2007:4 - gujarat sahitya prakash

Transcription

From the Editor’s PC
FROM THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE TO THE
TREE OF LIFE: An Ignatian Understanding
Of The Incarnation
Would we have Christmas if Adam and Eve did not sin?
Would Jesus be born into this world as Emmanuel, God with
us? The tradition of the Church certainly tells us that it was
original sin that brought Jesus into this world to save us and
open the gates of heaven once again. St. Augustine proclaims,
“Oh happy fall” of Adam that brought Jesus as our Saviour!
Is there another way of looking at the Incarnation? Yes.
The Jesuit philosopher and theologian Francisco Suarez, who
lived at the time of Ignatius, suggests that there is a strong belief that Jesus, Emmanuel, would be born into this world even
Ignis–Ignatian Spirituality: South Asia
Quarterly / No. 2007:4 Vol. XXXVII No.IV
Articles for publication to be sent to:
The Editor, IGNIS
email: [email protected]
for subscriptions write to:
The Publisher, Ignis, Gujarat Sahitya Prakash, P.B. 70, Anand,
Gujarat- 388001, INDIA. email: [email protected]
Annual Subscription Rates: Rs. 70 for India. US $20; Euro 18 for
other countries. Please pay by M O / DD drawn in favour of GUJARAT
SAHITYA PRAKASH payable at Anand.
Editor: Paul Coutinho, SJ
Printed and Published by:
K.T. Mathew, S.J., Gujarat Sahitya Prakash, P. B. 70, Anand – 388001,
Gujarat, India. Printed at Anand Press, Gamdi-Anand, Gujarat – 388001.
IGNIS 2007/4
if there were no sin. The purpose of the incarnation then would
be to complete the work of Creation or its glorification. Jesus
has come into the world to bring Creation, a divine emanation, to its original end. Later, Teilhard de Chardin would write
about involution and evolution - Involution being Spirit becoming matter in the beginning of creation and evolution as matter
returning to its original state, namely, spiritual and divine.
What does Ignatius believe about the Incarnation? Ignatius does not write a theological treatise, but if we follow the
dynamics in the Spiritual Exercises we see that both Suarez
and Teilhard are true to the Ignatian experience.
The grace that Ignatius wants the retreatants to experience is, to know, to love and to follow Emmanuel. And the
prayer that Ignatius now suggests is contemplation. The retreatants open themselves to the mystery they are contemplating
and allow the mystery to fill them and transform them into the
mystery itself. The Divine has become human so that humans
can become divine. This dynamic transformation of the retreatants climaxes at the very end of the retreat when the retreatants become one with the Divine, like the rays of the sun and
the sun or the waters of the fountain and the fountain (SpEx
237). And as one matures and grows along the spiritual path,
Ignatius believes that “the perfect, due to constant contemplation and the enlightenment of the understanding, consider,
meditate, and ponder more that God our Lord is in every creature by His essence, power, and presence (SpEx 39).
St. Paul will tell us in his letter to the Romans that we
have received the Spirit who helps us realize that we are children of God and as children we are Divine heirs! Not only us but
the whole of creation is waiting in eager expectation, groaning
as in the pains of childbirth, for our true identity to be revealed
through the incarnation of Jesus, Emmanuel. God becoming
human to help us experience our identity as Divine heirs! And
as heirs the gifts and graces of God are not just our privilege
but our right. All the gifts and graces of God belong to us if we
know it and want it.
So where do we find the roots of the Incarnation? In
FROM THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE TO THE TREE OF LIFE
Genesis 3 we find the account of the Fall of Adam and Eve.
Traditionally we are told that the sin of Adam and Eve was
disobedience. This is what Paul writes in his letter to the
Romans: “For just as through the disobedience of the one man
the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of
the one man the many will be made righteous.” (Rom 5:19).
This act of disobedience marked every human being with the
stain of original sin and through the obedience of Jesus the
human race is once again reconciled with God.
But there is another way of looking at the Fall that may
help us to understand Ignatius and the other Jesuits. In most
ancient traditions and cultures the serpent is a symbol of wisdom. In the book of Genesis we are told that the serpent had
secret knowledge and wisdom that no other creature had. The
serpent seduced the woman into eating the fruit from the tree
of wisdom and knowledge. The feminine intuition recognized
that the fruit was good for food, a delight to the eyes and that
the tree was to be desired to make one wise. The fruit resulted
in nakedness where we see ourselves just as we are – with no
masks and no pretences. In our nakedness we see ourselves
as God’s own image and likeness and the Divine breath. We
experience our true identity.
But wisdom often comes with a price. Skins were put
onto our nakedness. Skins that created Jews and Gentiles,
slave and free, male and female. Wisdom has other consequences, namely, punishment, alienation and suffering at the
hands of those who are close to us and those we love most. At
the same time wisdom continues to seduce us and challenges
us to eat the forbidden fruit until we come to the tree of life. It
is then we will experience the fullness of wisdom and find our
true identity in the Divine.
We eat from the tree of knowledge and experience our
nakedness or transparency. We see ourselves more and more
as we truly are and this gives us a growing inner freedom. But
this knowledge is counter-culture and sometimes anti-social
and makes those we love most and are close to us very uncomfortable. To avoid being ridiculed or ostracized by others
our loved ones will stay away from us or punish us and make
IGNIS 2007/4
us suffer. It is not our enemies but those we love and cherish
most who will resist us most and alienate us. Jesus was not
killed by the Romans or his enemies but by his own people and
the religious tradition that he so loved.
But the thirst and craving for the gift of the tree of life
leaves us with a restlessness and a deep burning fire that challenges us to keep eating the forbidden fruit of knowledge and
deeper consciousness until we reach the tree of life. .
When we look at the Fall of Adam and Eve in this way,
we realize that before they ate of the tree of knowledge and
gained consciousness they were in a state of ignorance. And
Jesus came into this world to give us the fullness of knowledge
and consciousness – knowledge that we are God’s image and
likeness and our consciousness of being Divine heirs!
Paul Coutinho, SJ
IGNATIUS AND HIS BENEFACTORS
Joseph Murray Abraham, S.J.
Joseph Murray Abraham is a member of the Darjeeling Province
and is the Director of St. Alphonsus Social and Agricultural Centre
(SASAC), Sepoydhura, Kurseong, Dt. Darjeeling – 734 203.
There are two fundamental facts about the spiritual life
and the lifework of Ignatius that must never be forgotten or ignored. If they are not constantly before our eyes, then there is
no way we can be in heart and mind true followers of the man
we call ‘our father in the Lord’. The first fact is Ignatius’ conviction that the hinge virtue that opens the door to all other virtues
is the virtue of gratitude. In contrast, Ignatius says that ingratitude is the most abominable of sins and equivalently slams the
door in the face of Christ. It may seem I am exaggerating, but
read what Ignatius writes about ingratitude.
It seems to me in the light of the divine goodness, although others may think differently, that ingratitude is the most abominable of sins and that it should be detested in the sight of our
Creator and Lord by all of His creatures who are capable of
enjoying His divine and everlasting glory, for it is a forgetting
of the graces, benefits, and blessings received. As such it is
the cause, beginning and origin of all sins and misfortunes. On
the contrary, the grateful acknowledgement of blessings and
gifts received is loved and esteemed not only on earth but in
heaven. 1A
I cannot conceive how Ignatius could have used stronger
5
IGNIS 2007/4
language to praise gratitude or to condemn ingratitude. If gratitude is not the key virtue in my soul as a Jesuit, then I have
missed the very heart beat of Ignatian spirituality. We often
say the secret of that spirituality is “to find God in all things”.
But we do not find God in things merely as things. We find God
in things as His gifts. Certainly for Ignatius it is unworthy of ‘a
noble knight’ not to feel, express and ‘live’ in gratitude for the
gifts of His King, the divine Majesty—as Ignatius so often calls
God.
Ignatius was convinced that gratitude is the source from
which flows the virtues that makes it possible for us to love and
serve God. He expressed that conviction most emphatically in
the Contemplation to Attain Love. It is in the Second Prelude
that Ignatius states so clearly the grace we are seeking in this
contemplation, and indeed seeking in our lives as Jesuits.
The Second prelude is to ask for what I desire. Here it will be to
ask for interior knowledge of all the great good I have received,
in order that, stirred by profound gratitude, I may become able
to love and serve the Divine Majesty in all things.2
As usual, Ignatius’ words are not elegant, but it would
take a dull mind indeed not to grasp his meaning. It is gratitude
stirring in the womb of our minds and hearts that gives birth to
our love and service of God. Ignatius puts it so simply: gratitude
makes us ‘able’ to do what every Christian and Jesuit must do,
love and serve the Lord. Now, we can’t have it both ways. We
can’t say Ignatius is a master of the spiritual life—which we can
say and must say—and then say he exaggerates and is wrong
about the essential role gratitude plays in our spiritual growth.
It is not only in the Contemplation to Obtain Love that
Ignatius highlights the function of gratitude in our spiritual life.
In some ways, the First Week of the Exercises is the most crucial. That is why Ignatius thought it was necessary for all those,
who wanted to amend their lives, to go through the exercises of
the First Week. But he also thought that for those, who would
not draw profit from the following weeks, the First Week was
sufficient. On our pilgrimage to God, the great leap forward for
all of us is an ‘intense sorrow and tears for our sins’. That feel-
ing of repentance brings us like prodigals into the arms of our
heavenly Father. But how does Ignatius make sure that the bitter awareness of our sinfulness, acquired during the First Week,
won’t react on us like his betrayal of Jesus reacted on Judas?
For Ignatius only gratitude to God for his mercy will provide the
escape hatch by which we can save ourselves from the despair
threatening to drown us in the ocean of our sinfulness.
I will conclude with a colloquy of mercy—conversing with God
our Lord and thanking him for granting me life until now, and
proposing with his grace, amendment for the future.3
This teaching of Saint Ignatius should be obvious to us
if we remember how gratitude forms and informs our hearts.
First, gratitude is the surest and most attractive way to humility—the foundational virtue in Ignatian spirituality. When we
are grateful, we take to heart the meaning of the parable of the
vine. Separated from Jesus, the source of all God’s gifts and
graces, ‘we can do nothing’. United with Jesus we can do great
things and produce much fruit in our lives. This is the truth;
and humility is truth.
Make your home in me, as I make mine in you. As a branch
cannot bear fruit all of itself, but must remain part of the vine,
neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you
are its branches, whoever remains in me and I in him, bears
fruit in plenty; for cut off from me you can do nothing. 4
Ignatius teaches that ingratitude cuts us off from the vine
so that spiritually we ‘wither away and die.’
But gratitude is the source of another virtue that Karl
Rahner says is a constituent element in Ignatian spirituality.
That element is joy. Gratitude is always a cause of joy. When
we reflect that all the good things we receive every day are really gifts from our Father, this realization cannot but fill us with
joy. For gifts are always a sign of the giver’s love. Since every
day God overwhelms us with His gifts, our gratitude for those
gifts should overwhelm us with joy. Now what is astounding
about Jesus’ parable of the vine is what follows it. Get the
picture. Here is Jesus, at the last supper, a short time before
IGNIS 2007/4
his terrible agony in the garden when he will say, ‘My soul is
sorrowful even unto death’. Yet, amazingly, what reason does
he give his disciples for telling them this parable of the vine and
branches?
I have told you this that my own joy may be in you and your
joy may be complete.5
Jesus is reminding his disciples that no sorrow, no matter how intense, can be compared to the enduring gift he is
giving them: the gift of union with Him, the source of ‘all good
gifts’, the source of all joy.
Since gratitude fills us with a sense of humility and joy,
it should come as no surprise to us that Ignatius praises it so
highly. In whatever Ignatius wrote, he was usually laconic, and
always circumspect. Francis Borgia, even Francis Xavier, may
bubble in their letters like Tennyson’s brook running merrily
over its stony bed; but Ignatius expresses his feelings like the
quiet movement and gentle swelling of the incoming tide of the
ocean. We have to take Ignatius ‘at his word’. When he talks of
gratitude, his usually sober words become the exultant cry of a
little child humbly rejoicing in its complete dependency on the
love and gifts of its mother or father. When talking about gratitude, Ignatius lets the exuberance of his joy have its way!
Ignatius’ oft-repeated insistence on the absolute need of
gratitude in our spiritual life is one fact we must never forget
if we want to have a heart after the heart of ‘our father in the
Lord’. But the second crucial element in Ignatius’ spiritual life
has always astounded me, and still astounds me. It is the depth
of gratitude Ignatius felt for the friends and benefactors who had
so profound an influence on the development of his own spiritual life and on the development of his fledgling Society. And
this, I think, is where many of us Jesuits fail miserably today.
From my experience, many Jesuits take our lay collaborators
and supporters for granted and not with Ignatian gratitude. This
is surprising not only because their attitude is diametrically opposed to the charism of our founder; but it also completely
ignores the decrees of the 34th General Congregation. We believe that just as the early disciples of Jesus could say ‘this
seems good to us and to the Holy Spirit’, so the Fathers of a
General Congregation writing their decrees can also say, ‘this
seems good to us and to the Holy Spirit’. It is a strange that to
a great extent we have ignored the words of the representatives
of the whole Society on what our attitude to our benefactors
should be in this day and age. It is positively frightening for the
future of our Society to ignore the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
For the first time in the history of General Congregations, the
Fathers devoted a chapter of decrees to our relationship with
our lay co-workers and supporters. As Vatican II predicted the
church of the future will be ‘the church of the laity’. At that
time, the Vatican Fathers could not have foreseen the drastic
drop in priestly and religious vocations, especially in the affluent world, but the Holy Spirit could foresee it—as the document
on the laity clearly shows. In God’s divine providence, perhaps
the decrease in priestly and religious vocations is what God
thinks the best way to make us realize the vital importance of
the vocation of the laity in the Church’s evangelization of the
world.
Many Jesuits may think the GC34 decrees require an
absolutely new attitude towards the laity working with us and
supporting our work. On the contrary, it requires reviving the
original attitude Ignatius had in the infancy of his conversion
and in the infancy of his Society. From the beginning, Ignatius
realized that God was sending into his life as his instruments lay
people who would bring him the graces he needed to carry on
his pilgrimage to the Lord and to establish his ‘least Society’.
It was this realization that made gratitude flourish in Ignatius’
soul. We must never forget this startling but undeniable fact:
without Ignatius’ lay ‘friends in the Lord’, there would never
have been a Saint Ignatius, or a Society of Jesus. This is no
more startling than saying without the lay man, Ignatius, there
would never have been a Blessed Peter Faber or a Saint Francis
Xavier. All of us are aware of the vital role Ignatius played in the
lives of the early Jesuits. But Ignatius was fully aware of the
vital role so many lay people played in his pilgrimage to God
and in his founding of the Society of Jesus. It was this awareness that opened wide his heart to the grace of gratitude.
10
IGNIS 2007/4
Now, no doubt many of my readers will feel in saying this
about Ignatius’ attitude to his benefactors, I am going too far;
but after reading the following quotations from Ignatius’ letters, in which he pours out his heart in gratitude to his benefactors, they will end up feeling I have not gone far enough. First of
all, I quote from a letter, written when Ignatius, the pilgrim, was
trying to find his way to God. It was written to Isabel Roser, one
of the first women to help Ignatius discern God’s will for him.
Because it expresses so well the whole ‘tone’ of the gratitude
Ignatius felt for all his benefactors, I quote it at length.
You also say I must forgive you for not giving me more help,
for you have many obligations to fulfill and your resources are
not sufficient. There is no need to ask forgiveness—I fear for my
own pardon, for I think that if I do not do what God our Lord
requires of me towards all my benefactors, his righteous and divine justice will not forgive me—all the more so, if I were to fail
in this respect towards you, after all I have received from you.
In short, if I do not manage to fulfill what I owe in this respect,
I have no other refuge but, when the merits I obtain before
God’s divine Majesty are counted—merits that are nevertheless
gained through his grace—to ask the Lord himself to distribute
them among the persons to whom I am indebted, to each one
in accordance with the service he has rendered me, and chiefly
you—for to you I owe more than to anyone I know in this life.
As I am conscious of this, I hope in God our Lord that he will
help me to cancel the debt of my gratitude to you. Think, then,
that from this time onwards your goodwill towards me, which
is so spontaneous and so sincere, will be received by me with
as much pleasure and spiritual joy as all the money you could
send me, for God our Lord requires us to look at and love the
giver more than the gift and that we should always have him
before our eyes, in our soul and in our heart.6
GRATITUDE A DEBT OWED
For Ignatius, gratitude was always due to benefactors as
the repayment of a debt. It was a debt that had to be repaid, an
obligation that had to be fulfilled. He was genuinely afraid that
God would judge him severely for not thanking his benefactors
11
enough. His only hope was that if his gratitude had fallen short
of the amount of gratitude due, God would make up the deficit
by giving his benefactors the merits Ignatius had gained by
God’s grace. That is the only way he thinks his debt of gratitude
can be repaid. There is something of spiritual account-keeping
in Ignatius as there was in the spirituality of his day. One had
to tote up merits so they would pay off the deficits registered in
the Doom’s Day Book. The benefits of Indulgences for this or
that good act were calculated in so many days. Entering the
exact number of one’s failings in the little ‘account book’ of the
Particular Examen, Ignatius considered the best practical way
of getting rid of them. This mathematical approach to spiritual
life may not appeal to everyone today, and may even repel
some—but it was the ordinary way of proceeding spiritually in
Ignatius’ time—and indeed, also much later.
--To Isabel Roser: As I am conscious of this, I hope in
God our Lord that he will help me to cancel the debt of my
gratitude to you…. As long as I shall live I shall not be able to
help owing them [benefactresses] but I do indeed think that
after we have left this life, they will be well rewarded for what
they have done for me. 7
--To Ines [Agnes] Pascal: In this [the collection of alms
for Ignatius’ from his friends] as in all other questions I shall
consider whatever you do as best, and I remain contented for I
am continually in your debt and for the future I shall always be
under an obligation to you.8
--To Betram Loyola: The ambassador of the king of Portugal, in whose company Francis is travelling, is, you must
know, one of our dearest friends, one to whom we are very
deeply in debt….9
--To Father Simon Rodriguez: [I]t is known to the whole
Society, but to you more closely than to others since you are
there present, that we are under the greatest obligation to the
king, your lord and ours in the Lord… I wished to remind you….
we in Rome… are faithful and grateful to those to whom under
the Divine Goodness we owe so much….10
12
IGNIS 2007/4
--To King John III of Portugal: It is truly a great comfort to me, and I find it a real delight, to be forever beholden to
you.11
--To Prince Philip of Spain: I am speaking of the true
and affectionate reverence and gratitude which I owe to your
highness in our Lord. It is a debt which I bear close to my heart
and of which I have been conscious for some time past, a consciousness that makes itself keenly felt with every moment.12
--To Dona Aldonza Gonsalez: For you must consider
all of us your debtors in our Lord, who are prepared to do everything, having been surpassed in charity by that which Your
Grace has shown us in this matter… As long as I shall live I
shall not be able to help owing them [benefactresses] but I do
indeed think that after we have left this life, they will be well
rewarded for what they have done for me.13
--To John de Vega: [O]ur great obligations are well
known to all of them [the Fathers of the Society], obligations
which it is a joy to acknowledge.14
--To Madonna Gigli: And in truth, on the obligation
which gratitude and charity impose on us, that we should try to
give pleasure to people to whom we are so much indebted…15
--To the Confessor of the Queen of France: For this I
shall be grateful to you as long as I live, and I am very glad to
be thus obliged to you. If ever I can, whether present or absent,
be of any service to you, I shall consider myself honoured, if
God makes me worthy in his supreme and divine goodness to
repay my great indebtedness.—16
Here it might be profitable to pause for a paragraph or
two. I have always been intrigued by two influences on the
spirituality of Ignatius: First, the influence of the culture of his
times and secondly, the influence of his ‘guru’, Saint Thomas
Aquinas. As to the first, Ignatius lived in the age of chivalry.
That fact so influenced the attitudes of Ignatius that we can
truthfully call his spirituality, a chivalrous spirituality. Ignatius
drew his vocabulary, the expression of his ideals, his images,
his feelings towards Christ from the culture of chivalry. That
13
aspect of his spirituality would make a most fascinating study
because it might make us realize that we have not adapted his
Spiritual Exercises enough to fit our modern culture, which is
so different from his. Perhaps we need to translate the Exercises into a language modern people can better understand.
To make the Exercises have the impact they should have on
those seeking the will of God today, perhaps what we need is
an aggiornamento.
But here I want rather to touch briefly on the second great
influence on Ignatius’ spirituality: Saint Thomas Aquinas. As
I have mentioned, it would not be altogether an exaggeration
to say the spirituality of the Middle Ages was rather a ‘mathematical spirituality’. This too is a ‘sign of the times’ we live in.
Today, many people, if not most, think that economics is the
most important thing in life. And the more important business
becomes, the more accounts, and the more types of accounts,
have to be kept. Counting helps you to know where you are in
your business. But for many people today, again, if not most,
spirituality is a lot less important than it was in the time of Ignatius. So why bother doing all that counting? But Ignatius might
very well answer that question by saying: “If you don’t count,
you won’t know where you are; you won’t know how many
miles you’ve travelled on your pilgrimage to God, nor will you
know how many miles you still have to go.”
I think Ignatius got many of his thoughts on gratitude
from Aquinas. He certainly thought Saint Thomas, through his
writings, was scattering into the mind of students many precious jewels. Ignatius gathered up many of those gems and
stored them in the treasure house of his own spirituality. Then,
later when ‘helping souls’ by ‘talking about the things of God’,
‘like the owner of a house, he brought out of his storeroom new
things, as well as old.’ Here are a few of the old things, Saint
Thomas things, Ignatius brought out about gratitude.
A debt of gratitude is a moral debt required by virtue.
Now a thing is a sin from the fact of its being contrary to virtue.
Wherefore it is evident that every ingratitude is a sin.
The debt of gratitude flows from the debt of love, and
from the latter no man should wish to be free. Hence that any-
14
IGNIS 2007/4
one should owe this debt unwillingly seems to arise from lack
of love for his benefactor.
[T]he nature of the debt to be paid must needs vary according to various causes giving rise to the debt, yet so that the
greater always includes the lesser. Now the cause of debt is
found primarily and chiefly in God, in that He is the first principle of all our goods.
[T]he repayment [of the debt] that belongs to the virtue
of thankfulness or gratitude answers to the moral debt, and is
paid spontaneously. Hence thanksgiving is less thankful when
compelled.
Since true friendship is based on virtue, whatever there
is contrary to virtue in a friend is an obstacle to friendship, and
whatever in him is virtuous is an incentive to friendship. In this
way friendship is preserved by repayment of favours and repayment of favours belongs specially to the virtue of gratitude.
Every effect turns naturally to its cause; wherefore Dionysius says that “God turns all things to Himself because He
is the cause of all”: for the effect must needs always be directed
to the end of the agent. Now it is evident that a benefactor, as
such, is the cause of the beneficiary.
A poor man is certainly not ungrateful if he does what
he can. For since kindness depends on the heart rather than on
the deed, so too gratitude depends chiefly on the heart. Hence
Seneca says “Who receives a favour gratefully, has already begun to pay it back: and that we are grateful for favours received
should be shown by the outpourings of the heart, not only in
his hearing but everywhere.” 17
Those gems of Saint Thomas certainly enriched Ignatius’
thoughts about gratitude. And it is interesting to note that final
quotation. Ignatius expressed his gratitude not only to the benefactors concerned; he expressed it also to the Fathers around
him and often to the whole Society.
A MAN OF JOY
Now reading the above quotations from Ignatius’ letters,
we are in great danger of making a horrible mistake. Words
and phrases like debt, obligation, indebtedness, ‘not to be able
15
to help owing’—all these conjure up a miserable situation to
be in. For many they express something we must do but will
be most unhappy doing; something we will do only grudgingly. Ignatius did not think, could no think, that way. As I have
mentioned, Ignatius was a man of joy and Ignatius’ spirituality, precisely because gratitude is an essential element in it,
is a spirituality of joy. He literally loved being in debt. It kept
him ‘walking humbly before His God.’ His sense of indebtedness made him realize how much he needed the help and gifts
of his benefactors, help and gifts that ultimately came from
God ‘from whom all good things come’. The fact that Ignatius
thought he could never pay back to benefactors and to God the
debt he owed made him realize how much they had given, how
freely they had given their gifts, how much they loved him.. In
his life Ignatius learned how generous God is; he learned the
truth of the prayer we say in our breviary: “God not only gives
us what we ask for, he also gives us what we dare not ask for.”
If Ignatius had not felt his indebtedness so keenly, he would
never have felt gratitude so deeply, and if he had not felt such
deep gratitude, he would never have been what he was, a man
of joy.
--To Isabel Roser: I hope in God our Lord that he will
help me to cancel the debt of my gratitude to you. Think, then,
that from this time onwards your goodwill towards me, which
is so spontaneous and so sincere, will be received by me with
as much pleasure and spiritual joy as all the money you could
send me…18
--To King John III of Portugal: It is truly a great comfort to me, and I find it a real delight, to be forever beholden to
you.19
--To the Confessor of the Queen of France: For this I
shall be grateful to you as long as I live, and I am very glad to
be thus obliged to you.20
--To Francis Borgia: I find fresh reason, I assure you,
for rejoicing in our Lord, and while giving thanks to his Eternal Majesty I can attribute my joy only to his divine goodness,
which is the source of all our blessings.21
16
IGNIS 2007/4
--To John de Vega: [O]ur great obligations are well
known to all of them, obligations which it is a joy to acknowledge.22
ALL GIFTS ‘FROM ABOVE’
In Ignatian spirituality there is a kind of trinity of love,
each love distinct, but not separate, each love ‘in’ the other
and with the other. At one and the same time, this love is for
all the gifts he received in life, for all the givers of the gifts and
for the Giver of both the givers and the gifts—the Giver of all.
How clearly and simply Ignatius expresses this in his letter to
Isabel.
[F]or God our Lord requires us to look at and love the giver
more than the gift and that we should always have him before
our eyes, in our soul and in our heart.23
Ignatius loves the gift and the giver in his all-embracing
love of the Giver. And this is the reason why he appreciated
gifts so much, and loved the givers, his friends and benefactors,
so affectionately. In loving both gifts and givers he is ‘incarnating’ the love of ‘his whole heart, of his whole mind, and of all
his strength’, his all-inclusive love, his love of God. In loving
the benefactors he could see, he was loving the Benefactor he
could not see.
We cannot understand Ignatian spirituality and his love
for all his friends and indeed for all creatures, until we realize
that he is always loving them in the Love that comes to him
‘from above’. “God has poured out his love into our hearts by
the Holy Spirit, whim he has given us.24 All things, but especially his friends and benefactors, are to Ignatius like panes of
coloured glass. The coloured light of each friend shines in his
heart with a unique loveliness. But their rainbow-coloured light
he sees as coming from the only source of light from Jesus, the
Son, “the image of the invisible God” 25, “light from light, true
God from true God.26 Ignatius could no more separate his love
for his friends from his love for God than he could separate the
light shining through coloured glass from the light of the sun.
Coloured glass is made to let the light of the sun shine through
17
it with the different colour of each pane. Coloured glass cannot
‘be’ itself, cannot be what it was meant to be, in the dark. So for
Ignatius human beings cannot be what they were meant to be,
be themselves, unless the light of love from God shines through
them. When Ignatius saw the light, the love of each friend shining upon him, coloured by each friend’s unique personality,
he saw them as transparent gifts through whom he could see
the light ‘from above’, see the face of God, source of all light,
source of all love. “O God let your face shine its light on us.”27
That is why in the last Exercise of his Spiritual Exercises,
The Contemplation to Attain Love, the last thing Ignatius wants
us to ponder so its truth will imprint itself indelibly in our hearts
is this:
I will consider how all good things and gifts descend from
above…just as the rays come down from the sun.28
That is also why his first rule in the second method of
making an election is this:
That love that moves me and makes me chose the matter in
question should descend from above, from the love of God; in
such a way that the person making the election should perceive beforehand that the love, whether greater or less, which
she or he has for the matter being chosen is solely for the sake
of our Creator and Lord 29
According to Ignatius this ‘love from above’ should so
dominate our wills when we are making even simple decisions
in our spiritual life that it will always be the ultimate motive for
what we do.
How clear Ignatius makes this in his rules for the distribution of alms.
First of all, that love that moves me and brings me to give the
alms should descend from above, from the love of God, our
Lord, in such a way that I perceive beforehand that the love,
whether greater or less, which I have for the persons in God,
and that God may shine forth in the reason for which I have
greater love for these persons.30
18
IGNIS 2007/4
It was when reading Ignatius’ letters that I realized how
fully he lived every day his Contemplation to Attain Love. He
won’t let himself or his friends forget that all good comes from
God. His usual way of doing this is by using short phrases that
express all. It’s when you read them in letter after letter that
these phrases exert their cumulative effect. Then you realize
that this truth was the vine of Ignatius’ spirituality and all other
truths were its branches. Ignatius did not ‘find God in all things’
as mere things. He found God in all things as gifts of love and
so the cause of his joy and the root of humility. To Ignatius all
things, and all friends and benefactors, were God’s gifts, his
blessings, his goodness to us.
--To Francis Borgia: the source of all our blessings.31
--To John de Vega: as principal author of every blessing.32
--To Charles Borgia: the author of all blessings.33
--To the King of the Romans: the author of all good.34
--To John de Avila: the author of all good.35
When expressing his gratitude to benefactors, in many
different ways, Ignatius reminds himself and them that their
generosity to him and to the Society is really a grace from God.
It is God loving the Society through them. He is the one who
inspires them to give; he is the one using them as his instrument. Ignatius didn’t consider benefactors as remote agents
of God. They were as close to God in their help of the Society
as an instrument in God’s hands.
--To the King of Portugal: He [God] has shown this continual interest [in the Society] by choosing your highness as
the distinguished and faithful instrument to suit his purpose.36
--To Dona Aldonza Gonzalez: May God reward with a
crown of glory and with an everlasting reward all those who
have been the most efficacious instruments of his providence in
this work.37
This is a favourite metaphor of Ignatius. He uses in his
Constitutions to try to make us understand how intimately we
must be united with God if we are to be able to do his work.
19
We must use every means we can, supernatural and natural,
that unite the human instrument with God and so dispose it
that it may be wielded well by his divine hand.38 They must
also pray for friends and benefactors….that God may dispose
them all to receive his grace through the weak instruments of
this least Society.39 So just as God uses our benefactors as
his instrument in supporting the works of the Society, so he
uses the members of the Society as his instruments in disposing benefactors through their prayers to receive the grace of
generosity. Ignatius considers this mutual, reciprocal help the
essence of friendship.
Love consists of a mutual communication between the persons.
That is one who loves, gives and communicates to the beloved
what he or she has, or part of what is had, and the beloved in
return does the same to the lover.40
And so, in his Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, Ignatius wrote:
It is highly proper for us to do something on our part in return
for the devotion and generosity shown towards the Society by
those whom the Divine Goodness employs as his ministers to
found and endow its colleges. First of all, therefore, in every college let a Mass be said in perpetuity each week for its founder
and benefactors, living and dead.41
The founders and benefactors of such colleges become in a special way sharers in all the good works of those colleges and of
the whole Society.42
In general, the Society should deem itself especially obligated
to them [the benefactors] and to their dear ones, both during
their lifetime and after their death. It is bound by an obligation
of charity and love, to show them whatever service it can, according to our humble profession, for the divine glory.43
And in the Complementary Norms, published in 1996,
which brought the laws of the Society up to date, we find:
The Society should always show itself bound to its benefactors
in charity and gratitude. Superiors should ensure prayers are
20
IGNIS 2007/4
offered for them and other appropriate signs of our gratitude are
shown to them.44
THE ROLE OF DESIRE IN IGNATIAN SPIRITUALITY
Ignatius often explains in his letters just how God, the
‘author of all good’, works in the Society’s benefactors to make
them his instruments. He inspires them, fills them full of desires
to express their love of God in deeds, in gifts given to help the
Society’s works.
--To Dona Aldonze Gonzalez: I see the good intention
and the devout wishes, with which the Lord continually inspires your Grace, that our humble Society should take over
that college for the honour of God and the profit of souls…45
--To Mary of Austria: [I]t has pleased God’s goodness to
stir the mind of certain good men and move them to… desire
to see instituted in the celebrated university of Louvain as elsewhere, a college of the Society of Jesus.—46
--To Andrew Lippomant: We are aware of the great
readiness and the ardent desire with which God our Lord has
inspired your lordship…as to helping the scholastics of our order…47
--To John de Vega: As to the rest, the affections of
which your Lordship gives proof in your wish to see increased
in our Lord the favour of this least Society which is wholly
yours, Jesus Christ who is our God and our Lord, who himself
has inspired you, will we hope, in His divine love perfect and
reward it always.48
--To Prince Philip of Spain: May God our perfect and
eternal good, be your highnesses’ unending and happy reward, since it was his service that has moved, and I hope will
continue to move, the royal and Christian soul of your highness, so that you will continue to show the same favour to this
least Society which belongs entirely to your highness 49
--To Louis Prince of Portugal: I should like to be able
to answer your highness’ letter of September 27, not so much
21
in words as with a feeling of gratitude in recognition of God’s
mercy and giving him infinite thanks for the favour he confers
on this least Society by inspiring your highness with the desire
to help and support it in his divine service.—50
Now we come to a crucial point in trying to understand
the full meaning of Ignatius’ gratitude to those who were his
personal benefactors and also benefactors of the Society. How
is it he could give his benefactors such an important role in the
governance of the Society? How could it be that he thought it
was right ‘in the Lord’ that his duty of gratitude to his benefactors should not only influence his duty as General, but should
often determine what his duty was? It was often the ‘ardent’
desires of benefactors that helped Ignatius discern his duty as
the General of the Society. So often, in very important matters,
it was what benefactors desired so earnestly that Ignatius decided to do—even though if he had not taken their desires into
consideration, he may have done something else. Hugho Rahner in his book “Saint Ignatius Loyola, His Letters to Women,”
makes these comments.
Ignatius was forced to admit, in the last year of his life, how
dear [Father] Araoz had become to the princess and realized
there could be no question of his recall.51
From all the world requests and petitions for priests, professors,
teachers and missionaries were reaching Ignatius. Was Biocan
in darkest Sicily, of all places, to be the most important? Yet he
could refuse nothing to the irrepressible Isabel.52
Now these comments could make one believe Ignatius
himself suffered from the ‘inordinate affections’ we have to
get rid of before we can find the will of God. When there were
such compelling reasons to make Ignatius think he should do
something else, how could he allow his affectionate gratitude
towards his benefactors make him do rather what they wanted
done? Now I think two things will help justify Ignatius’ way of
proceeding—though as his most unworthy son, I hesitate to use
the word ‘justify’ when talking about my saintly father! The first
thing we have to take into account is the key role desire plays
in Ignatian spirituality. For him, no one will ever do a good
deed for God unless God first inspires him with the desire to
22
IGNIS 2007/4
do it. That may seem obvious. But Ignatius goes further than
that—and the further step is not obvious but rather astounding.
He says that if God inspires us with the desire to do something
we simply cannot do, then the desire is the deed, is equivalent
to the deed and will achieve in God’s own way what the deed
would have achieved had it been possible.
Ignatius did not believe that during their studies, the
scholastics should spend too much time in prayer, but he wrote
this to the Scholastics of Coimbra:
The fourth way of helping your neighbour is very far-reaching indeed and consists in desires and prayer. The demands of
your life of studies do not permit you to devote much time to
prayer, yet you can make up for this by desires, since the time
you devote to your various exercises is a continuous prayer ,
seeing that you are engaged in them only for God’s service
In this passage Ignatius tells the scholastics if helping
their neighbours by deeds is impossible, their desire to help
them is already a help—indeed, it is the only help God wants
them to give. So their desire itself is the deed, something done
for their neighbour. And it is the scholastic’s desire to pray that
transforms the hours they spend in study into prayer. For Ignatius, desire is the operative thing, desire ‘does it’! If we have
the desire and can ‘do’ nothing, the desire is enough. It is what
God wants from us. And indeed the first part of the one prayer
Jesus taught us is nothing but an expression of our desires:
may Thy name be holy, may Thy Kingdom come, may Thy
will be done. God inspires us to have those desires and express
those desires, because in themselves they are deeds, they ‘do
something’ to make his name holy, his kingdom come, his will
be done—most of all, in our own hearts where deeds need doing most of all!
Ignatius had requests to send Jesuits to places all over
the world. Sometimes apparently God did not inspire him with
any desire to send them to this place rather than to that. Then a
benefactor expresses a strong God-inspired desire that he send
some of his sons to this particular place. Obviously Ignatius
allowed the desire of the benefactor to decide the place he
23
should choose to send some of his very limited men. It was
through the God-given desire of the benefactor that Ignatius
could discern the will of God. He felt that they were so one in
the Spirit, ‘in union of mind and heart’, with him and the Society
that God was using the desire he had inflamed benefactors with
to inflame in Ignatius the same desire.
Now, many may think that Ignatius’ reverence and obedience to the desires inspired by God in his benefactors does
not ‘justify’ his giving benefactors such a key role in the governance of the Society. They think that because they can’t
understand that Ignatius thought God had so intimately united
his benefactors with the Society that he wanted Ignatius to give
them that role. Two passages from scripture may help us understand what Ignatius thought made someone in the deepest,
truest sense a ‘member’ of the Society.
When they told Jesus that his mother and brothers were
outside and wanted to speak to him, Jesus answered:
Who is my mother and who are my brothers? Pointing to his
disciples, he said: Here are my brothers and my mother. Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, sister
and mother.53
Here Jesus teaches us that our physical relationship, our
relation ‘in the flesh’, with people is not nearly as important and
essential as our spiritual relationship, our relation with them ‘in
the will of God’. Being genuine sons and daughters of Our Father is literally an infinitely more intimate relationship that our
relationship with our human mothers and fathers. Ignatius may
well have believed that benefactors who were working with him
to help souls through the Society out of a pure desire to do the
will of God were more ‘members’ of the Society than those who
could put SJ after their names but did not have the same pure
desire to do the will of God.
The second scriptural passage that throws light on our
question is from Paul.
A man is not a Jew if he is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is
24
IGNIS 2007/4
one inwardly, and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by
the Spirit, not by the written code.54
Jesus says a spiritual union in the will of God between
people unites them much more to each other than a physical
union does. Paul says that it is not a juridical circumcision in
the flesh by the rabbi that makes a person a Jew but the spiritual circumcision in the heart by the Spirit truly makes someone a Jew.
Now for me the only reason that can explain and ‘justify’ the important role Ignatius gave to his benefactors in the
governance of the Society is that he believed that someone
did not become truly a Jesuit by the vows he said with his lips
unless he also said those vows with his heart under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It is not that the oral vows don’t make a
difference. Ignatius would not consider vows truly vows until
they are one with the vows of the heart. It was not the physical relationship of Mary with Jesus that mattered most. It was
her spiritual relationship with him in the will of the Father that
was infinitely more important. But the physical relationship did
matter. It made the relationship between Jesus and his Mother
absolutely unique; not to be compared with any other relationship. The supernatural relationship did not, as Saint Thomas
teaches, destroy the natural relationship. Quite the contrary:
God’s grace builds on nature. Perhaps we can say the most
significant thing about Jesus was that he was God. But that
doesn’t alter the fact that his being a man was also essential to
who he was. He wouldn’t have been Jesus had he not been human. It’s his humanness that makes our relationship with Godin-Jesus also a unique relationship. So it’s the fact that Mary is
the mother of Jesus that makes the relationship between him
and her unique, as it is for all mothers and sons.
Here perhaps we have to remember what analogy is.
It’s a comparison between two things, both different and yet in
some ways the same. The difference is usually more obvious
than the similarity. God is our Father in a very different sense
from the sense in which our human father is our father. God
gives us our very existence, cares for us with a wisdom, power
and love beyond the wildest dream of our fathers ‘in the flesh’.
25
But they are also truly our fathers. It is an analogy to say that
we are united with Jesus in a mystical body. Mother India is
very different from our physical mothers. But there are many
similarities: Mother India in a true sense gives us life, nourishes
us, teaches us and takes care of us. The word body indicates
first and foremost a physical thing. So a mystical body is quite
different from a physical body, but there are similarities. The
analogy does express a truth about how closely and intimately
we are united with Christ and each other and how we function
in his Mystical Body.
Ignatius seemed to think—though of course he never expressed it so—that even though his benefactors did not belong
by vows to the ‘physical body’ of the Society, they did belong in
the Spirit—in a true sense—to the ‘mystical body’ of the Society. They were truly united to the Society because the financial
and spiritual support they gave was given under the inspiration
of the Holy Spirit. They were sure that it was the will of God
that they devote themselves to the works of the Society; they
were convinced that it was God who had given them the desire
to ‘help souls’ for the greater glory of God through the Society.
They were truly united ‘in mind and heart’ with Ignatius in his
efforts to expand the good work of his Society. They wanted to
participate in his life and work and be collaborators with him in
his Society. If someone questioned the way Ignatius gave his
benefactors a very responsible part in the governance of the
Society, he might have answered—a la Jesus and Paul—“Who
are the members of the Society? Whoever, following God’s will
and filled with desires inspired by him, wants to work for His
greater glory through this least Society of Jesus, they are true
members of this ‘least Society!’”
Certainly for me it is only if Ignatius had this attitude that
I can find meaning in certain words which at first baffled me
so annoyingly. My frustration was increased by the fact that
I could not excuse his seemingly extravagant words on the
plea that Ignatius was the kind of man who often used words
loosely and got carried away by his enthusiasm. If any man
used words meticulously, almost scrupulously, it was Ignatius.
Before sending his letters, he corrected all of them, some many
26
IGNIS 2007/4
times. Well then, I had to presume he not only meant what he
said, but what he said also had a very precise meaning.
He wrote these remarkable words:
To Lenor Mascarehnas: our Society, which is more
yours than ours.55
To the Countess of Luna: Your Excellency also considers our whole Society as yours in Our Lord, as indeed, it is.56
To Peter Ortiz: the Society, which is wholly yours.57
To Don John de Vaga: this least Society which is wholly yours …58
To John of Avila: this Society, which is more yours
than ours…59
To Prince Philip: this least Society which belongs entirely to your highness.60
Now I can only make sense out of these seemingly wild
words, if Ignatius truly believed that his benefactors, because
of the Spirit within them, belonged in a mystical, but true, real,
way to his Society of Jesus. Within a body, the union with the
whole body is so profoundly intimate that each member can
say, as Ignatius believes his benefactors can say: ‘This Society
is my body, this whole body belongs to me.’
The body is a unit though it is made up of many parts, and
though all the parts are many, they form one body…[T]here
should be no division in the body, but the parts should have
equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it.61
Ignatius had his own way of expressing the oneness of
the body of the Society. He considered that any benefactor
who helped this or that work of the Society deserved the gratitude and prayers of the whole Society, for whatever helps one
member of a body, helps the whole body. He wrote these words
to John de Vaga, after his wife had died:
To fulfill in some part the gratitude we all owe to so great an
27
affection and so many favours,,, besides the Masses and prayers
of this whole community, we ourselves will write to all the
houses of the Society to do likewise, since our great obligations
are well known to all of them, obligations which it is a joy to
acknowledge.62
Once I accepted that Ignatius truly thought his benefactors belonged to the ‘mystical body’ of the Society because,
inspired by the Spirit, they wanted to serve God and help souls
financially and spiritually through the Society for ‘the greater glory of God’, then I thought his extraordinary words were
‘justified’, were perfectly reasonable and acceptable. He was
convinced his friends and benefactors in a true sense were also
members of his ‘least Society’. And just as it would be the
utmost folly for the eye to says to the hand: ‘I have no need of
you’, so it would be not less foolish for Jesuits to say they had
no need of their benefactors, their supporters and collaborators, who are one with them in the work of God through the
Society and who are absolutely essential to that work.
Not only did Ignatius think his benefactors were a part
of the body of the Society, but his benefactors also thought so.
Dona Isabel de Vega wrote these beautiful words to him:
I beg you to give your blessing from where you are, and to remember in your prayers the Count, my husband, and myself,
for truly we consider ourselves as much a part of the Society as
those who are members of it.63
I was even more confirmed in my conviction that Ignatius
believed his benefactors were ‘members’ of the Society by a
strange sentence Ignatius wrote to John de Avila:
For the prayerful remembrance of me and this Society… I will
not give thanks to your reverence. For one is not accustomed to
expect thanks for what he does for his own.64
This sentence puzzled me until I thought of some sentences I had read in St. Thomas which—who knows?--Ignatius
might have remembered from his student days.
[A] man cannot thank himself, since thanksgiving seems to
28
IGNIS 2007/4
pass from one person to another….. [N]o man confers a favour
on himself,…. Therefore in things that one does for oneself,
there is no place for gratitude…65
Ignatius felt he could not thank John because that would
be to thank someone for doing a favour to himself. I can think
of no more novel or striking way in which Ignatius could have
expressed to John that he was as much a part of the body of
the Society as Ignatius was. Though Ignatius could not thank
John for bestowing favours on the Society because it would
be like John’s thanking himself, still Ignatius adds this beautiful touch: And yet there is plentiful occasion to give thanks to
God our Lord, the author of all good for so uniting you to the
Society.
Ignatius loved his friends, not only for their gifts which
made it possible for him to build colleges ‘for the greater glory
of God’, but he loved them also for the gifts they brought him
personally from God. The love that moved Ignatius to love
his friends and benefactors so warmly and affectionately was
always his love for his first Love, his Creator and Lord. That
explains, and only that explains, why Ignatius could love his
friends, both men and women, so tenderly, so chivalrously and
so seemingly extravagantly. He was a ‘divine’ lover who truly
‘fell in love’ with all the friends and benefactors God sent into
his life because falling love with them was falling in love with
God. It is only when we also can love our benefactors as passionately as Ignatius did that we can truly ‘love God with all our
hearts, with all our minds and with all our strength’.
In his last letter to Eleanor Mashcarenhas, written when
he was very sick and not far from death, ‘with the outpourings
of his heart’, Ignatius expressed the grateful love he felt for all
his friends and benefactors, not only for helping him materially,
but far, far more for helping him spiritually:
Your two letters, of November and December, reached me on the
same day toward the end of April, and I behold in them what is
written in my own heart from the first time that we met in the
Lord—I mean the intense love and affection which you have
for me in his Divine Majesty. I trust that in his divine goodness
FR PEDRO ARRUPE’S EQUATION FOR JUSTICE IN EDUCATION
29
these sentiments will remain both in your soul and in mine,
and go on increasing forever and ever…. as I have said above, I
have held you and still hold you in my heart of hearts, and will
do so in the future, even more, if that were possible.—66
Two months after writing that letter, Ignatius was dead.
Was there ever a more affectionately grateful man than Ignatius? As sons of Ignatius, surely we must be like our father.
Even though times have changed radically since ‘his day’, still
we must not lose this beautiful and essential element in the
charism of our father. Can it be done? Can we so adapt the
charism of Ignatius that our gratitude for the gifts, for the givers, for the Giver, will have the same influence on our spiritual
life and on our work for ‘the greater glory of God’ as it had on
Ignatius? Can we love them, not as outsiders, but as ‘friends
in the Lord’ who ‘belong’ to the Society we belong to, who are
one with us in the Spirit? Are we going to love them as Ignatius
loved them, with an inclusive love, a love that includes them as
sisters and brothers in our Ignatian family?
Of all the gifts God has given me in life, I thank him in a
special way for the mandate to help the poorest children and
families in and around Kurseong that was given me by my Superior in 1959. As I struggled to fulfill that mission, God taught
me, as he taught Ignatius, ‘like a teacher teaching a pupil’—not
(sob!) with the same ‘saintly results’!—to cherish and nourish
the grace of gratitude God gave me as a ‘sine qua non’ for
my own spiritual life and for the work he had given me to do.
Alone, I depended completely on the support and collaboration
of my lay friends. They have so enriched my life that, like Ignatius, I am convinced only God can thank them adequately for
all the gifts, both material and spiritual, they have given me. As
the time of momentous importance for the Society approaches, the days of deliberation of the Fathers of GC35 under the
guidance of the Holy Spirit, I am saying a special prayer. In the
decrees of GC34, we find these words:
We have recovered, for our contemporary mission, the centrality of working in solidarity with the poor in accord with our
Ignatian charism. 67
30
IGNIS 2007/4
My prayer is that the Fathers of GC35 will write in their
decrees these words: in accord with our Ignatian charism, for
our mission today, we have recovered the centrality of gratitude
to our benefactors, to our lay supporters and collaborators, for
the sake of our own spiritual life and for the sake of all our apostolic works. Despite the tremendous differences between the
times of Ignatius and our own, can that charism be recovered?
I know it can. Through God’s grace and goodness in my mission to the poor, I have recovered it. Simply to survive and to
carry out the mandate the Society had given me, Ignatius had
to intercede for me and obtain from Christ the grace of Ignatian
gratitude towards all my friends and benefactors. How Ignatius
helped me recover that precious grace of gratitude calls for
another article—in the unlikely event that some readers have
survived this article.
ENDNOTES
1. 2. All emphasis added by underlining is mine.
Before the references in the end notes, the letter—
L—indicates the quotation is taken from: Letters of St. Ignatius
of Loyola, Selected and Translated by William J. Young S.J.,
Loyola University Press, Chicago, Illinois, 1959.
The letters LW—indicates the quotation is taken from: Saint Ignatius Loyola:
Letters to Women, by Hugh Rahner S.J. Herder, Freiburg,
Nelson, Edinburgh—London, 1956.
3. or quotations from the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, I use
only the standard paragraph numbers used in all editions
of the Exercises.
1A
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
9 10 11 12 13 ------------------------------------------
L--p. 55, Letters to Father Simon Rodrigues Rome, March 18, 1942.
Sp. Ex. 233.
Sp. Ex. 16
Jo. 15,4-6.
Jo 15/11-12.
LW--p.265, Letter to Isabel Roser, November 10th, 1932,
Ibid
LW-t p.183—Letter to Ines Pascal, Paris, June 13th, 1533.
L--–. p. 41. --.Letter to Bertram Loyola, March 20, 1540.
L—p. 55 —Letter to Father Simon Rodrigues, Rome, March 18, 1542.
L — p. 65,--Letter to King John III of Portugal. Rome, March 8, 1543.
L.— p.175/6—Letter to Prince Philip of Spain, Rome—1548. LW—p.237—Letter to Dona Aldonza Gonzalez, Rome, October 11th, 1549.
31
14 L—p. 215 —Letter to John de Vega Rome, April 12, 1550.
15 LW—p. 217—Letter to Madonna Gigli de Fanturri in Bologna, Rome
April 6th, 1555.
16 L—p.26,--Letter to the Confessor of the Queen of France—Venice, end
of 1556.
17 Summa Theologica: Questions 106 and 107—passim.
18 LW—p.265-- Letter to Isabel Roser, November 10th, 1532.
19 L — p.65,--Letter to King John III of Portugal. Rome, March 8, 1543.
20 L.—p.26,--Letter to the Confessor of the Queen of France—1536.
21 L— p.179—Letter to Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandia, September 20,
1548.
22 L—p. 215 —Letter to John de Vega Rome, April 12, 1550.
23 LW-- p.265, Letter to Isabel Roser, November 10th, 1532.
24 Rom.5/4
26 Athanasian Creed
27 Ps.66.
28 Sp.Ex.237.
29 Sp. Ex.184.
30 Sp.Ex.338
31 L—p.179—Letter to Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandia, September 20,
1548.
32 L-- p 226—Letter to John de Vega, Rome, September 17, 1550.
33 L-- p. 227—Letter to Charles Borgia, Rome, November 1, 1550.
34 L— p.232, Letter to Ferdinand King of the Romans, Rome April, 1551.
35 L—p. 364—Letter to Father John de Avila--—February 7, 1555.
36 L— p. 65,--Letter to King John III of Portugal. Rome, March 8, 1543.
37 L—p. 237--Letter to Dona Aldonza Gonzalez, Rome, October 11th,
1549.
38 Constitutions of the Society of Jesus: [813].
39 Ibid. [638]
40 Sp. Ex. 231.
41 Op. Cit.[309]
42 Ibid. [317]
43 Ibid. [318]
44 Complementary Norms—413.
45 LW--–p.237—Letter to Dona Aldonza Gonzalez, Rome, October 11th,
1549.
46 LW-- p.41-Letter to Mary of Austria, Rome, March 26th, 1552.
47 L—p 90 --Letter to Andrew Lippomant, Rome February 22, 1546.
48 L-- p.218—Letter to Don John de Vaga, May 31, 1550. .
49 L-- p.256—Letter to Prince Philip of Spain, Rome June 3, 1552.
50 L--p. 314—Letter to Louis Prince of Portugal, Rome, December 24,
1553.
51 LW-- p. 66—Editorial comment by H. Rahner S.J.
52 Ibid.-- P.467
52A .—Op. Cit. p. 129—To the Fathers and Scholastics at Coimbra, May
27.1547.
53 Mt. 12/48-50
54 Rom. 2/28-30
55 LW–p. 426 Leonor Mascarehnas, Rome, September 10th, 1546.
32
IGNIS 2007/4
56 LW-- p.469—Letter to the Countess of Luna, Rome, November 5th,
1553.
L-. p. 88—Letter to Doctor Peter Ortiz, Rime 1546.
L-- p. 218—Letter to Don John de Vaga, May 31, 1550. .
L- p. 218—Letter to Don John de Vaga, May 31, 1550.
L- p. 256—Letter to Prince Philip of Spain, Rome June 3, 1552.
1 Cor 12/12-25-26
L-- p. 215—Letter to John de Vega Rome, April 12, 1550.
LW-- p.468, Letter to Ignatius from Dona Isabel de Vega y de Luna. May
1554.
L--—p. 364—Letter to Father John de Avila.
Summa Theologica-— Q.106, A.3
LW-- p.421/2, Letter to Eleanor Masharenhas, Rome, May 19, 1556.
GC34 Decree 2, #8.
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
A NOTE ON THE ECCLESIASTICAL APPROBATION OF THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES
By Varghese Malpan, S.J.
Varghese Malpan is a member of the Kerala Province. Having finished his doctoral studies in Rome he was first the director of a
Spirituality Institute in his province and now the tertian director.
His address: Sacred Heart College, Shembaganur. 624 104. Dt.
Dindigul, T.N.
From its very inception, the Society of Jesus has been
conscious of the truth that God deigned to bestow on it the gracious instrument of the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola
as a constant source of renewal of the first companions and all
the would-be members of the Society of Jesus. It “is principally by the Ignatian Exercises that the Society communicates
to her sons her strength, her character and image”… and that
“God has also granted to the Society through this one special
practice a great part of her success in leading souls to a perfect imitation of Christ.” These words of Father John Baptist
Janssens in connection with the fourth centenary of the papal
approbation of the Spiritual Exercises bring out their profound
significance and value in the life of every Jesuit.
It was Pope Paul III who, for the first time, approved the
Spiritual Exercises on the 31st of July, 1548 in his Apostolic
Letter, Pastoralis Officii. It is very instructive to refer to the approbatory words of the Pope himself:
The Spiritual Exercises “… drawn from the Sacred Scriptures and from experience in the spiritual life, and full of
piety and holiness, were and would be very useful and
33
34
IGNIS 2007/4
helpful for the edification and spiritual progress of the
faithful… We approve the aforesaid Exercises and everything therein contained, we praise them, and bestow
on them the protection of this document. Moreover we
earnestly urge in the Lord each and every Christian of
both sexes wherever they may be to make use of such
pious documents and Exercises and to seek prayerfully
to be instructed in them.”
This first approbation is followed by countless other Papal documents which single out the Spiritual Exercises as the
chief means of renewal for the members of the Society of Jesus and of achieving the end for which the same Society was
founded. The Popes have also commended unceasingly the
use of the Spiritual Exercises to the regular and secular clergy,
to seminarians and to the rest of the faithful. Father Janssens
went to the extent of saying that one “could rightly assert that
no other book could be found that was the recipient of so many
earnest pontifical approbations.”
Let us take for example the documents of the Supreme
Pontiff, Pius XI. In connection with the fourth centenary of St.
Ignatius’ writing of the book the Spiritual Exercises, the Pope
by his Apostolic Constitution, Summorum Pontificium of July
25th, 1922, declared and appointed St. Ignatius of Loyola the
heavenly patron of all Spiritual Exercises, and consequently of
institutes, sodalities and congregations of every kind which assist those who are making the Spiritual Exercises. In the same
year, on the occasion of the third centenary of the canonization
of St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier, the Pope sent an Apostolic Letter, Meditantibus Nobis, to the then Father General,
Ledochowski, retelling the praises of the Spiritual Exercises. In
the year 1929 the same Pontiff published the Encyclical Letter, Mens Nostra, by which he declared the importance of the
Spiritual Exercises, putting special emphasis on their suitableness for different classes and ages of persons and earnestly
promoting their extended use. This letter is, in fact, considered
an epitome of the continued approval of the Holy See over a
period of four hundred years. The following insightful passage
from this letter should energize our weakened enthusiasm and
35
inspire us to appreciative engagement in sharing this treasure
that is bequeathed to us Jesuits by our saintly founder, Ignatius:
Now among all the laudable methods that exist and that
are inspired by the sound principles of Catholic asceticism, there is one which has attracted the full and repeated approval of this Apostolic See, which had won
fullest praise from saints and masters of the spiritual life,
which has reaped great harvests of holiness for four centuries. We allude to the method of St. Ignatius Loyola,
of him whom we love to call the Specialist of the Exercises… From the day that it was solemnly approved…
by Our predecessor, Paul III…the book almost instantly
established and imposed itself as the wisest and most
universal code for the government of souls, as the inexhaustible stimulus and secure guide to conversion and
to the highest spirituality and perfection… The solidity of
spiritual teaching, far from the dangers and illusions of
the pseudo-mystics, the marvellous adaptation to every
class and condition of persons… the organic unity of
its parts, the remarkable order in which the truths to be
meditated are succeeded by spiritual instructions suitable to lead a man from the point where he is freed from
sin to most sublime peaks of spirituality, by the roads
of abnegation and victory over passion, all these things
render the method of St. Ignatius the most commendable
and the most effective.2
In praising the Spiritual Exercises, Popes Benedict XIV
and Leo XIII underlined the genuine ascetic doctrine contained
in the small little spiritual classic. Pope Pius XII confirmed the
praise of the Spiritual Exercises by his predecessors in the encyclical letter, Mediator Dei, of November 20, 1947. He called it
the “tiny but immense book of the exercises of St. Ignatius.
Pope John XXIII bore witness to the same esteem for the
Exercises. In December, 1958, the Pope took part in the annual Vatican retreat, given by Father Messori Roncaglia, S.J.
At its conclusion the Pope spoke of his own long-standing familiarity with the Exercises dating back to his seminary days.
36
IGNIS 2007/4
He told of the devotion which in 1954 moved him to visit at
leisure and with solace the cradle-scenes of the Exercises: Loyola, Montserrat and Manresa. He observed that the Exercises
are specifically aimed at the interests of the Kingdom of God,
which the Pope is duty-bound to promote.3
In a discourse in Rome on 29 December, 1965, to those
present in the first general assembly of the Italian Federation
of the Spiritual Exercises, Pope Paul VI, while pointing out the
necessity of adapting the Spiritual Exercises to all categories
of peoples, spoke of them as a “source of salvation and spiritual energy”. Pope John Paul II, during the Angelus message
on Sunday, 16 December 1979, recommended the faithful to
reread Pope Pius XI’s encyclical letter, Mens Nostra, the fiftieth
anniversary of which fell on 20 December, 1979.
Speaking of the Ignatian method as a secure guide in the
field of spiritual exercises, Pope John Paul II said: “Through the
strong dynamism of the Exercises, a Christian is enabled to
enter into the realm of the very thoughts of God, His designs to
trust Him who is Truth and Love, and thus to take committed
decisions in the following of Christ clearly assessing His gifts
and one’s own responsibilities.”
The Church’s unstinted praise of the Spiritual Exercises
through the Supreme Pontiffs over the centuries stands to confirm the experience of Ignatius himself. The harmony that exists between the mystery of faith and the mystery of the Church
here and now is so well and succinctly expressed in the book of
the Spiritual Exercises. The Church’s acknowledgement of the
Spiritual Exercises as a treasure which God had given to the
world through the instrumentality of Ignatius of Loyola comes
from the conviction that if they are diligently performed by different groups of the Church, “a spiritual regeneration will result;
piety will be enkindled, the forces of religion will be strengthened, apostolic zeal will unfold its fruitful branches, and peace
will reign among individuals and throughout the world.”4
It is through the Spiritual Exercises that Ignatius has exerted his most valuable and pervasive influence overtly upon
individual persons and through them tangentially upon multi-
37
tudes of people down the centuries because he stood by the
principle of “influencing those who can influence others.” During his own lifetime from Manresa onward he gave these exercises frequently to numerous men and women with whom he
dealt. It is, as we know, by means of these Exercises that he
won and trained his first followers with whom he founded the
Society of Jesus. They in their turn directed innumerable others in making them.
However, the extraordinary and never failing dynamism
of the Spiritual Exercises is to be seen and evaluated in the
light of the supreme determinant of Ignatius’ own life, namely,
the wonderful work of divine grace in him. What we perceive in
this book is not so much of an evolution of a clear and distinct
idea as that of an unambiguous and personal invitation to respond to a spiritual happening/awakening in the depth of one’s
heart. No doubt God blessed Ignatius to live and develop such
an experience. The book of the Spiritual Exercises is but a mirror image of that encounter with the living God and it has the
manifest purpose of initiating and fostering in others a similar
itinerary of purification and growth in our ongoing search to
“praise, reverence and serve God.” The countless ecclesiastical approvals of this spiritual classic tell us something: “Take
this instrument of God seriously”.
ENDNOTES
1 2 3
4
For a detailed documentation of the references in this article the readers
may consult the work: Varghese Malpan, S.J., A comparative Study of
the Bhagavad-gita and the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola on the Process of Spiritual Liberation (Roma, Pontificiae Universitatis
Gregorianae, 1992) pp. 188-191.
Pope Pius XI, Mens Nostra, in: Acta Apostolicae Sedis 21 (1929). English translation from Why a Retreat? “Mens Nostra” (New York, The
Paulist Press, Year (-) pp. 20-22.
See. Hervé Coathalem, S.J., Ignatian Insights (Taichung-Taiwan,
Kuangchi Press, 1971) pp. 12-17.
Pope Pius XI, Mens Nostra, in: Acta Apostolicae Sedis 21 (1929) p. 705.
JESUS OUR SAVIOUR AND REDEEMER
David L. Fleming SJ
David Fleming, editor of Review for Religious, in charge of Jesuit
Formation and ex-provincial of the Missouri Province resides at
Jesuit Hall, 3601, Lindell Blvd., St. Louis. MO 63108. USA.
JESUS OUR SAVIOUR
An Ignatian Perspective on Our Relationship with Our Saving
God
Ignatius acknowledged that he felt that he had been
taught by God during a very special ten-month period of reflection and retreat in Manresa, Spain in 1522-1523. From
the “lessons” that he had learned from God, Ignatius shares his
insights into the spiritual life.
I would like to present to you a lesson that Ignatius teaches us in his book, The Spiritual Exercises. I would like to reflect
with you about the title we give or the word we use to describe
Jesus as Saviour. The idea of saving or our being saved are
central references throughout our Lenten season prayers and
readings. Throughout the year, many of our prayers are addressed to God as our saviour. What does it mean to say that
God is our saviour or to call Jesus our saviour? Do we feel that
we need saving? What do we feel that we need saving from?
How or in what way can or do we experience God’s saving
power? How is God (Jesus) a saviour for us?
38
39
The Hebrew roots of our word saving come together in
this kind of fundamental experience: “to be saved is to be taken out of a dangerous situation in which one risked perishing”
(Mackenzie). The act of saving could include anything dealing
with protection, liberation, ransom, cure and health, victory,
life, and peace. The word saving or saviour slowly is applied
to God in the Old Testament out of all the various experiences
of the Israelite people. In the New Testament it becomes a key
word in biblical language to describe Jesus and to identify the
Gospel as bringing salvation to every believer.
Although a god who saves is common to religious traditions, the significance of the Hebrew expression, saviour, is
that it has the connotation of mercy. Calling God our saviour
means that God is merciful. God in his loving mercy led his
people out of Egypt in the exodus experience; and so God is
identified and called upon as a saving God. In all their times of
difficulty and exile, the Israelites look to God as their saviour,
as a God who shows mercy to them, giving them freedom, providing them health, guarding them in victory—ever so slowly
identifying God as the God of salvation for their whole life. In
the New Testament, as the writers applied the word saviour to
Jesus, it was a way of identifying Christ as God—One who is
full of mercy, a saving God who offers life forever in the risen
Saviour, Jesus Christ. And so Jesus’ parable of the prodigal
son is, above all, a picture of God as the father who shows
nothing but a loving mercy to both his sons. This is a saving
God.
Ignatius was not a biblical scholar; in fact, he is not even
known as an accomplished theologian. Steeped in the Christian tradition of a medieval Spain and then being taught by God
in some extraordinary experiences, Ignatius had his own way
of trying to enter us into our own kind of “Israelite experience”
so that we might claim to know Jesus as our Saviour, to know
God as our saving God.
In what St. Ignatius identifies as the First Week of his little book called the Spiritual Exercises, we have a description of
a prayer time that deals with sin in our world and in our own
life experience. Ignatius wants us to enter into the evil of the
40
IGNIS 2007/4
world. He suggests that we consider the beginning of personal
evil in the sin of Adam and Eve as presented in scripture. He
also would have us allude to the sin of the angels who rejected
God as referenced in scripture. Ignatius would not want us to
define sin so much as to experience its meaning. When we are
steeped in the reality of creation with a God who creates out
of love, who presents the manifold gifts of our created world to
us human beings, who desires nothing more than that we learn
about God from the “sacraments” of these very gifts, and be
able to respond to God as “our God,” the God as Giver of all
good gifts, we stutter and stammer to say only “Thank you.”
Then the realization presented in scripture from our first
parents and from God’s angels of their rejection of any gratitude for gifts received to a claiming of the gifts as their own
possession (priding themselves to be as independent as any
god could ever be), the meaning of sin begins to invade our
lives. What Ignatius learned from God is that ingratitude is
the essence of sin, of personal evil. If Jesus on the cross is so
central to our Christian faith that this symbol becomes its icon,
what is the meaning we are meant to imbibe? A true religious
symbol elicits a felt meaning. Feelings are involved that enter
us into a meaning that is more than just identifying the surface
object. The symbol of Christ on the cross is not just to stop at
a person being executed. As a symbol, it is not meant to focus
our attention on the amount of pain and duration of suffering,
which the artifact in itself—a man nailed to a cross--does. If
we were to stop just at the physical object of a crucifix, we may
ask ourselves the question: Does God love suffering? And
then what kind of God do we have? Does God demand a kind
of justice reparation for any evil done, and does he expect to
save us only through all the passion and dying struggles of his
only Son, Jesus Christ? What kind of a loving and compassionate God would this be, and what is the meaning of divine
justice—which would seem to be satisfied with nothing less
than death, and not just a dying, but a death on a cross?
How does Ignatius handle this situation? After presenting us with the scripture beginnings of the choices of our first
parents and even of those pure and enlightened creatures
41
called angels and, from contemporary experience, the same
kind of continuing decisive choice of any one person today,
choosing themselves or God’s gifts over God, (what we identify
as sin), Ignatius would have us talk with Jesus as he hangs on
the cross.
When Ignatius suggests that we put ourselves before Jesus hanging on the cross, my own imagination takes me to
Jesus as represented by a drawing of John of the Cross—a
viewing of the world over the shoulder of Jesus as he hangs
on the cross looking down upon the world. Salvador Dali has
made his own dramatic masterpiece painting of this depiction,
which you may be familiar with. Ignatius suggests that we enter into conversation with Jesus. Here’s what we might want to
say: “Jesus, since you are identified with God forever as Son,
Second Person of the Trinity, since you had life eternal, how did
you come to be here on a cross, dying?” Then we might feel
the conversation focus on us: “How are we involved in this?
What will we do about it?”
As the conversation begins, we might have all these kinds
of questions and many more besides. But the more important
dynamic is allowing ourselves to listen to what Jesus might tell
us. Perhaps Jesus will enter us into what he sees as he looks
down from his cross and what he hears. Does he see people
laughing at him in his pain and anguish because he hangs naked and crowned, with thorns? They scoff: What kind of king
is that? Even worse, what kind of God is that! Then there is
the challenge: “Come down from the cross if you are a god.”
And they say, “he saved others, let him save himself.” And
looking down with Jesus, we hear Jesus share “Can you enter
into my shame? I don’t mean that my shame is focused on me.
That kind of shame is not a healthy shame because it remains
self-focused. The kind of healthy shame I feel and I want you
to share with me is a shame that is relational. I am ashamed
of my brothers and sisters. Look at how they talk about me.
Listen to how they make fun of me (and of God). Look at how
my own closest followers, my apostles, run and hide—from me
(from God). I love them so much (and I still do), but they
cause me to be ashamed, for them. Can you understand? Can
42
IGNIS 2007/4
you be ashamed with me? Can I share that grace of what sin
feels like for me (for God)?”
We keep listening to Jesus in our prayer: “Have you
ever experienced in your family or among your friends someone acting hatefully to one or another and it made you feel
ashamed? Have you ever felt shame for your country (which
you love) because of the way it treats other peoples? Then you
realize that you too are part of the family, or you too are within
the grouping of friends, or you too are one of the citizens of this
very country? Well, as I hang on this cross, I am one with all
of you. I stand before my Father, and I am ashamed. I have
become “sin” for you. For you are my brothers and sisters, I
identify with you and with your actions, and I continue to hold
you up in love before my Father. ‘Father, forgive them for they
know not what they do.’ My arms are stretched wide to take in
everyone in my embrace. That’s how much I love, even when
people turn away from me, reject me, make fun of me, and
even try to make me the dead one in their lives. I am the image, the icon, the symbol of a God of mercy, of a God of compassion, of a God who forgives—if only you will turn to me.”
If we in our prayer were to listen to Jesus’ words in this
way, what does it mean for us to call upon Jesus as our Saviour? How do we look upon sin—others’ and our own? Can
we begin to see sin through God’s eyes—not so much in this
action or that, but in terms of a relationship with One who loves
us no matter the cost, One who is hurt by our rejection and by
our indifference. Yet One who like the father in the parable
goes running out to meet his son and welcomes him home with
a party because “he was dead and has come back to life.”
Yes, we might recall the parable of the prodigal son in
Luke 15:11-32. It is Jesus’ own picture of what we mean by
calling God our Saviour. Ignatius suggests that as we try to
respond to God, this God of mercy, we might find ourselves
just saying “thank you” to Jesus, our Saviour. Maybe we can
pray now with felt meaning before a crucifix, “Jesus, save me.
Jesus, be my Saviour.”
43
JESUS OUR REDEEMER
An Ignatian Perspective on Our Relationship with Our Redeeming God
During ten months of prayer at the little town of Manresa,
Spain, Ignatius Loyola knew that he was being taught by God,
especially through some extraordinary mystical experiences.
Ignatius shares with us through the Spiritual Exercises some
of the “lessons” that he had learned from God. Drawing upon
some of these Ignatian insights, I would like to reflect with you
about the notion of Jesus our Redeemer.
The theology in the Christian tradition has tended to be a
bit eschewed in its various theological explanations of the word
redemption and of God as Redeemer. There are two major roots
in Hebrew of the word redemption. One word does emphasize
more the notion of buying or ransoming as related to slaves.
Another word refers more to a relationship within the family
or tribe whereby one member comes to the aid or rescue of
another in some area of need because of the relationship. We
know it as “sticking together because we are all part of the
family.”
Isaiah (Second Isaiah) strongly identified God in this second usage of the word redeemer. Isaiah called God our Redeemer in that he had chosen the Israelites as a people peculiarly his own. And so the Israelites could call upon God as
their Redeemer in any difficulty.
Many of us may have known the Latin roots of the word
redemption as meaning “to purchase,” or, perhaps more fully,
“to buy back,” which seems to trace its meaning more to the
first Hebrew word. We may have grown up with hearing how
Jesus is our Redeemer because by his death and resurrection
he purchased us for God. Sometimes the image was carried
further in describing how God was purchasing us from the devil
by the cost of death of his Son. Of course, some Scripture texts
like “we are purchased at a great price” would seem to support
this kind of interpretation. But the religious notion of redeeming was not looking to an actual transition of payment between
parties. From the second Hebrew word, the one preferred by
44
IGNIS 2007/4
Isaiah and other Old Testament writers, the emphasis was centred on the relationship between the one redeeming and the
ones being redeemed. There was a cost involved, but not necessarily paid to anyone—just the cost of one party serving the
other in a crisis or need, because of a familial relationship.
I would like us to enter into a way of understanding Jesus as redeemer as we could pray it in Ignatius’s first prayer exercise of the Third Week that we find in his book, The Spiritual
Exercises. Ignatius suggests that we look to the events of the
Last Supper. He would turn our attention to three aspects: the
celebration of the paschal meal in the Israelite tradition, Jesus’
washing of his apostles’ feet, and finally his giving of his Body
and Blood in the Eucharist.
The celebration of the paschal meal recalls the events
of the exodus experience of the Israelites, on the night they
were to escape from their slavery in Egypt. They were to kill
a lamb, spread its blood on the lintels of the doors of their
houses to save them from the angel of death, and eat its flesh
as their strength for the journey on which they were to embark.
From the Mosaic covenant on, the Israelites were involved in
a “covenant” relationship with God. The covenant celebrated
a relationship by a ceremony that usually involved the killing
of an animal, whose blood symbolizing life (not death, just as
when we “give blood” today, it is in terms of “giving life”) was
sprinkled on the altar. The altar symbolized God, and with the
blood then being sprinkled on the people, there was shown to
be a union between God and his people. By the sprinkling on
the altar and on the people, the blood of life was being shared
between God and the Israelites. It was a covenant in blood, but
the blood was not seen as efficacious because of a killing of
an animal, but because of a life-giving blood shared between
two parties, making them blood relatives. This blood covenant
was the reason why the Israelites knew and worshipped God as
their saving or redeeming God.
Let us move on to the second focus of Ignatius’s lesson.
The washing of the disciples’ feet by Jesus in John’s Gospel is
another symbol of the Eucharist—a giving of oneself in loving
service. The choice of this passage to be read as the Gospel of
45
the Holy Thursday Mass may surprise us. We would ordinarily expect a Gospel account that relates the institution of the
Eucharist. The washing of the feet is given its full meaning
in our understanding of the Eucharistic celebration. So let us
continue to follow Ignatius’s lead and move to the institution of
the Eucharist.
Ignatius turns our attention to Jesus’ gift of the Eucharist—what Ignatius identifies as “the greatest mark of his love.”
Just this brief description by Ignatius should stop us. Did he
write that the Eucharist is the greatest mark of his love? How
can he not point to the passion and crucifixion, with all its pain
and suffering, which will make up all the rest of the prayer exercises of this Third Week in the retreat? How is the Eucharist
the greatest sign of his love?
The Eucharist takes place within the context of the paschal meal. When Jesus identifies that the cup is the new covenant in his blood, all the apostles, good Jews as they were,
understood something important was taking place. They were
to eat this bread as his body and drink this wine as his blood.
This action established their partaking in a “new covenant”
with God. Jesus, sometimes called the Lamb of God, is no
longer working only with symbols. Jesus, not a lamb, is our
food and drink for the journey. Jesus shares his blood with us,
and the relationship is not just symbolized by a sprinkling of
blood from some animal. With the reception of Eucharist, Jesus’ very life blood is being shared with us. With divine blood
giving us life, we truly can be identified as brothers and sisters
of Jesus, children of God, who may call him “Father,” as Jesus,
his only Son, has taught us.
Jesus holds nothing back. Jesus gives us all that he
is; he shares with us the fullness of his very being in giving us
(sacramentally) his body and his blood. He literally gives himself over into our hands. We can think of that in each Eucharist, as we reach out to receive the host and reach out to take
the chalice. That is how much Jesus identifies with us; he is
truly our redeemer, a blood-relative, part of the family, who will
pay any cost to save us because he loves us.
46
IGNIS 2007/4
The Eucharist then gives us the meaning of the crucifixion. Jesus on the cross can only be understood as an act
of love, God’s love, that will pay any price, bear any burden,
forgive any wrong, for our return of love. What we call redemption, then, is this action of Jesus totally giving himself in love
to us and to his Father in every Eucharist. Yes, every Eucharist makes present to us Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, holding
nothing back, paying the cost of love, even to death, including
even our contemporary attempts to put him to death by our
sinful actions. And the Eucharist remains our sustaining “daily
bread” because we are receiving divine nourishment, slowly
growing into the children of God we are.
I have two suggestions for a way of praying that may
help to bring these thoughts home to us. We know the gospel
account of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. We find it
in the Gospel of Luke 24: 13-35. As we read and reflect on the
gospel, we might ask ourselves: What did Jesus have to explain to these two disciples about the scriptures? Did he need
to awaken them to the meaning of God as redeemer? Did he
need to explain the symbolism of the covenant ritual? Why is
it that in the breaking of the bread that they recognized him?
Jesus does not explain suffering and death; he just lets us understand that he is present to us as redeemer in life, suffering,
and death. We can always call upon Jesus as our redeemer.
Another possibility is the prayer “Soul of Christ.” Probably most of you are familiar with it. Perhaps you may know
the traditional prayer by heart or you have it in your prayer
book. I believe that as you pray this prayer very reflectively,
you will see how much Jesus is your redeemer, your blood
relative. Then you might want to just say with a new heartfelt
meaning, “Jesus, be my redeemer,” “Jesus, you are my redeemer.”
FR PEDRO ARRUPE’S EQUATION FOR
JUSTICE IN EDUCATION
Hedwig Lewis, SJ
Hedwig Lewis belongs to the Jesuit Gujarat Province. He is a writer and
author. His most recent book is “Pedro Arrupe Treasury”. His personal website: http://joygift.tripod.com
One name looming large on the list of ‘Jesuit greats’ of
the twentieth century is that of Fr Pedro Arrupe, SJ [19071991]. Dom Pedro, as he was fondly called by companions
and colleagues, the former Superior General of the Society of
Jesus, was a charming and charismatic leader, an exemplary
‘man for others’. His clarion-call – “Education for Justice” – to
Jesuits and their collaborators continues to resound in Jesuit
institutions worldwide with renewed vibrancy. For the past three
decades the “soldiers of Christ” have been striving to obtain
“Justice for all” on a war-footing, even at the cost of martyrdom, in the spirit of generosity that characterised St Ignatius
Loyola.
Arrupe is being especially remembered this year
because of his upcoming birth-centenary on 14 November.
Arrupe was a prolific writer and speaker who had a way with
words. In a landmark address in 1973 in Valencia, Spain, to
European alumni of Jesuit institutions, he made an electrifying
statement: “Today the prime educational objective must be to
form men for others; men who will live not for themselves, who
cannot even conceive of a love of God which does not include
a love for the least of their neighbours, and who are completely
convinced that a love of God which does not result in justice
for all is a farce… Our students are not to see themselves as
48
IGNIS 2007/4
isolated individuals learning how to elbow their way through
hostile masses to positions of power and prestige. Rather, let
them discover in ways they can never forget that they are
brothers and sisters in a global village.”
As a veteran Jesuit educationist who has witnessed the
import and impact of this Arrupean legacy on our educational
vision and mission, I feel inspired to offer some reflections on it.
Love in the global family
Arrupe was a die-hard devotee of St Ignatius Loyola.
Apart from several striking physical and biographical similarities between the two, Arrupe was a loyalist Ignatian to the core.
His attitude of treating everyone as ‘family’, on a person-toperson basis, with special predilection for the marginalized,
has roots in Ignatius’ retreat manual Spiritual Exercises, which
challenges the exercitant to a passionate commitment to the
cause of the poor: Friendship with the poor makes us friends of
the Eternal King.
St Ignatius clearly teaches that love is measured in
deeds, not words. The key word in Arrupe’s statement (quoted
above) is LOVE – a reiteration of Ignatian love-in-action as the
direct consequence of a passionate commitment: the overflow
of ones deep desire of “finding God in all things”. In the context of Justice, God dwells among the poor; we must find Him
there to offer Him loving service. The impact of such loving
contact is incredibly amazing. Fr Arrupe, in a popular quoted
(attributed to him) likens the experience to that of “falling in
love”. It radically transforms one’s world-view, one’s attitudes,
motivations, relationships. In terms of Justice, finding God in
the poor enables one to see reality from the perspective of the
disadvantaged. It compels one to contribute toward creating a
more truly just and humane world. Justice linked to Faith enhances one’s friendship with the Eternal King. “Just as we are
never sure that we love God unless we love our fellowmen, so
we are never sure that we have love at all unless our love issues in works of justice,” remarked Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach,
49
SJ, Arrupe’s successor as Superior General, in an address to
alumni/ae at Kolkata (2003), in the light of Arrupe’s diktat.
“Father Arrupe called justice ‘the sacrament of love’,
meaning that love is not true if it does not find expression in a
concrete commitment, a concrete issue, a concrete campaign
to ensure that every human being created in God’s image, born
as a son or daughter of the Father, become a brother or sister of
Jesus the Lord, and made into a temple of the Holy Spirit, can
live in dignity and freedom of his or her life… Justice without
love becomes injustice and charity without justice easily remains in the order of pious sentiment and ineffective good-will
unless it finds expression in concrete action… The promotion
of justice in the name of the loving Lord means becoming the
voice of the powerless and voiceless in reaction to injustice
whatever form it takes” (Kolvenbach, Zambia, 2005).
Educational perspective
Though service to the marginalized is embedded in the
foundations of the Jesuit Order, down the centuries the educational apostolate got skewed and stabilized on the intellectual
plateau, gradually distancing itself from the surrounding reality, or making superciliary forays into the zone of the poor. The
Jesuits became professional “schoolmasters of Europe”.
Arrupe challenged Jesuits and alumni to make a radical
turnabout in the spirit of the Ignatian magis, to do “more” than
mere charity to the poor through the existing outreach programs
(“social service”), by striving to uproot sinful structures that
sustain lives of abject poverty. At Valencia Arrupe provided a
“shorthand description” of the charisma engendered in genuine
service: “men for others”. The phrase was subsequently translated as “men and women for others”, to include Jesuits and their
collaborators, and eventually “persons for others”. The catchphrase “Persons For Others” (PFO) enthused Jesuits around the
world; it crystallized the mission for Jesuit-based training, and
was recognized as the face of “Education for Justice” in all their
institutions, not limited to Social Work Centres alone.
50
IGNIS 2007/4
Practical equations
Reinforced by decrees of recent General Congregations
[32, 33, 34] of the Jesuits, the Arrupean epigram, PFO, transformed systematically the academic thrust. It provided an open
door to the neighbourhood, a freeway to the fringes of society
where the unfortunates grind out a meagre living in sub-human
conditions.
Arrupe insisted that Jesuit schools continue the tradition
of providing their staff and students with excellent all-round
training: physical, moral and social, and in developing the intellectual (IQ), emotional (EQ), and spiritual (SQ) aspects.
But these ought to be equated with the Justice Quotient (JQ),
the dimension of ‘Education for Justice’ that makes education more integral. Solidarity with the suffering masses must
be taught through “contact” rather than through “concepts”:
direct experience touches the heart, challenges the mind to the
cutting edge of change, and serves as a catalyst for solidarity
which then gives rise to intellectual inquiry, reflection and action.
Educating for justice means training students how to
become not merely good citizens but power-resources for
the neighbourhood community; teaching them to think globally and act locally. Education for Justice provides academic
programmes and ventures that inculcate in students a zeal, a
sense of mission, to eliminate hunger and conflict in the world,
develop sensitivity to the need for more equitable distribution
of the world’s goods, pluck up courage to fight for the elimination of sexual and social discrimination, and feel inspired to
share their faith with others.
Education for justice creates dynamic leaders who shun
ambitions toward building ‘ivory castles’ or creating ‘comfort
zones’ for their selfish satisfaction. Such leaders are equipped
with strategies for making sound choices: in what they study,
who they learn from, and how they choose to spend their time.
They help build bridges of love so as to reach out to people,
irrespective of caste. class, colour or creed, people who do not
have the basic necessities of life, those unjustly treated and
51
deprived of their rights and privileges… through compassion
and selfless service; for we are all children of God, brothers and
sisters, belonging to one human family.
Grading JQ
Arrupe’s speech at Valencia was directed to Jesuit Alumni/ae. He implied that akin to education itself, personal development does not end with schooling but demands an on-going
formation.
There are no, mark-sheets or SATs (standard assessment
tests) to grade ones JQ or quantify ones PFO level. The JQPFO combine burns into one’s character and blazes with one’s
passionate commitment – as one lets one’s light shine through
good works in the dark and dank quarters of poverty-stricken
societies. One’s value lies in the measure of ones generosity:
giving without counting the cost, fighting without heeding the
wounds, labouring without seeking any reward – content only
that one receives God’s grace and blessings in return.
To keep their ‘passionate commitment’ burning ever
brightly, Alumni/ae must objectively check the crucial choices
they make at every turning-point in life. They must ask questions such as: What role does the JQ play both in the defining
and the expected outcome of our respective choices? Can we
rest assured that we are doing justice to the education received
and are progressing the JQ-PFO way?
Arrupe’s criterion provides a powerful point of reference:
“Let each one examine oneself to see what one has done up to
now, and what one ought to do. It is not enough to recall principles, state intentions, point to crying injustices, and utter prophetic denunciations; these words lack real weight unless they
are accompanied for each individual by a livelier awareness of
personal responsibility and by effective action.”
Becoming a “PFO” par excellence requires divine grace,
personal charism and complete dedication. To attain a “PFO100%” status is a process that may take a life-time. But if education has instilled in one a high JQ, then one cannot but
52
IGNIS 2007/4
constantly and consistently strive to be a better and worthier “man/woman for others”, till one is the very best – for the
greater glory of God!
CONTENTS
1. From the Editor’s PC
From the Tree of Knowledge to the Tree of Life:
An Ignatian Understanding of the Incarnation
2. Ignatius and his Benefactors
Joseph Murray Abraham, SJ
3. A Note on the Ecclesiastical Approbation of the
Spiritual Exercises
Varghese Malpan, SJ
4. Jesus our Saviour and Redeemer
David L. Fleming, SJ
1
5
19
33
5. Fr Pedro Arrupe’s Equation for Justice in Education 42
Hedwig Lewis, SJ
Would we have Christmas if
Adam and Eve did not sin? Would
Jesus be born into this world as
Emmanuel, God with us?
JJJJJJJ
JJJJJJJ
IJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJK
IJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJK
2007:4
back cover

2007:4 - gujarat sahitya prakash

Transcription

Similar documents

Fr. Mitch Pacwa, SJ - St. Stephen Church

Spiritual Classics Written by Saints

THE BARCELONA OF SAINT IGNATIUS

March 2013 - Saint Ignatius Parish

Ignatius Park College

Baskets - Cistercian Abbey

June 12, 2016 - St. Ignatius of Loyola Parish

Sales Sheet

05/24/15 - St. Ignatius of Antioch

3rd Sunday of Year C 2016