The novice directors held a hybrid meeting from 1 to 5 June. Four novice directors attended online, and four were on site at the Jesuit Retreat House in Cebu.
Fr Ignatius Wardi Saputra SJ, Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific (JCAP) Formation Delegate, who accompanied us on site, challenged us by questioning: Do we make use of the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus as a guiding principle in our way of proceeding? How do we prepare our young men to embrace the Constitutions during their time of studies and in the missions?
Fr Jun Viray SJ, JCAP President, who joined us online, raised the issue of how AI and social media have influenced our lives deeply and opened new lines of thought. He asked those of us working in formation: Do you prepare our young men to use AI and social media ethically and responsibly?
These are burning questions because we accompany young men, including Gen Z, in a very fluid time bombarded by the constant excitements of social media and AI. They are contextual questions that echo St Ignatius’ invitation for the retreatant to ponder the Contemplation of the Incarnation, to look at the world and consider what one can offer in an environment enlarged by the overflowing information on social media and the rapid developments of AI, which can risk making us “intellectually numb”.
Realising these challenges, we invited Fr Roy Ragas SJ, a psychologist at Emmaus Centre in Manila, to help us understand Gen Z and their realities and challenges. In his online presentation, he explained how social media and AI have changed people and created cultural and emotional-psychological gaps between generations. These plural gaps, according to Fr Roy, make effective communication across generations, from boomers to Gen Z and even to Gen Alpha, more difficult. In particular, as novice directors, realising and understanding these gaps and the world behind each generation (particularly Gen Z) inspired us to have an awareness of self-regulation and co-regulation as a community and companions within the novitiate’s foundational formation ecosystem.
Enriched by these inputs, we reflected on how to better help our formands and accompany them more effectively. Two words circulated in our spiritual conversation after the session: compassion and co-regulation. Compassion is the path to understanding and creating space to meet someone unknown to us, especially formands from a different generation. As Fr Lester Maramara SJ said, compassion in the context of the youth of today means giving our novices the tools to face the challenges of the world outside the novitiate. By being compassionate, we promote healing among peers and between formators and formands. This compassionate presence is the pathway to co-regulation, a process of stabilising a person’s emotional and psychological state through interpersonal encounters.
We concluded our meeting having taken home not only the fruits of our study and conversations but also the hospitality of our companions in Cebu. During our city tour, we were warmly welcomed in the first house of the Jesuits in Parian and at the Jesuit communities of Ateneo de Cebu and Sacred Heart Parish. We thank them for their generosity, particularly the staff of the Jesuit Retreat House.
