TIME TO MOVE ON ‘All good things come to an end’; they say, or ‘Life moves on’, which may not be the same idea.

But the truth of life, for those of us like myself who are Jesuits, and countless other people as well, is that from time to time the Good Lord touches you on the shoulder and says, ‘Time to move on; there’s work for you somewhere else’.

And that is what has happened to me, after just over nine years supervising the training of young, or at least new, Jesuits at Jesuit Theological College, in Melbourne, and more to the point for Madonna readers, after nine years in the editor’s chair at Madonna. I’m off to St Ignatius College, Riverview in Sydney, where I taught and did various Jesuit things in the late 1980s.

By happy chance, or providential planning, the man I am replacing at Riverview is taking over my editorial chair here at Madonna. After more than twenty years of leading Jesuit schools in Melbourne and Sydney, Chris Gleeson has begun in the new role of Director of Jesuit Publications. He will take over the editorial baton for Madonna from the next edition.

By happy chance I’m writing this farewell in mid-June 2003. I have just found the June 1994 Madonna, when Pat O’Sullivan, the previous editor, handed over to me. We shared the Partyline in that issue. Pat announced that he was going to Ethiopia to work with the Jesuit Refugee Service; I’m rather abashed at my modest transfer. At the moment I am packing for the trip north, and my Madonnas are certainly coming with me. The shredder is busy meanwhile with traces of my various crimes.

Nine years is longer than many magazines last, though the time is brief in Madonna’s one hundred and more years. How does it keep going? Nine years, on Peter Steele SJ and Edmund Campion are still writing for Madonna, which says much for their generosity and our good fortune. And David Lovell is still doing all the real editing work, for which I am more grateful than I can say. The staff at Jesuit Publications do all the complex practical work that brings Madonna to your postbox. Good Christian souls, anonymously, continue to write the Daily Prayers. The heart of the magazine has been there, because that is where the praying is done.

In contrast to the June 1994 edition, Madonna is now a bi-monthly magazine, the format is larger, we use colour, especially on the covers people often praise, and the overall layout is more readable. We have more permanent columnists that we used to; my thanks to them also. The magazine is more attractive to the modern eye and, we hope, more accessible to those seeking the movement of the Spirit in our world, over our land, in our hearts.

Madonna has changed and remained the same. There are many readers now who were readers then, and thank goodness there are many new ones. Some of our old readers have gone to the fullness of the Lord’s loving presence, where presumably they still read Madonna, but don’t have to pay subscriptions.

So the magazine indicates something of how it can be for us in life: there’s continuity, change and conclusions, and the freshness of renewal. For editors, writers, and readers, this is painful, delightful, life-giving and attended by the gift of peace.

All of us are called to discern the Spirit day after day, and nine years from now we will be doing it still, and, please God, Madonna will be helping us do it.

By the time this edition of Madonna arrives, I will be totally absorbed into my new life. Schools, for all their demands, difficulties and occasional tragedy, are power houses of new life. Much as teachers can welcome the holidays, there is nothing so empty as school buildings during the holidays. Come the first day of term, the energy floods back like waters surging into dried-up watercourses. Laughter, shouting, running, story-telling, spirited energy. New life. I hope I can cope.

At the same time you, dear readers, will be receiving this Madonna. Looking ahead at the articles, appreciating our well-practised writers, I know that this little magazine, one of the small miracles Our Lady keeps her eye on, will bring you Spirited energy, through its story-telling, its passages of reflection, its prayerfulness, its underlying tone of wonder at the goodness of the Lord.

Thank you for your support, your letters, your prayers. Blessings upon you all.

Andrew Bullen SJ