From a Small Sapling to a Mighty Tree: 50 Years of MSJ

Mount St Joseph is in its Golden Jubilee Year. It began as a small sapling in the year 1959 and now it has grown into a tree, and the tree has blossomed and borne much fruit. It began as a formation house for novices and juniors but now it has become a mighty institution with multi-dimensional ministries - a parish, primary and high schools, a technical centre, Pre-university college, retreat house, a farm and orchard and of recent a spirituality centre and a Senior Jesuits’ Home.

Jubilee for the Israelites was a time to hallow the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants. They were called to return, everyone of them, to their property and everyone to their family (Lev 25:16). Hundreds of Jesuits of the South Asian Assistancy have begun their journey as novices in the Society at Mount St. Joseph. The jubilee year is a time for all of them to return to their beginnings in mind and spirit.

Jubilee is normally a time of conversion - a change of heart and of attitudes. God is the real owner of everything. We are only stewards. God today asks us: “What are you doing to the garden entrusted to you - the garden of novices, the garden of students, the garden of parishioners, the garden of retreatants, the garden of seekers, the garden of senior Jesuits who need additional care and the garden of the people entrusted to your care? Steward disciples recognize God as the origin of life, the giver of freedom, the source of all they have and are. They see themselves as caretakers of God’s gifts. They are grateful for what they have received and are eager to cultivate their gifts out of love for God and one another.

God has blessed Karnataka Province with a good number of vocations. When the harvest is lean elsewhere, Mount St. Joseph has been having a houseful experience. Jubilee then is the time, not merely to rest and to celebrate, but to think of God’s gifts to us both individually and, even more, as a community, and to go back to our origins as a community of friends in the Lord. A Jubilee Community of friends in the Lord is God’s gift to us.