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Glossary

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There are currently 4 names in this directory beginning with the letter T.
Tertianship
After three to five years in active ministry, a Jesuit spends a period of time in a tertianship program ranging from nine weeks over two summers to nine months to prepare for his Final Vows (see term above). The tertian, as he is called, spends time, often with a spiritual director, in seeking a deeper understanding of his life as a Jesuit.

The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice
In 1975, Jesuits from around the world met in solemn assembly to assess their present state and to sketch plans for the future. Following the lead of a recent international assembly (“synod”) of Catholic bishops, they came to see that the hallmark of any ministry deserving of the name Jesuit would be its “service of faith” of which the “promotion of justice” is an absolute requirement. In other words, Jesuit education should be noteworthy for the way it helps students-and for that matter, faculty, staff, and administrators–to move, in freedom, toward a mature and intellectually adult faith. This includes enabling them to develop a disciplined sensitivity toward the suffering of our world and a will to act for the transformation of unjust social structures which cause that suffering. The enormous challenge, to which none of us are entirely equal, nevertheless falls on all of us, not just on members of theology and philosophy departments, campus ministry and spiritual development.

The Society of Jesus
Catholic religious order* of men founded in 1540 by Ignatius of Loyola* and a small group of his multinational “friends in the Lord,” fellow students from the University of Paris. They saw their mission as one of being available to go anywhere and do anything to “help souls,”
especially where the need was greatest (e.g., where a certain people or a certain kind of work were neglected).

Today, numbering about 23,000 priests and brothers, they are spread out in almost every country of the world (“more branch offices,” said Pedro Arrupe,* “than Coca Cola”)–declining in numbers markedly in Europe and North America, but growing in India, Africa, Latin America, and the Far East.

The abbreviation “S.J.” after a person’s name means that he is a member of the Society of Jesus.

The Spiritual Exercises
(capital S and E) An organized series of spiritual exercises put together by St. Ignatius out of his own personal spiritual experience and that of others to whom he listened. Ignatius set all of this down in the book of the Spiritual Exercises as a handbook to help the guide who coached a person engaged in “making the Exercises.”

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