The Loyola Spirituality Center was, for another year, the setting of the meeting of the Territorial Apostolic Platform (TAP) of Loyola, passing on the spirit of the apostolic meetings that the Loyola Province used to celebrate. This year’s meeting, celebrated April 22 and 23, was entitled “Hospitality and the Transmission of Faith: Cultivating a Spirituality of Open Eyes” and 120 people from all the works of the Society in the Basque Country and Navarre participated.
The delegate of the Territorial Apostolic Platform, Jaime Oraá, SJ, placed this year’s meeting in the wake of the first Provincial meeting of Spain, also celebrated here a few weeks earlier. Oraá signaled that the TAP meetings help to strengthen our apostolic body, which “wants to jointly discern important elements of our shared mission here and now.” Oraá also took the opportunity to share about some advances in putting into practice the planning of the TAP. Some projects, such as formation, are still being directed by the Province, and others, such as reconciliation, enculturation, spirituality, hospitality, etc. function at the level of specific commissions of TAP.

The objective of the gathering this year was “to develop the implications that the prophetic nature of hospitality and inclusion have for our community life and for our mission.” Vicente Marcuellos, SJ, explained that the advisors of the TAP saw the need to unite the calls in order to maintain boundaries and to transmit faith, so that these calls “are continually present” and aren’t “seen as two distinct impulses, but as a single one that develops in different ways.” Welcome and hospitality do not need to answer to an ethical principle but to a spiritual one, the Ignatian one, that can be defined as a “spirituality of open eyes.”

Friday afternoon we participated in a contemplative exercise on reality from the point of view of those key points, directed by Vicente Marcuello, SJ and Marta García. Next, José Javier Pardo, SJ, offered a presentation in which we explored the realities that are so real for us today, such as the suffering of immigrants, fear of those who are different, the exploitation of the weak, or the need for recognition and integration, concerns that are illustrated in the Old Testament, which speaks to us of a God who reminds us that we too were once immigrants and that we ought to show mercy and justice.

The Saturday workday was dedicated to looking at our institutional reality and to advancing in the practice of hospitality, recognizing what we had done and imagining what we could do. Asier Arpide and Mary Tere Guzman expounded on the work of the Hospitality Commission to put into practice the campaign of the same name. This commission has two people on it who are responsible for each PAL [¿qué significa PAL?] and reference persons in all the works. Afterwards we created a communal deliberation exercise to look for a way to strengthen the message of faith and the work of justice toward those to whom hospitality calls us. First joined together by sectors, we reviewed the practices that take place in all the institutions. Then, reunited in the PALs, we looked for ways to enrich that work, specifying priorities and proposals.

To conclude the meeting, Nacho Eguizabal and Idoia Irigaray helped us to take note of all the graces received in these two days, to get rid of our fear, and to feel sent to return to Galilee from our daily lives – our families, our communities, our works – to encounter the Resurrected One.

Participante de los Fondos Next Generation