Intro

Dear Fathers and Brothers,

Peace of Christ.

When you glanced through the decrees of the recent General Congregation, you surely noticed that there is no decree about what makes most Jesuits' everyday environment: community life as we live it in the Society. Actually, however, community life was not neglected. The summarizing set of norms which ended the updating of the Constitutions is based on Master Ignatius's concept of our community life, enriched by all that the General Congregations have said on the topic since the Thirty-First General Congregation (NC 314-330).

In other parts of its work, the recent General Congregation recognized a close link between our apostolic community and our apostolic chastity. The decree on chastity calls on each of us to take responsibility for the development of community life. It reminds us in one paragraph that prayer and sharing our spiritual experiences ought to mark our daily life and, in another, that community life must not be self-centered but open to hospitality and solidarity (GC 34, 250-251).

The decree on poverty could hardly have overlooked our sharing of material things in community, which basically shapes our style of life; and it could hardly have ignored greater solidarity and transparency in our sharing with those who need material help (GC 34, 285-286).

And finally, the decree on vocation promotion. It comes back constantly to the issue of the witness the community gives or does not give. "Do our communities remain mysterious to all except Jesuits, or are they open and welcoming to those who seek us?" (GC 34, 292-295).

Did we need a separate decree to say more on community? The General Congregation admitted that it could not improve on Decree 11 of the Thirty-Second General Congregation (GC 34, 250 and notes 10 and 21). Though it emphasized certain things – hospitality and solidarity, partnership and mutual help, exchange and sharing for the fulfillment of Christ's mission – the General Congregation left it to the ordinary life of the Society to take charge of this crucial renewal of community life, "our way of proceeding on the way to God". So as soon as it was feasible after the Congregation, every one of our communities was invited to use the year's "ex-officio" letter to give its verdict on our community life.

It is important to acknowledge how seriously the communities, with very few exceptions, reflected on what is required for us to live together as brothers, as friends in the Lord sent on mission like the apostles. Reading the hundreds of letters that evoke the happy experiences and the hard things in community life, one senses that men everywhere honestly yearn for a new departure: We can no longer be satisfied with being more or less united in a worldwide apostolic body. We must grow together as servants of the Christ's mission in the real community life that we experience.

All of this comes up now as though the Society had been being prepared for a sudden urgent insight that we need to understand our apostolic community life more clearly and in detail. So it happened that during the past few years (especially during the Ignatian year), the Society rediscovered prayerful discernment in the vital experience of Spiritual Exercises. As a consequence of that, the Society could re-envision the way Master Ignatius designed into the Constitutions, while updating them with the Complementary Norms. Now, finally, everything seems to be calling us to live again the apostolic community experience of the first companions who preceded us in this endeavor to grow together through the sharing of a common mission, Christ's own, as friends who all have the Lord as companion. The Society has expressed this charism of our origin and foundation concretely in many variations on community life, every one of them fashioned to realize the mission of Christ.