Testimonials from the Bikfaya Tertianship Program

Bikfaya Tertianship Centre – A School of the Heart

It’s a herculean task to compile my tertianship experiences on a page. Yet, I attempt to describe some of the essential dimensions of the Bikfaya tertianship program, which mainly focuses on five significant aspects: autobiography, the Spiritual Exercises, Experiments, the study of Institute/Constitutions, and the Jesuit history/our life-mission today. These are described below briefly.  

We began this school of heart by reading, reflecting, and praying over the reminiscences of St. Ignatius since we, as young Jesuits, follow the path of his conversion experience and his pilgrimage along with the First Fathers. Simultaneously, we kept reflecting on our personal journey on how God led us into his Least Society and how God continue to lead us in fulfilling his mission given to St. Ignatius and the First Fathers, confirmed by the La Storta vision of Ignatius, “being placed with Jesus” in a mission of helping souls. Hence, writing our autobiography was a powerful experience of seeing ourselves, our lights and shadows, in a mirror, that is, God’s Love, which is essential for our conversion and transformation. 

The 30-day Spiritual Exercises is the source and summit of tertianship. Personally, I have been waiting and preparing wholeheartedly to enter into this pilgrimage of God’s mercy, forgiveness, and healing granted to me by Our Lord Jesus. It was a time for deepening the graces of the pascal mystery of the incarnation, passion, death, resurrection and the experience of being sent on a mission filled with the Holy Spirit, with a greater realization that God is labouring in this troubled world.

An experiment is a mission of being sent into a broken and uncertain world, a world of human reality where we encounter both good and evil. I had an enriching experience being part of JRS Education in Lebanon. Some were sent to JRS Iraq, others worked in the migrant centre in Beirut, and still, a few others spent their time waiting to go to Syria or writing for publication. Nine of us had many different experiences of joys and sorrows, ease and hardships; yet, we realized that we were not alone in the journey, for our Lord was with us as he promised to his disciples, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age (Mt 28:20).” 

My companions in tertianship would agree with me that this was the first time we have read, reflected and prayed on the Institute/Constitutions as a whole. Now, we can confidently pronounce our vows with greater understanding and depth of the Institute/Constitutions, enriched by the spiritual and human wisdom of St. Ignatius and his followers over the years. 

History is the most excellent teacher who helps us know who we are as Jesuits and guides us to move forward, learning from the strengths and limitations of our past. Our reading of Jesuit history and talks by Dermot Preston SJ have immensely enlightened us with some of the most significant moments of glory, passion, death, and resurrection lived by the Society in its five centuries of history. The suppression and the restoration of the Society remind us of what Ignatius wrote in Part X of the Constitutions: “The Society was not instituted by human means; and it is not  through  them  that  it  can  be  preserved  and  increased,  but through  the  grace  of  the  omnipotent  hand  of  Christ  our  God  and Lord, therefore in him alone must be placed the hope that he will preserve and carry forward what he deigned to begin for his service and praise and for the aid of souls (C 812).” I genuinely believe that our beloved Minima Societa is truly a company of Jesus, who has sent us on a mission of reconciliation and justice. 

As we, the tertians, tunnelled through these five parts of the tertianship, we were also enriched by multiple other activities: workshops on affectivity, non-violent communication, discernment, reconciliation; weekly review and recollection; pilgrimage to various religious places and shrines, and community outing to enjoy the rich historical, cultural, and geographical landmarks of Lebanon. 

In conclusion, I affirm with deep conviction that through this school of the heart, the Lord has blessed us, the nine tertians from six countries representing the universal Society, under the guidance of Dany and Nawras, with greater availability and mobility for Christ’s mission with renewed vigour and zeal. May Our Lady of Deliverance and St. Charbel intercede for us. Amen. 

Vinod Fernandes SJ

Témoignage sur mon expérience de troisième an à Bikfaya, par un jésuite de la province EOF

Ce qui m’a beaucoup aidé dans le troisième an à Bikfaya et la raison pour laquelle j’aimerais le recommander à d’autres jésuites, c’est l’attention donnée à notre chemin spirituel dans la durée. Lors d’un de mes premiers entretiens d’accompagnement dès le mois d’octobre, notre instructeur m’a dit « les trente jours ont déjà commencé ». Cela avait l’avantage de retirer la pression psychologique par rapport à ce moment tant attendu, mais aussi de me faire entrer dans un chemin spirituel qui se déployait dans la durée, à travers la relecture de vie des premiers mois, la grande retraite, l’expériment en Irak, puis le retour à Bikfaya pour l’étude de notre Institut. Cela je ne l’ai compris qu’à la fin, en découvrant une continuité entre ce que j’avais vécu pendant les trente jours et ce qui s’était poursuivi pendant l’expériment. 

Ce chemin spirituel était également favorisé par une relecture hebdomadaire de la semaine précédente avec les autres tertiaires, ainsi que par une récollection d’une demi-journée par semaine. La relecture commune nous permettait de prendre conscience que les autres compagnons faisaient aussi leur chemin à travers consolations et désolations et de construire en profondeur la communauté. La récollection hebdomadaire apparaissait souvent dans la relecture comme le temps fort de la semaine, qui donnait un enjeu au reste de la semaine. Surtout, elle a permis d’entrer progressivement dans les trente jours et de continuer le chemin après. Je vois aussi un intérêt majeur dans le couple relecture-récollection dans le format qui nous était proposé. Ce sont des exercices qui pourront se vivre au quotidien dans la vie apostolique pendant le repos hebdomadaire, car le chemin se poursuit même si le troisième an touche à sa fin. 

Auteur : un des jésuites participant au programme. 

A Tertianship Confession

I was initially drawn to this tertianship program because it focussed on reconciliation. Coming from a country (South Africa) and a people that developed and implemented Apartheid, and having to live my Jesuit vocation, as I minister to people affected by Apartheid and needing reconciliation, I thought this program would be the answer to many of my questions. These were one of many questions I came with hoping to sort them out. 

And was I wrong! My very first shock came when Dany told me reconciliation was not first and foremost my finding ways to bring healing or living with Jesuits, we (my people) oppressed but to be reconciled with myself, that is, with who I am. This was perhaps the deepest question I had and in time, inexplicably and after some profound conversations, this became clearer. What I discovered was that I could not answer this question without reference to God, our Lord. 

It was really in the Spiritual Exercises that I renewed my commitment and conversion to Jesus as my Lord. This relationship that invites me to follow Him, and Him alone, humbly, poorly, and in insignificance, was my first profound experience. 

When we reflected on the life of Ignatius, we looked at the experience of Ignatius where he was being placed with the Son. It was, however, only after the retreat and after looking at it more in light of our Institute and her understanding, that we saw in this one that implicates every Jesuit. Maybe one might say it is analogous to original sin that is “imputed” or “inherited” in virtue of our humanity. This placing with the Son was an experience or vision given to Ignatius but with it one that implicated all of us. It has a Paschal dimension and shows the way I am to live but also to perceive and accept my identity as being taken up in the mission of the Son that is focussed on helping souls by showing them who the Father is and how He is their Light and Salvation. I am drawn into this mission and my being part of this Institute is being part of a body that means that in whatever I do I share in all others’ mission as much as they share in mine. In fact, we share in the one and only mission of the Son. 

This may seem somewhat theoretical, but it became clear to us that this is the most practical aspect of our Institute and one that probably cost the most. At this stage of our formation, who of us had not had to do some mission that we were not really enamoured with? Who did not have to obey even against his own wishes? This is where this beautiful theory meets harsh reality. Yet, how do we get the energy and desire to keep on giving ourselves to the full in our missions even those we would not have chosen as our first choice? By fostering the relationship with our Lord. We cannot follow Him if we do not know and love Him. 

It was here I received yet another shock as I had to let go of a string inclination that prayer was the only avenue and the prerequisite to all else, I do as Jesuit. It was a joyful discovery to learn that for us contemplatives in action means that we find God best in helping souls. Off course to see this as my prayer, or rather, to find my prayer here, I need to keep myself within the spirit of prayer.

I came with many questions and amid the confusions that arose whenever I tried to find answers I came to a dead-end. It was during a discussion with someone on the Scripture that says we “should love the Lord, our God, with all our hearts and souls and minds”, together with a story Dany recounted from the Desert Fathers about a dog that saw the rabbit, as the reason why it continued chasing after it while the other dogs that followed him only because of his barking gave up, that I realised the place for me to find or rest in answers that are not to be thought through is to allow the heart to love without boundaries. It is in the experience of the heart and its movements that I would find the place for God and for reconciliation. These motions of the heart call forth the dynamic of the examen and of continual discernment as a way of life. Most helpful here was a workshop on the discernment of spirits that we had. That was a precious gift.

I now leave tertianship much more reconciled – with my brokenness and failures, and in the poverty of what I cannot and will not achieve but with a greater clarity that what is important is the quality in which I live my love and the quality of my relationship with Jesus by sharing in His mission. This sharing is at depth that He is with me as I am sent out. This also includes the realisation that I am not going to be that great Jesuit and man of faith I had sometimes hoped to become. Oddly tertianship has somehow freed me from this desire and renewed within me the desire to be more fully human, one among others, as others, equally searching for reconciliation and searching for God as I try to be an instrument in living and bringing reconciliation. 

St Charbel played an important role in our tertianship. We visited his shrine twice and spent considerable time praying there and even celebrating two masses. However, the most touching was the visit to his birthplace. In the small chapel (his former house) was an icon of St Charbel with his hands folded protectively over his heart. This image touched me much and I have adopted it as the symbolic expression of our Bikfaya Tertianship experience. The heart is the place we encounter our Lord, but it requires us to read the motions it produces so that we may follow the Good Spirit as He seeks to help souls and bring reconciliation to them though us. This requires from us both reverence and protection of our heart. Thank you Bikfaya, Dany, Nawras and all who made up our community. And a special thanks to this wonderful province. You are most inspiring.

John Enslin SJ