Wilo Haro Rivas is an Ecuadorian Jesuit with thousands of followers on social media, where he mainly shares his work related to embroidery. Three days ago, he posted an image on Instagram taken during a spiritual retreat, showing him celebrating Holy Mass outdoors, seated cross-legged on a mat and holding the Missal.
The scene depicts the priest dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, over which he wears a green stole directly, without an alb or chasuble. Beside him, the chalice and liturgical objects are placed on fabrics spread on the ground, with no proper altar visible. The photograph conveys a deliberate informality incompatible with the external dignity required for the celebration of the Eucharistic sacrifice.
This is not about rejecting outdoor celebrations or denying the spiritual value of Ignatian exercises. The issue is the reduction of the liturgy to a personal experience subject to the celebrant’s creativity. The Mass does not belong to the priest, and its norms are not decorative elements that can be omitted to reinforce a particular aesthetic, no matter how artisanal, approachable, or supposedly pastoral it may claim to be.
The image also reflects the decline of a Society of Jesus increasingly detached from the discipline, obedience, and supernatural sense that marked its origins. The order that gave the Church great missionaries, theologians, and martyrs today seems too often identified with experimentation, irreverence, and the pursuit of notoriety. When the Jesuit’s personality takes the place that belongs to the altar, the crisis ceases to be merely numerical and becomes a profound crisis of identity.