In 2019, at the end of a two-year process of discernment involving the entire body of Jesuits worldwide and its collaborators, Fr Arturo Sosa (Superior General of the Society of Jesus) promulgated four Universal Apostolic Preferences for the whole Society.
These are showing the way to God through the Spiritual Exercises and discernment; walking with the excluded; accompanying young people in the creation of a hope-filled future; and caring for our common home.
Concerning the third, Fr General wrote, “It is the young who, from their perspective, can help us to better understand the epochal change that we are living, and its hope-filled newness”.
In accompanying young adults in London, I hear every day about the challenges they face: the shortage of housing (and exorbitant rents they have to pay); the precarity of the job market; loneliness and the difficulty of finding a suitable life-partner; the closing of opportunities and borders as once-friendly nations turn on each other to protect their own narrowly-conceived interests; a planet that is becoming increasingly inhospitable.
The future they were promised is disappearing before their eyes. At the same time, the digital world they are natives of reveals itself to be a minefield of disinformation, loss of privacy and vacuous Tinder relationships. Where is the hope?
Community and friendship
In Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis called “a love capable of transcending borders” (n. 99) social friendship. At our events, we see young Catholics form friendships across ethnic, class, professional and national boundaries. Pope Francis continues, “Genuine social friendship within a society makes true universal openness possible.”
The lived practice of social friendship among young people today gives hope for a future where a better kind of politics, one at the service of the common good, is exercised and a global community of fraternity established (n. 154).
A future where the growth and existence of developing countries is not impaired by crippling debt (n. 126). A future where the poor and marginalised are respected in their dignity (n. 187).
The social friendship of young people gives us a vision of a future where the Jubilee is a lived reality.
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:20-21)