Sr. Janice Farnham, RJM, assistant professor of church history at Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Mass., writes an open letter to the U.S. Jesuits being ordained to the priesthood this summer.

Dear Brothers:

As I write these lines on a lovely spring day in Eastertide, I remember a good number of you whom I have come to know as students at Weston Jesuit School of Theology. Last year at this time, you were nearing the finish line of academic theology programs, preparing for the diaconate and looking forward to a fourth year of integrating theory with service to the Word and the Lord's table.

As new deacons, you were solemnly given the book of the Gospels and heard a searing challenge: "Believe what you read, teach what you believe, practice what you teach." You have spent months of ministry trying to embody that message more fully. And you have struggled with personal discomfort, anxieties, and questions as to the meaning of priesthood in our world today.

Ordination invitations have gone out to your communities, colleagues, families, and friends. We will soon join you for ceremonies confirming your call to ministerial priesthood and will pray with you that God's Spirit, "the One who has begun this good work in you, will bring it to completion in the day of Christ Jesus" (Phil. 1:6).

From far and near we will come, sharing with you our mixed emotions and expectations. We will be there because for a long time we have watched and waited, wondered, doubted, and struggled with you. We will be there because, as you know so well, without us your priesthood loses its deepest significance.

Most of all, we will be there because we want to express our love, our support, and our encouragement of your calling as Jesuit priests, a calling that originates in our common priesthood, our one baptismal mission to proclaim the Gospel by laboring with Christ for the building up of his Body and for healing the shattered features of our world.

Your Jesuit ministry has often been described in terms of travel -- and don't think we haven't noticed how "religiously" you observe this mandate! Now your life will be even more of a pilgrimage with and for others, a Eucharistic revelation. Like the disciples of Emmaus, you will discover Christ "on the road" and recognize him in the breaking of the bread of the Word, in the crust of broken lives, on the earth's altar-table of wounds and rifts. Believe what you read in the text of the world, God's dwelling place among us.

Shattered features, broken lives. At the last general congregation in 1995, Jesuits were reminded that what they do as priests needs to be directed toward "those who are at the margins of the Church or of society, those who have been denied their dignity, those who are voiceless and powerless." These phrases represent a universe of need that will claim your time, prayer, energy, and skills.

As a woman religious who has been nurtured and challenged in so many ways by the Society of Jesus, I applaud and admire the efforts of my Weston colleagues to address these needs, particularly in the areas of lay leadership in ministry and the concerns of women in our Church today. I am heartened by the growing numbers of our students for whom the Spiritual Exercises and Ignatian vision are important sources of ministerial discernment and choice on behalf of the "least ones" of society.

These social dimensions of Eucharist, the claims of faith-justice and the cries of the poor, should undergird your priestly ministry more than ever. They will, please God, mark you with the sign of Christ crucified and make you a credible and compassionate witness to hope. Teach what you believe. Beyond the pulpit or the desk. With all your being.

As priests in North America, you have been called forth from a community of privilege, with much potential for theological education, vital ministry, spiritual depth. And yet, every time we approach this season of ordinations, I am aware in myself and in others of an ambivalent mix of sentiments. I thank God for your call to ministerial priesthood, for your generous response, for your commitment to the service of Word and Sacrament.

But I also pray that your priesthood will not distance you from us, from our concerns, from our uneasiness in the face of the divisions and petty confrontations that plague the Church today. We need you to stand with us now to confront our questions, which have never been more your own. Why do so many intelligent, competent, and committed women and men suffer and feel alienated in our parishes or communities? Why do they claim to be disempowered or voiceless in a Church that should welcome their gifts and discipleship? Why is our faith community apparently paralyzed by internal strife, and why do some appear more concerned with issues of power and control than with proclaiming the Good News? Broken hearts and lives. The stuff of a pilgrim Church, yes. At the core of all our ministry, a paradox of power and weakness.

I invite you to live these questions with us, to become what you teach, a sign of God's love and reconciliation in the midst of anguish. A celebrator of unity in diversity, for there are "a variety of gifts, but the same Spirit; varieties of service, but the same Lord … by one Spirit, we were all baptized into one body" (1Cor. 12). Referring to this passage, Father Arrupe wrote that "wherever there is suffering in the body, we, because we have received the same body and are part of it, must be directly involved." And I know you will be. Don't fear your weakness. We are a community of the blessed and the broken. We stand with you now -- your brother-Jesuits, your families, friends, and teachers -- in joyful trust and love, as you publicly accept to be "placed with the Son" for priestly service to this broken body, which by the grace of the Spirit, is being transformed into the fullness of Christ's risen humanity.

Peace and blessings on your future,

Janice, RJM

Company Magazine invites you to view pictures and short bios of the Jesuits who were ordained in 1998.