The Jesuits

Dear Companions,

The news of suicides and suicidal tendencies among priests and religious is not new. Of late, we hear that some of our brothers and sisters decide to end their lives due to enormous stress. Major calamities like the suicidal deaths traumatize us. Yet we sometimes neglect other psycho-spiritual confusions common among the clergy and the religious. Attempting to manage our stress, we might turn to alcohol, food and cyberspace for solace and comfort. We may become lethargic, withdrawn or desperately reckless. Worries, anxieties and hurts bend our backs and burden our hearts. The stress we experience has the potential to impair our lives significantly.

Hence, we need to recognise what makes us particularly vulnerable to stress. We need to develop ways to cope constructively with the stress of our lives as well as guard against destructive patterns of behaviour. Our vocation encourages the kind of human growth that is marked by vulnerability, solidarity, and compassion opposed to our contemporary culture’s focus on self-protection, self-promotion, and self-preservation. In our effort to follow Jesus humble and poor, we try to work against human tendency to stay with what is safe and secure.

The Constitutions urge Superiors to provide for “the spiritual, intellectual, and apostolic renewal of all our members” (Const. 243 §1), calling for early intervention, fraternal support, and wise governance. There is also a canonical expectation of genuine concern for the integral well-being of our brothers, not just by superiors but by all Jesuits, as friends in the Lord and companions in mission.

The Superiors ought to be aware of “the interior and exterior affairs of their subjects” [Const. 92].

It is important therefore that the Superiors make all efforts to know their men and organize programmes addressing mental issues adversely affecting the members.

We need to attend to our emotional and mental health. Let us keep in mind that each of us has left everything that was important to us (one’s own family, a future spouse, satisfying job, etc.) and have joined the Society. Having given up everything for Jesus, to be unhappy and miserable is a real contradiction, something that the Lord would certainly not want from anyone he has called. The Superiors need to create spaces where their men can be helped and healed, places where faith itself in the crucified and risen Jesus is renewed.

It is in this context that we need to go to our sources to apprise ourselves about the care of our body, mind, heart and spirit. However dark things are, goodness always re-emerges and spreads. Each day in our broken world beauty is born anew. Human beings have arisen time after time from situation that seemed doomed. Such is the power of the resurrection. Let us endeavour to be instruments of that power. – Happy Easter!