[This is part of what I told a group of Jesuits the other day in a talk.]

We are questioning ourselves about our identity. Persons change, as do groups too. Heidegger said that man is born as one, becomes many, and dies one again. We go on adding facets to our personality and reshaping our image. Also as a group.

The identity of the group is defined by the aim it pursues. St Ignatius defined the aim of the Society he had founded as “the care of the salvation and perfection of our own souls and of those of our neighbours”. Francis Xavier, one of the first Jesuits, learned well his lesson and dedicated his life to the care of souls in the East at a time when the doctrine “Outside the Church there is no salvation” was almost a dogma of faith, which he expressed in a prayer he himself had composed and recited daily: “See, oh Lord, how, to your discredit, hell is being filled with the souls of pagans!” He worked for the salvation of those souls. Today we are more generous, theologically speaking, and the Vatican Council has admitted that non-Christians can also go to heaven, so that helping people not to go to hell does not seem now so urgent as fewer go that way. About “perfection”, religious life was then called “state of perfection”, while now we call it “consecrated life” as we feel shy to call ourselves perfect. In conclusion, our aim of “helping souls” is the same but the words “salvation” and “perfection” don’t appeal to us, and so we are looking for new expressions.

Fr Arrupe, the saintly father general of the order in the last century, interpreted the aim of our mission as “the service of the faith and the promotion of justice”. This is “helping souls” now, and it expresses in a felicitous phrase the world situation in our century. Another expression gained currency at the time too, the “preferential option for the poor” as the defining attitude of the Jesuit in his mission, but that was not so fitting as many of us feel that if working for the poor was the defining task of a Jesuit, we just were not Jesuits. I’ve read a book, written by a justly famous Jesuit, with the title “Outside the Poor There Is No Salvation”, but it has not worried me overmuch. A little bit exaggerated.

Some ideas occur to me too. There is an expression of Ignatius’s himself in the very papal bull that established the Society of Jesus, which appears to me to have permanent value and inspiring strength. In the “Formula of the Institute”, pope Paul III’s bull “Regimini militantis Ecclesiae” (27.09.1540), it says that the Society of Jesus has been founded for “the encouragement of souls”.

In the Acts of the Apostles we are told of a Cypriot convert called Joseph whose name the apostles changed to Barnabas which means “Son of Encouragement”. In Hebrew grammar there are few adjectives, and the expression “Son of…” followed by a name is used as an adjective. For instance, Jesus called John and James “Sons of Thunder” to signify that both of them had strong characters. (Which, by the way, does not fit with the tenderly delicate image tradition has created for John the Evangelist whom Jesus called “Son of Thunder”.) The Greek word means “encouraging, strengthening, cheering up”, and such was Barnabas as the Bible shows him to be. He was a Levite, apostle, St Paul’s companion, saint. He cheered people up. That was his charismatic gift.

Once I attended the consecration of a new church in North Gujarat and many gathered for the occasion. Old friends meet again on such a celebration, sometimes after years, and greetings and news are freely exchanged. The bishop presided, of course, and about twenty or us priests went with him in procession from the presbytery to the church. The problem was that there was some distance between the two, and there were only a few meters of red carpet available. But the good people had thought of it and had the solution. They spread out the carpet, we tread on it carefully up to its border, stood there, they quickly took the carpet from under our feet, and spread it out again in front of us. Thus we went on walking and stopping while they recovered the carpet and spread it out again stage by stage. We solemnly reached the door of the new church and stood for the prayers.

The bishop prayed, blessed, lifted his hand and banged the door three times with his crozier intoning “Gate, open!” But the door did not open. It had been stuck on the inside and resisted all attempts to open it. A little boy run from the crowd, climbed like a squirrel the wall of the church, went in through a window, unlocked the door from the inside, pushed it open, and greeted the bishop with folded hands. Cheers from the crowd.

After the mass I went round shaking hands, reflecting smiles on my own, greeting old friends, when I found myself face to face with a missionary I had not seen for years. We hugged, we laughed, we looked at each other, and then I asked him by way of starting conversation, “What are you doing, Chomin?” The question meant only to find out whether he was a parish priest or a teacher at school or a chaplain to nuns or anything else, What are you doing, where are you posted, what is your job, what is your work? But his answer was better than my question. When I asked him “What are you doing?” he shrugged his shoulders, broadened his smile, waited for a moment and said charmingly, “Cheering people up, what else?”

Cheering people up. I told him he had given me the best definition of a Jesuit, his identity, his function, his mission. Cheering people up. He didn’t know he was quoting St Ignatius, the pope’s bull, and St Barnabas. But he was giving me an expression and an emotion that through times and moods and fashions and cultures remain valid and meaningful and define our personality, our charisma, our mission. Cheering people up. That is the Formula of the Institute, the “encouraging souls”, the “Son of Encouragement”, that is our life and our mission. Cheering people up. Definition for ever.

That is what I always tried to do when I was teaching mathematics at college. To cheer up my students. There were, of course, courses and tests and exams and grades, and I did want for every student of mine to learn the subject and pass the examination and get a first class, but my immediate aim in each class was that they would have a good time in it, that they enjoyed themselves, that they would forget their worries at home and at college and in sport and in love, that they would plunge into a happy and exhilarating experience, would enjoy the long theorem with its suspense and its exactness, would shout for joy at the solution of a complicated problem, would come out of class jumping with excitement after the intense experience of the best of sciences in the best of moods. It did not turn always that way, of course, but I tried hard, and I often succeeded. I enjoyed myself and got them to enjoy themselves. Cheering people up.

That’s what I do when I write books. Cheering up my readers. I don’t aim at changing society or saving the world. God forbid. I don’t try to teach or preach or direct or resolve anything. I just want to have a good time myself while writing, and hope to make the reader to have an even better time reading what I write. Cheering people up.

That’s what I do too in my Web page when I figure out what to tell in it, when I bring up memories, find anecdotes, manage to fill up the pages each time to make up the issue and honour my fortnightly tryst with my friends in Internet. Let whoever reads it have a good time, enjoy themselves, smile to life, cheer up.

And that is what I’ve tried to do in this talk to you. To cheer you up. Let us cheer up each other so that we can keep cheering up all those people that meet us in life. This is, in the end, our vocation. Cheering people up.