You are listening to God's voice to define your mission, and among the four fields of interest you are praying and reflecting on, you have chosen that of "Christ and social reality". I would like to share a process with you that the Society of Jesus is going through today, in its desire to fulfil its mission to promote Justice and serve the poor. We call this process: The Social Apostolate Initiative.

You asked Fr. Michael Czerny, the secretary for Social Apostolate in Rome, to come to talk to you about this dimension of the mission of the Society. Unfortunately, when the request was made to him, Fr. Czerny was already was already engaged in other meetings in various continents, and he could not accept your invitation. He asked me to express to you his regret at not being able to be here with you. I had the pleasure of accompanying the initiative quite closely on the European level, and I am happy to share with you our experience up to now, the richness of this ongoing process and the hope it engendered in us.

Our search can throw light on yours, and the result of your search for your mission can throw light on ours. I see in the workshop entitled, "Christ and social reality", there is the following area of interest: "the Society and CLC together at the service of the poor". Hopefully this sharing will lead to a more concrete collaboration on the level of local commitments between Jesuits and the communities of CLC and its individual members. In this way we may help each other to follow the Lord and serve Him in the poor.

The grace of Hong Kong revealed an explicit call to a deep conversion to the "poor and humble" Christ, to the poor and the downtrodden, and to the commitment to the service of Justice and Peace. On all levels of community life you are, therefore, well on your way to fulfilling that call and making great progress. Before speaking about the Initiative of Social Apostolate, I would like to review briefly with you some of the steps some of us have already taken in this process.

Your experience as World community makes you aware of the immensity of the situations of poverty and misery, of the diverse forms of injustice and, of the dramatic situations in which so many men and women are living. The neoliberal economic situation which is becoming ever more widespread is made for the success of the rich and the strong, of those who hold power. There is no place in it for the small and the poor. They are useless and are an "excess". In the North as in the South, in all countries, the types of poverty and exclusion are multiplying. This situation is deeply offencive to the Lord and to humanity, the pearl of his creation. It is a radical issue for our faith and a challenge to our personal and community life, as well as to the way we proclaim the Good News.

In the Church and in our Communities, the Spirit of the Lord has already helped us take great steps in contantly rediscovering the way of the evangelical option for the poor and the Promotion of Justice. We can thank God for that.

We know that it is a fertile path which bears a lot of fruit. The poor really evangelize us. They make us discover again and again the deep meaning of the Gospel - Good News for the Poor. Working for the Justice of the Kingdom, serving the poor, becoming closer to them, becoming their neighbour - all of this is an immense grace we both ask for and receive. It is a path we cannot avoid without denying our Christian identity. It is also at the heart of Ignatian identity and spirituality.

It is also a difficult and demanding path. The struggle for justice which involves power and people's riches will always provoke a lot of misunderstandings, conflicts and divisions. And the resistances and oppositions exist first of all within us - the poverty of the poor is not attractive. The world and the media keep repeating, "woe to the poor, the excluded and the marginalized", and they accuse them of all the evils of the earth. Our egoisms and our riches, too, separate us from them. The path to Justice and to the poor is a long-term journey of courage and fidelity, which will always meet with misunderstanding, because the Justice of the Kingdom is much more global and radical than mere human justice.

But this way is also the way of joy and the way of the Kingdom. We have already heard and experienced the Beatitude of the Poor in the Father's Kingdom, a Kingdom which is the true reality of our life and world for us. "Blessed are the poor for theirs is the Kingdom of God", and blessed are we, too, when we become poor, when we live closer to them, with them, when we become their neighbour.

I now come to the Initiative of the Social Apostolate itself.

The expression "social apostolate" refers to a great variety of social apostolic experiences and works in society and culture. It is an inclusive and wide expression, which indicates a shared and analysed coexistence with suffering, injustice and poverty. No particular approach or activity are specified or excluded, neither those more directly for and with the poor, nor the more intellectual ones of formation and studies. You know as well as I do the many and very varied works of the Society and the Jesuit companions in the social field in all regions of the world, both in the poor and in the richer ones.

The Initiative is an ongoing process

In his speech at the Congress in Naples, of which you have received a summary, Fr. Kolvebach said to us: "It is the passionate, insistent and urgent cry of the poor that has moved the Society towards Decree IV of the 32^nd General Congregation". In that decree, the mission of the Society has been defined as "the service of faith, of which the promotion of justice is an absolute demand". Decree 4 has had a powerful impact deeply renewing the apostolic activity of the Society of Jesus and the Society itself.

But the situation has certainly changed in twenty years, especially since 1989. In 1995, GC 34 reaffirmed "the unique mission of the service of faith and the promotion of justice", but there was a new awareness of other dimensions of the struggle for justice, especially "the inculturated promotion of the Gospel and the dialogue with other religious traditions". How do these changes influence our work for justice?

In 1995, shortly after the GC 34, the Social Apostolate Initiative was born. The central issue was how, as Jesuits, to bring the justice of the Gospel to society and to culture. Bit by bit a small number of companions involved in the social apostolate began to answer this question on the how, the boundaries, the elements, the method and the hopes of our social apostolate.

From mid-1995 to the beginning of 1997, more than thirty meetings were held all over the world. The results sent to Rome were handed on to an international task force, which then proposed the main themes of an international Congress centering on three points. These were firstly, spirituality and the project of our social apostolate (the Why), secondly, the contexts in which we work (where we work and where we live) and thirdly, the means and the methods we use (our way of proceeding)

160 Jesuits from the four corners of the world met for a week in June 1997. There was gathered here an immense richness of traditions, cultures, religious and spiritual expressions. It was a powerful moment of meeting each other, of sharing experiences, of listening and reflection on the diversity and the complexity of our Social Apostolate. Common questions, convictions, process and attitudes gradually appeared at the origin of our commitment to the poor, at the core of our life and work with them, and as so many reasons to continue.

Thanks to the great work of synthesis by Fr. Michael Czerny, Secretary of the Social Apostolate in Rome, the first results of our sharing and reflections have been transformed into a video "Social Apostolate: Why?" and a document called "The Characteristics of the Social Apostolate of the Society of Jesus".

Just as in 1986 the "Characteristics of Jesuit Education", which are a common reference in this particular apostolic field, were published, so also, at the end of 1999 or the beginning of 2000, Fr. General hopes to be able to formally publish a more permanent edition of the "Characteristics of Social Apostolate". Then we shall be able to use them in workshops, meetings and study groups, in courses, and during days of prayer or retreats. Finally, what is important is not so much to know the "Characteristics" intellectually, but more to integrate them spiritually and interiorize them. In so doing they may help us enter concretely into the service of the little ones and the poor, that Christ may be praised and served in His poor.

Video and Characteristics

The video SOCIAL APOSTOLATE : WHY? (I have an English, Spanish and French version with me) is not the chronicle of or a documentary on the Naples Congress. It present some aspects of the Social Apostolate as it is found at the end of the '90s and the questions with which we are confronted.

The document CHARACTERISTICS OF JESUIT SOCIAL APOSTOLATE (100 pages in English, published in June '98; the French and Spanish translations are already available or should available very soon) is not a description of all that we are doing and much less a doctrine. In Naples, however, we noticed that we have our own ways of approaching problems, and we have common convictions, tensions and questions. The Characteristics invite us especially to have a global outlook and not to forget any important issue of the Social Apostolate. Their aim is to help unify the great variety of our initiatives and efforts in the social apostolate. Just like the Spiritual Exercises, they intend being, first of all, a guide and an encouragement for personal and group reflection.

These two supports are temporary. They are mainly working instruments. They are intended for Jesuits and the social apostolate communities, but also for all those with whom we work and who help us in this ministry. And therefore, they are also for you, the CLC Communities, who are seeking to deepen the social dimension of your mission.

Let us look at the main themes of the Characteristics. We must once more repeat that the originality is not so much in the content itself, interesting though it may be, as in the process by which it invites us to question ourselves on a certain number of central issues. These central issues characterise our social apostolate.

II What inspires us? The origins

Just like Ignatius and his first Companions, it is the desire to follow Christ "poor and humble" that renders us friends of the poor. There is a paradox in the poor in that they experience very great sufferings and yet Jesus declares them "Blessed". This paradox provokes us to react. We live a mixture of indignation and tenderness that we call "Compassion", which binds us to them. The Spiritual Exercises, the Constitutions, the documents of the GC and all the social teachings of the Church strengthen the compassion we feel for and live with them.

III What do we do and how do we live?

What is essential for us and which defines our mission, is not so much to do this or that, as to be available, to be in solidarity and be commitedin every aspect of our lives. As we have already seen, no activity is either specific to or excluded from the Social Apostolate. There is a catalogue of the different activities of the Social Apostolate which shows clearly this diversity.

We also felt that the style of our community life and where we live are also essential for our social apostolate, to help us remain faithful and discern the Magis.

The answer to the question: "What are we doing and how are we living?" could be reduced to a triple friendship - friends of the Lord, friends of the poor, friends in the Lord.

III What are the elements of our work? Three principal aspects should be retained here (I'll summarize as much a possible here).

The reading of the situation. We must understand clearly why the poor go through so much suffering. They are not born poor, but are incessantly rendered poor. Reality is complex, hense the importance of cultural, economical, political, religious and multidisciplinary analyses, carried out by a team, sometimes even with the persons concerned.

The promotion of work. In order to become more efficient, we try to work as develop working as a team and networks that are constantly developing. We also develop the ability for evaluation and planning.

The consolidation of the social apostolate. GC 32 told us that the promotion of justice "should be our life concern and a dimension of all our apostolic efforts". It is definitely not a question of "leaving the promotion of justice to specialists". The social apostolate should, therefore, be at the core of the apostolic mission of each Province.

IIV What is our way of proceeding?

It is useless to say that discernment is a central and vital characteristic of Ignatian social work.

Permanent tensions exist and we are always "in progression towards" the Magis. Those tensions most frequently mentioned are between visibility and discretion, between the "head" or the "feet", and between the charism and the institution. This can be summed up in tension between work for justice as Good News or work for justice as effective social change.

V Why do we still hope?

Real hope for humanity and for the world is a gift. It is the fruit, both of our love for Christ poor and humble, and of our compassion for the poor. If work is done well and in service of the poor of the Kingdom as an extension of our faith, then our hope will be constantly reborn. The example of our martyrs is a reminder to us of this.

This solidarity, compassion, and life with the poor, has evangelized and converted more than one of us. The "recentering" of the mission by GC 32 in 1975 on the service of faith and the promotion of justice has made the Society rediscover its mission in today's world and returned it to the core of its spirituality centred on Christ poor and servant of the poor.

The social apostolate initiative is a great enterprise of reflection and discernment in order to better respond to the new challenges of the work for justice. We already have many rich experiences in the social apostolate specifically in works undertaken by CLC members or communities. It is on this basis of respective experiences, that we should share and promote concrete actions together, in our common desire to serve the Lord through his poor.