Dear Friends in the Lord, 

Christ’s Peace! 

The Care and Love for our Common Home and the Care and Love for the Society of Jesus are the two important themes which come to my mind while reflecting on some of the significant days of this month.

The Pope’s Prayer intention for September 2025 calls the

faithful to renew their relationship with all of creation, drawing inspiration from Saint Francis of Assisi’s deep sense of kinship with every creature. In his message, the Pope Leo XIV affirms that nothing exists outside God’s tenderness, and even the briefest life is cherished. Echoing the opening of Laudato Si’, a timely and prophetic intervention by Pope Francis, he invites us to see creation not as a problem to be solved, but as a mystery to be contemplated with gratitude, a revelation of God as the source of all goodness.

This reflection comes during the Season of Creation, beginning from 1 September, World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, to 4 October, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron of ecology. In 2025 the Season of Creation coincides with the 800th anniversary of the Canticle of Creation and the 10th anniversary of Laudato Si’. Cardinal Michael Czerny frames this moment as a “Jubilee of Hope,” urging gratitude and renewed care for our common home. The Pope’s vision resonates with broader ecological spirituality: to live simply, attentively, and reverently, fostering a contemplative awareness that leads to encounter with ourselves, with others, with God, and with the living world entrusted to our care.

The Pope has established a new Mass called Mass for the Care of Creation and the CCBI Commission for Liturgy has prepared this Liturgy for India, requesting us to celebrate this Mass in a prayerful and creative way in the context of COP 30 (Conference of Parties 30), scheduled from 10-20 November 2025 in Brazil. While inviting us to celebrate this Mass in our communities, Fr. Roberto Jaramilo, Director of Social Justice and Ecology Secretariat (SJES), recommends that we sign the statement of Religious Life for Climate Justice (https://www.ecojesuit.com/ndcs-for- cop30/) to collaborate with the care of creation. With love for our common home, let us integrate these two aspects in the UAP4/PAP2-related action plans of our communities/centres.

The Care and Love for the Society of Jesus: On 27 September 1540, the Society of Jesus was born with the approval of the Formula of the Institute of the Society of Jesus by Pope Paul III prepared by St. Ignatius by disposing himself to God with the spirit of discernment. The spirit of the Formula of the Institute reveals that love is not sentiment alone, nor intellect, but both woven together into mission “Beneath the banner of the Cross.” The Society’s birth was not the establishment of an institution for its own sake, but the sending forth of a body of men, tested and tempered, whose only desire was to be placed with Christ under His banner, ready for any labour in His vineyard. The Formula of the Institute makes it clear that the Life-Mission in the Society finds its foundation in the principles of readiness to go anywhere and serve anyone without seeking for reward; a poverty that frees the heart from greed and the mind from distraction; an obedience that is not blind submission but joyfully surrendering of one’s will for the good of the mission; and the formation that forms both intellect and spirit for the service of souls. This month as we honour our beginning let us renew the same interior disposition: to keep God always before our eyes, to hold nothing back, and to let our love be generous, our service as wise as it is wholehearted. In this lies the enduring care and love of the Society of Jesus, a living union of heart and mind,

ever seeking the greater glory of God. During our journey in our Province in the process of Reimagining and Restructuring our Life-Mission, we felt the need for going to our roots by familiarising ourselves with The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, and some have already started doing it. As our Mother Society was born in the month of September, it is well fitting

that we start the process of interiorising the spirit of the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus including the Formula of the Institute from now on, through Recollections, Faith sharing, Spiritual Conversations, Retreat, etc.

Britto Vincent

Provincial – Chennai Jesuits