Leafing through the many postulates of GC 36 and reading the responses to the Call of the King as initiated by Fr. Nicolas, one perceives ‘integration’ as the key word. Several postulates of GC 36 ask for an integration of life, mission and governance in the Society.

GC 36 discovers as it were, a paradigm of integration in the experience of the First Companions in Venice. “For the First Companions, life and mission rooted in a discerning community, were profoundly inter-related. We Jesuits today are called to live in the same way, as priests, brothers and those in formation who all share the same mission…. We do so knowing the intimate unity of mission, life and discerning community, all afire with the love of Christ.” (D.1. No.5)

Integration requires a ‘Contemplative mind and heart’, spending time in silence, discovering the interior movements of the Spirit as we wade through daily chores, our mission engagements and our interactions within the community and with the larger society. In a fragmented world with multiple and fast-moving images vying for our attention, to turn to the interior movements sounds like moving against the current. In fact, ‘interiority’ provides us with inner compass to navigate through the sound and fury of our days with a direction.

Ignatius felt at home in the world because he had invented this inner compass of interiority, of listening to the movements of the Spirit. The process of interiority made him feel at home with ‘spaces’ that could have engulfed or alienated him. The ‘labouring God’ of Ignatius brings the world and self together in and through the interior movements of the Spirit. This audacious perspective led many Jesuits to the existential frontiers of their times. When we are at home with our inner space, then we are at home everywhere. ‘I am the key for integration’ because of a labouring God at work in me and everywhere.

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