolate, the retreat apostolate, and in mass media. Some Jesuits are medical doctors, psychiatrists, lawyers, musicians, artists. Some are meteorologists, geophysicists, mathematicians, sociologists, and historians. Some go on foreign missions. Many are educators, among them philosophers and theologians. The only norm for the type of apostolate of a Jesuit is service to God and his people, in accord with the will of his superiors and the corporate thrust of the society which is “the promotion of justice in the service of faith.”
What Is The Meaning Of The Vows Which All Jesuits Take?
The Jesuit takes religious vows which are apostolic. He commits himself until death to the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience. This is so that he may be totally united to Christ and share His own freedom to be at the service of all God’s people. And so, the Jesuit formalizes this commitment, by public vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
In binding the Jesuits, the vows set them free:
free by their vow of poverty, to share the life of the poor, relying on God’s providence, and to use whatever resources they may have not for their own security and comfort, but for service;
free by their vow of chastity, to be men-for-others, in friendship and communion with all, but especially with those who share their mission of service;
free by their vow of obedience, to respond to the call of Christ as made known to them by him whom the Spirit has placed over the Church, and to follow the lead of their superiors, especially the Father General, who has all authority over them.
Moreover, following Ignatius they have asked Christ our Lord to let them render this service in a manner that gives them a personality of their own. They have chosen to give it in the form of a consecrated life, placing themselves at the service not only of the local churches but of the universal Church, by a special vow of obedience to his who presides over the universal Church, namely, the Pope.
What Is A Brother?
The Jesuit Brother is fully a religious in the Society of Jesus. He takes the same vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. He is a Brother because this is what he feels God is calling him to be. God gives him this special vocation and not the priesthood. He is trained and works with the priest as teacher, educator, business manager, sports moderator, engineer, technician, carpenter, accountant, agriculturist, et cetera.
How Does One Become A Jesuit?
First of all, one must have the right intention or motivation to become a Jesuit Priest or Brother.
To be clear on this, one can be helped by having a spiritual director, and by making an appointment with the Vocation Director (See list of Vocation Promoters below) and by attending a Vocation Seminar.
When a person decides to enter Jesuit religious life, he is given tests for psychological and intellectual qualifications. After this, he is interviewed. Then, it is decided whether he ought to enter the novitiate or go through the Prenovitiate program first.
Novitiate. If he is deemed qualified and ready to enter Jesuit religious life, he enters the novitiate where he grows in his prayer life and practices Ignatian living for two years. The Jesuit novice comes to know himself, to know Christ, and to know the Society of Jesus. He learns to live in a religious community. He lives out his experiences gained from his thirty-day “long” retreat with the with the Spiritual Exercises. He goes through “trials” in a mission area, in a parish, in a hospital, in a slum area, in a factory. After two years of growth in the spiritual life, he pronounces his perpetual vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience.
Juniorate. After his First Vows, a Jesuit moves to the juniorate. For one year or two, the junior sharpens his skills in communication by studying literature, composition, and speech intensively. He also engages in some other apostolates besides his primary one which is his studies.
Philosophy. After juniorate, the Jesuit takes two years of philosophy and completes his college undergraduate work, and in some instances, gratitude work.
Regency. Then follows his regency. The Jesuit regent spends this apostolic internship period by spending a number of years participating in the various ministries of the Province. He may be sent to teach in a Jesuit school or to assist Jesuit of other provinces or to engage in apostolates of social action.
Theology. After regency, the Jesuit invests four years to enrich his faith through formal studies in Scripture and Tradition in the theologate. After the third or fourth year of his studies in theology, the Jesuit scholastic who is called to the priesthood is ordained.
The Jesuit Brother ordinarily does not take philosophy nor the four years of theology but instead finishes his four years of College or takes up graduate studies after Juniorate.
Tertianship. The final period of normal religious formation for Brothers and Priests is tertianship, a third year novitiate-like experience in which the mature Jesuit attempts to integrate his past periods of formation and intensifies his contact with God through another “long” retreat, studies, and apostolic activities.
Altogether, formal training occupies the first eight to thirteen years of a Jesuit’s life in the Society. Though his formal training ends with final vows, a Jesuit’s professional and spiritual development is a lifelong endeavor to become a better instrument of the Lord.
What Is The Cost Of Jesuit Training?
If accepted in the Prenovitiate, the applicant is asked be contribute some amount to help defray expenses undertaken by the Society. He is also expected to provide for his own personal needs while in the Prenovitiate.
Anyone, however, who is not able to meet these financial requirements can explain his situation to the Vocation Director, or to the Director of the Prenovitiate who will judge what arrangements are feasible. No one is refused admittance for purely financial reasons.
As soon as the candidate is accepted into the Novitiate, he has no more financial obligations. The Society, with the help of generous benefactors, takes care of financing his whole formation and training in the Society.
What Do I Do If I’m Discerning My Vocation?
Continue to pray, receive the sacraments, write or visit us. Get involved in your parish and your school’s religious activities specially in the liturgy of the Eucharist. Come to the vocation seminar described below.
Refer to the list of addresses and telephone numbers of vocation promoters.
Where And When Are Vocation Seminars Held?
There are seminars about discernment of one’s vocation, about Jesuit Priesthood and Brotherhood, almost every month at Loyola House of Studies on the Ateneo de Manila Campus along Katipunan Road, Loyola Heights, Quezon City. Other Jesuit centers also hold similar activities. Notices about these seminars are posted in many schools and churches.
