Mass with Jesuits on the Feast of St. Ignatius

Jeremiah 20:7-9; 1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1; Luke 14:25-33

Dear brothers, peace be with you.

It is a joy to be with you on this feast of our father, Ignatius of Loyola. It is especially meaningful to be in a part of the Society of Jesus that is young, alive, and growing at a moment when so much of our body is learning to become smaller with grace. I want to begin, as Jeremiah does, with an admission: “You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived; you overpowered me and prevailed.” That is not a comfortable way to describe a vocation, and yet every Jesuit recognizes it. Ignatius was ambushed by grace at Pamplona. None of us, if we are honest, chose this path the way we might choose a career. We were seduced by a fire that, once lit, could not be put out — “a fire shut up in my bones,” as the prophet says.

Jesus, in today’s Gospel, will not let us romanticize that fire. Large crowds are following him, full of enthusiasm, and he turns and tells them plainly: count the cost first. Sit down, as one does before building a tower or going to war, and ask honestly whether you have what it takes to finish what you begin. Discipleship, for Jesus, is never an impulse. It is a decision made eyes wide open about everything it will cost — family, security, even one’s own life.

Just a few months ago in Rome, Pope Leo XIV said something to us as, Major Superiors, that speaks directly into this Gospel. He told us plainly: “the Church needs you at the frontiers — whether they be geographical, cultural, intellectual or spiritual. These are places of risk, where familiar maps are no longer sufficient.” That is exactly Luke’s arithmetic of discipleship, translated into our own moment. The Holy Father named some of these frontiers concretely:

• the synodal path the whole Church is walking;
• the wound of reconciliation in a world “torn apart by conflict, inequality and abuse”;
• the frontier of artificial intelligence and technology, which he said holds real promise for human flourishing but also real risk of isolation and manipulation.

He reminded us that going to these frontiers sometimes means, in his words, “letting go of long-cherished structures or roles — an exercise of Ignatian ‘holy indifference.'”

That phrase matters here in Indonesia in a particular way. You are part of a Society that, in many older provinces, is learning to let go — of institutions, of certainties, of a shape it once had. But here, you are part of the frontier itself: younger, growing, closer to the poor, often planted where the Catholic faith is a minority. That is not a smaller vocation. It is, as the Holy Father insisted, quoting Isaiah, God “doing a new thing” — and asking whether we can perceive it.

Pope Leo walked through our four Universal Apostolic Preferences and gave each one a face for today.

• On the way to God through the Exercises and discernment, he pointed to

Augustine’s restless heart, and asked us to meet people in that restlessness — in retreat houses, in schools, even in the informal spaces where seekers gather online.

• On walking with the poor, he spoke, echoing his own exhortation Dilexi Te, of “the dictatorship of an economy that kills,” and he asked us not to give in to resentment or what he called “compassion fatigue,” but to trust that even a mustard seed becomes a great tree.
• On accompanying young people, he named their thirst for authenticity, and pointed ahead to World Youth Day in Korea as a moment for this mission — not so distant from here.
• On caring for our common home, he asked our communities to become, quite simply, examples of ecological sustainability and gratitude.

In the second reading, St. Paul gives us the single measure underneath all four preferences: “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” Ad majorem Dei gloriam. Not some things for God and other things for ourselves — everything, without division. And then the sentence that should stay with us today: “I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved.” That is Ignatian indifference in its simplest form — freedom not for its own sake, but freedom for others.

So how do we sustain a fire like Jeremiah’s, on frontiers as demanding as the ones Pope Leo names, without being consumed by them? He gave us the answer, and it is the oldest answer we have: remain with Christ. “Remain with him through private prayer, the celebration of the Sacraments… remain with him by recognizing his presence in community life.”

From that rootedness, he said, “you will have the courage to walk anywhere.” No frontier — not AI, not migration, not the loneliness of a minority Church — is beyond a Jesuit who walks with Christ, because the frontier was never really the danger. Losing that closeness was.

Pope Francis once described the Society as living permanently in fieri — always still being formed, never quite finished, precisely because that is what frees us from paralysis. Pope Leo repeated that word to us. I think it describes you especially well: a still relatively young province, still becoming what the Spirit is shaping it to be. Do not experience that as instability. Experience it as the same fire Ignatius carried up a mountain path from Loyola, still burning, now placed in your hands.

With Jeremiah, let us cry out even in the middle of all difficulties: “Sing to the Lord! Give praise to the Lord! He rescues the life of the needy from the hands of the wicked.”

May Our Lady of the Way, la Madonna della Strada accompany each of you. May Christ, poor and humble, find in you companions still willing to be seduced by his love.

Amen.