They seem to be in no hurry, it will be noted, to celebrate Mass. The group waits forty days. This point has to be interpreted both according to the customs of the time, and as a reflection of their desire for an intense spiritual preparation for an act which they regard as central. It would be a huge error to see in this an expression of indifference. Ignatius decides to wait a whole year, doubtless so as to be able to celebrate his first Mass in Bethlehem. What is more, he tells us that this period was one of an intense experience of graces, ‘most of all, when he began to prepare himself to be a priest in Venice, and when he was preparing himself to say Mass. Throughout all these journeys, he had great supernatural visitations of the kind that he accustomed to having while he was in Manresa’.[6] The reference to Manresa, the place where his spiritual life really took off, shows just how important ordination is to him.
Finally, when plans to go to Jerusalem fall through, it is a group of priests which, at the end of November 1538, places itself at the disposal of the Pope to be sent wherever in the Lord’s vineyard it will seem good to Him. The companions insert themselves at the heart of the hierarchical institution of the Church. What they are looking for from the Pope is very much in the domain of canonical mission and of jurisdiction. The little group is a modest presbyterium, an ‘extraordinary’ presbyterium of the Bishop of Rome in so far as he has responsibility for the whole of the Church, a presbyterium of ‘reformed priests’, which is what the Church most needed in the period. From the start, the companions will receive missions and ministries which belong to priests, part and parcel of the hierarchical mission of the Church.
Only in 1539 do the companions take the decision conclusively to found a religious order, with obedience to a superior to prevent the centrifugal missions they received from the Pope from destroying their little band. To those who say that the decision to have themselves ordained priests was the result of a merely sociological reason, one could reply that this new decision was of the same sort. But I would not agree with either statement. Rather, the Society transforms everything it incorporates into itself, presbyterate as well as religious life. It is an apostolic motivation, a sense that the mission is what it is all about, which draws the one and the other successively into itself. If it is true to say that presbyteral ordination is the means to an apostolic end, exactly the same goes for the foundation of an Order.
The Formula of the Institute approved by the Pope in 1540 clearly expresses one goal: apostolic mission centred on the official proclamation of the Word, the works of the Word and the administration of the sacraments, mentioned in the example of confessions. The governing image is the ministry of the apostles who surrounded Jesus and were sent out by Him. Jesuit canon lawyer, Michel Dortel-Claudot sums up the central convictions of the first generation of Jesuits like this: ‘it is the apostolic aim which structures the Society and is the heart of its religious life. The Society is the first order of this type. The Society is, as are the other “clerks regular”, an order of priests, but in a different way from them because the presbyterate of the Society is orientated first of all to apostolic mission.’
Of course not all Jesuits are priests. Early on we see the idea emerging of temporal coadjutors, more normally known as brothers, and of course there are novices and scholastics. But all are part of the apostolic mission. The core of the Society is indeed that of a presbyteral and instructed body. There is a place for non-priestly members of the Society but as coadjutors in a presbyteral body. These brothers (as well as the scholastics and novices), put themselves at the service of what is essentially a presbyteral form of mission in the Society.
It is well known that one of the great achievements of Vatican II was to recover the New Testament perspective of apostolic ministry, rooted in the ideas of being sent and of mission. The Council was obliged to shift the terms around from the moment it gave its rightful place to the ‘priesthood of all believers’ and treated the ordained ministry from the point of view of the bishops, and no longer from that of the presbyter understood first and foremost as sacerdos. Thinking through ministry from the point of view of the mission of the apostles as continued today by the Church’s triple ministry of Bishop, priest and deacon, the Council rehabilitated the term ‘presbyter’, meaning a co-operator of the bishop. This has helped make clear that apostolic or ordained ministry is defined first of all by its meaning and only then by its tasks. This meaning is an expression of the initiative of Christ in relation to His Church; the bishop and the priest are and symbolise ministerially, the gift of Christ-as-Head. Father General Kolvenbach points out that the Jesuit vision of priesthood to some extent anticipated the 20th Century insight: ‘The view of Vatican II fully confirmed and enriched the figure of the presbyter as it is understood and lived in the Society of Jesus.'[7]