EJIF Summer 2002 Meeting in Hungary

Report of the Forum 1-5 August 2002

Theme of the Meeting: Community life

Our topic was prepared through a survey of the delegates before the Summer Meeting itself. Starting the meeting we took decision to explore the theme in terms of a workshop: to look at the reality of our lives as community and to explore the resources we have for making and sustaining our community.

We came to see that community is not an unfortunate compromise with our work or mission. Community is integral to our mission, indeed our community is ad missionem. It is central to our witness of the call and new life we have received in Christ.

However we realised that while we have many excellent things to say about community we also have the reality of our experience, especially our negative experience. We live with this tension between the ideal or the theory and the reality. The danger lies in seeing community only as an impossible ideal. This undermines our hope and our desire. It also makes us mistrust our own language about community and its necessity.

When we saw this tension, we also came to understand how it is a subtle source of desolation. It is this desolation that we explored sharing in our practical experience of life in community - the different dynamics of relationships, resistances and denial. The ever greater pull away from community to concentrate on our own life and work or to simply compromise for the sake of peace.

But we did not wish to remain in this, for we come to see that our “realism” was false. It made us powerless and simply gave us an excuse for not genuinely working for that koinonia that the Spirit gives us. This opened up our search for the resources, the first one to be prayer, that we have in overcoming these desolations.

They were ourselves, our own call to the society - a call to a genuine Societas as servants of Christ's mission, for when He calls he creates community. We come with our history. Marked though it is by our failures and disappointments, it also contains our experience of successfully creating relationships and sustaining them. This is our wisdom and knowledge which is always available to us. We also have the encouragement and call of our own documents especially the Exercises, the Constitutions and the decrees of recent congregations, the letters of the General and the solicitous encouragements of the Pope.

We have each other, the wisdom and skills already available to us in our communities and among our friends, whose advice, example and encouragement we may call upon.

We also have the great community of the Church in whom and for whom we live. We have its sacramental means of building community, especially the Eucharist and Reconciliation.

Above all we have God Himself, our relation to him in prayer and with one another, who desires to give us this gift and has placed us in his Society with His Son.

We took these resources and through examples and workshops sought to see them at work in practical ways for building community.

We came to see that there is no one fixed style of Jesuit community. We are men given a mission, but expressed in many different ways, with individual needs and abilities, with great desires and expectations, often drawn from many different places and not in one place or community for a great length of time. Community in the Society, therefore is something that we always have to be creating out of the circumstances and the persons that are given. It is always a process.

Yet this is also a joy and a real sign to the world, especially a world which feels itself threatened by differences and unwilling to accommodate the other. Our community is itself a counter-cultural sign of the difference Christ makes. In our communities our is the fruit of difference. While our difference draws us into the wonder of our unity for it draws us into the mystery of the One who has called us to work with Him. Our love and respect for each other, our willingness to love and honest and transparent communication, to work through our conflicts and disappointments and to work in the ordinary things that sustain our common life, bringing our each others gifts, says to a world of broken relationships and suspicion, that Christ is a new space in which to become human.

We took these things into retreat and made community the grace we sought.

The prayer which we offer is the fruit of these weeks. We also offer some reflections on the qualities of formators and suggestions for helping to create them.

James Hanvey SJ and Darko Perkovic SJ

First announcement

December 2001

With Christmas approaching, the EJIF structure gets again into the "rapids" of preparing the next summer encounter 2002. Indeed, it is a well established tradition now, that the Euro-group of the European Jesuits in Formation (EJIF), comprising both scholastics and brothers in formation, meets each summer in one of the European provinces, starting with a joint celebration of Saint Ignatius feast day and a 4-day forum or work session on a particular topic, followed by a classical 8-day retreat and ending with a two or three day round up and evaluation of the encounter (symposium).

The summer encounter is one of the major activities of EJIF, aiming to help the Jesuits in formation of different provinces to come to know each other and each other's situation so as to lay down the foundations for increased future apostolic cooperation. In the larger context of the European integration process on the economic and political level, EJIF also aims at a better integration of the European Jesuits in formation into the European Society of Jesus as part of a worldwide body. We are convinced that the development of a deeper understanding of our universal Ignatian charisma together with our apostolic mission in Church and society, particularly at the European level, is capital for the new generation of European Jesuits. This is a vast and slow project, but at the same time irreversible and EJIF receives the bull backing of the CEP (Conference of European Provincials and its President) and of Father General, who always shows great interest and enthusiasm for the EJIF cause, as a mean to foster a more integrated European Society of Jesus.

In this light, the next EJIF summer meeting will be a very important one. After the most successful meeting in Portugal (Rodizio), the next meeting will be held in Central Europe, Hungary. Thanks to the warm and generous hospitality of the Hungarian Jesuits, the EJIF 2002 encounter will be held in Dobogokö (forum and symposium) and in Miskolc (retreat) from the 29th of July until the 18th of August.

This summer forum's topic will be the theme of "Jesuit Community Life", a topic of primary concern for the life of every Jesuit in formation in Europe, but it is also a recurrent theme in Father's General's series of letters about formation and community life. We also choose this topic not only for the personal interest of Jesuits in formation, but also as a clear mean of how Jesuits can be present and attractive to the wider society. The way we live together as Companions of the Lord, is felt to be part of our apostolic witness of the Kingdom in a society dominated by solitude, egoism, individuality or superficial consumer type relationships… The topic was practically unanimously accepted by the participants of the last summer meeting in Portugal (Rodizio). 

The forum will be an excellent opportunity to share our experiences, our expectations or even our frustrations and difficulties with regard to community life (it will also include issues as chastity, sexuality, affective maturity, spiritual growth, double belonging etc…). We are very lucky to have as animators of this forum two outstanding experts in this field : Fr. Pepe Morales S.J. (delegate of Father General for Formation, Curia) and Fr. James Hanvey S.J. (teaching the Constitutions at the noviciate, superior of a community of scholastics, spiritual director and theology professor, BRI). Besides the annual visit of the CEP president (Fr. Mark Rotsaert S.J.) and his Socius (Fr. Chris Dyckhoff S.J.), we have the unique chance of receiving the visit of Father General himself to the EJIF summer meeting on the 4th of august, the last day of the EJIF forum. The participants will then have the opportunity to share their conclusions and expectations with Father General on this topic. At the end of the forum, the participants draw a final document with their conclusions, handed over to the CEP and all the European provincials.

For this reason, the Coco (Coordinating Committee of EJIF) will make extra efforts to have a delegate from each province present, including from the Middle East Province. EJIF also attracts two non-European observers (from Puerto Rico and Canada) to its summer meeting ; so that also in those regions something as an EJIF structure can be implemented. It is the worldwide dimension of the Society of Jesus that is made present here.

The second important part of the EJIF encounter is, doing the Ignatian exercises together. This is usually a very strong and highly appreciated European society experience for Jesuits in formation. It completes the three dimensions of an EJIF encounter : reflecting and sharing about our Jesuit life and formation (forum and symposium), social gathering during free, leisure time (sports, social evenings, excursions, social program the two first days of the EJIF encounter) and prayer (daily mass and mi-day prayer, 8-day retreat, renewal of the vows, Saint Ignatius feast day).

Last but not least, another very important aspect of the next EJIF meeting will be the election during the symposium of the new Coco team (renewed every two years). Every delegate will be considered as a possible candidate for the new Coco board.

May I also kindly invite you to have a look at our brand-new EJIF homepage which has recently been put online. Any suggestions or remarks are highly welcome (please send them to Ludger Joos, e-mail Ludger.Joos@Jesuiten.org)! 

Georges Ruyssen S.J. (Coco team)

The schedule is as follows:

• July 29th: arrivals and gathering in Budapest
    
• July 30th and 31st: social days of visit of Budapest and celebration of Saint Ignatius Feast, together with departure for Dobogoko (conference centre of the Hungarian Jesuits)
    
• From August 1st until 5th in the morning: EJIF Forum on "Community life". We have the great opportunity to have two outstanding animators with lots of experience: Fr. James Hanvey SJ (BRI) and Fr. Pepe Morales SJ (Curia, responsible for formation). Of course, as always, the President of the Conference of European Provincials, Fr. Mark Rotsaert SJ, and his Socius, Fr. Chris Dyckhoff SJ, are present with us during those days.
    
• From August 5th until 14th in the morning: EJIF 8-day retreat directed by Fr. Franz Meures SJ (Provincial of GSE) and assisted by Fr. Pepe Morales SJ, James Hanvey SJ and Fr. Tamas Beothy SJ (HUN). The retreat takes place in Miskolc (college of the Hungarian Jesuits). On the 5th of August and also on the 14th of August, we will travel and have the opportunity to visit some tourist sights in Hungary and also renew our vows.
    
• From August 15th until 18th: EJIF Symposium in Dobogoko; this year the symposium takes three days in order to write some final document directed to the provincials. Remember that this year the Coco-team will also have to be renewed, so elections, be prepared!
    
• August 18th during the day: departures.
    

Coco-team:

Darko PERKOVIC SJ <darko.perkovic@ftidi.hr> 
Ludger JOOS SJ <ludger.joos@jesuiten.org> 
Georges RUYSSEN SJ <georgesruyssen@hotmail.com> 

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