All roads led to Rome for most of the Tertian instructors and some of their assistants with Fr General Arturo Sosa calling for a special meeting of instructors from the 16 different Tertianship programmes worldwide.
What made this particular assembly of Tertian directors and assistants quite different was that there was no single resource speaker invited. Such was the case because Fr General wanted more to listen and learn from people’s inputs based on their own experiences as instructors and to foster a supportive exchange across Tertianship programmes.
Given the general structure and flow of the sessions, much of what the instructors and the assistants did was to engage themselves in prayerful reflection and spiritual conversation in both small and plenary groups.
Some weeks before the meeting, Fr Mark Ravizza SJ, Fr General’s Assistant for Formation sent to all participants particular themes and questions for them to pray over and reflect. And it was these same themes and questions linked closely to the objectives noted above that became the focus of the group sharings and spiritual conversations.
Covering a wide range of themes on Tertianship and Jesuit life in general, the participants shared on various points like their own personal experience as instructors (or assistants); the profile of present-day tertians; final vows and grades; sapiential reading of the Jesuit Constitutions and other foundational texts; the experience of the 30-Day Retreat, plus other experiments in the programme; and finally, affectivity and safeguarding.
In addition to these, sessions on the Universal Apostolic Preferences (UAPs) and how they can be incorporated well into the Tertianship programme were led and facilitated by Fr General Sosa himself.
After several days of discussions, ultimately, the instructors did not propose any notable addition or change to the overall programme of Tertianship in the Society. However, without doubt, the meeting offered numerous graced opportunities for all of those who attended, like opportunities to share and learn from one another; opportunities to reflect and pray together on significant themes and issues related to Tertianship; and finally, opportunities to bond together and affirm one another in the formation ministry as brothers who are at the same time “friends in the Lord.”
In the end, people were all in agreement that the meeting went so well that it would be good to schedule another one – yes, also in Rome – but four years from now – 2023 August.
Fr Ramon Ma Bautista SJ is Tertian co-instructor of the Asia Pacific Tertianship Programme, an international work of the Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific.