en 
en 
On 1st November 1615 Mary Ward wrote to her confessor, Roger Lee SJ, about a spiritual insight she had received the day before. This has come to be known as the ‘Just Soul’, an understanding that came from God about how she and her sisters should live out their vocation.
The “Just Soul” Mary Ward has seen, consists of a special freedom from all attachment to earthly things, combined with a readiness and aptitude for all activities to be undertaken. It can be described by three attributes: freedom, justice, and sincerity.
November 1st 1615
“It seems a certain clear and perfect estate, to be had in this life, and such an one as is altogether needful for those that should well discharge the duties of this Institute. I never read of any I can compare in likeness to it. It is not like the state of saints, whose holiness chiefly appears in that union with God which maketh them out of themselves; I perceived then an apparent difference, and yet felt myself drawn to love and desire this state more than all those favours.
The felicity of this state (for as much as I can express) was a singular freedom from all that could make one adhere to earthly things, with an entire application and apt disposition to all good works. Something happened also discovering the freedom that such a soul should have had to refer all to God… I seemed in my understanding to see a soul thus composed, but far more fair than I can express it.
It then occurred and still continues in my mind, that those in Paradise, before the first fall, were in this estate. It seemed to me then, and that hope remains still, that our Lord let me see it, to invite me that way, and because He would give me grace in time to arrive to such an estate, at least in some degree. That word Justice, and those in former times that were called just persons, works of justice, done in innocency and that we be such as we appear, and appear such as we are – these things often since occurred to my mind with a liking of them… I have moreover thought upon this occasion that perhaps this course of ours would continue till the end of the world, because it came to that in which we first began.”
Over the difficult decades following Pope Benedict XIV’s Apostolic Constitution of 1749 forbidding the sisters to acknowledge Mary Ward as their foundress, her writings became obscured and, while the insight of the ‘Just Soul’ may have continued in the lives of those sisters who struggled on, knowledge of her letters, autobiography and retreat notes was gradually largely lost.
The work of rediscovering Mary Ward’s writings and re-instating her as foundress of her Institute started in the middle of the nineteenth century and gathered pace in the twentieth. The ‘Just Soul’ was brought back into view particularly by Immolata Wetter CJ in her ‘Letter of Instruction’ of 1973. Since then other writers have discussed and analysed this important spiritual insight, some of whom have been quoted in this work.
When we celebrated the 400th anniversary of Mary Ward’s insight of the ‘Just Soul’ we have asked a wide range of our Mary Ward companions who have been living out this vocation throughout the world to ‘tweet’ their understanding of the ‘Just Soul’ today, based on their lived experience. Our sincere thanks go to all who have offered us the fruits of their meditation, whether in writing or images, and whether or not we were able to include them in this work.
We hope that this book of reflections will help you to grow ever more deeply into the person God has called you to be.
