I vividly recall the day in the summer of 1974 at the end of my first year teaching philosophy at Marquette University when the connection between faith and justice first became clear for me. I was talking with Fr. Bill Ryan, SJ who, as founder of the Center of Concern, was deeply involved with global economic and human rights issues, especially as they impact the poor.
It was a pretty exciting time for Jesuits. Our international governing body, which meets on the average of less than once a decade, was preparing to gather in Rome for the 32nd General Congregation (GC-32). Bill enthusiastically described the determination of Jesuits from all over the world to make justice a theme central to guiding documents and decrees the deliberations would produce under the leadership of Fr. General Pedro Arrupe, SJ.
It was a pretty exciting time for me too. The congregation delivered more than I hoped. Aspects of my experience of Ignatian spirituality suddenly "clicked" together in a coherent whole. The emerging decrees raised issues, awareness, and personal challenges.
"What is it to be a companion of Jesus today? It is to engage, under the standard of the Cross, in the crucial struggle of our time: the struggle for faith and that struggle for justice that it includes… We must 'contemplate' our world as Ignatius did his, that we may hear anew the call of Christ dying and rising in the anguish and aspirations of men and women. There are millions of men and women in our world, specific people with names and faces, who are suffering from poverty, and hunger, from the unjust distribution of wealth and resources and from the consequences of racial, social and political discrimination." [GC-32].
Specific people, with names and faces; it is worthwhile to emphasize that. The Gospel does not call us to an abstraction: the struggle for justice means taking the side of the poor and marginalized. But it is not easy in our culture to let such people into our thoughts, much less into our lives. We are all familiar with the statistics: the richest 10% of the world control more wealth than the other 90%; about 40,000 children starve to death each day in a world awash in food. We are witness to what Fr. Dean Brackley, SJ, professor of ethics at the University of Central America in San Salvador, calls "the globalization of the South Bronx." One of the poorest areas of the world's wealthiest city, the South Bronx is a metaphor for the victimization of the world's poor. Where to start?
Our faith requires of us a response of compassion for the poor and marginalized of our world. It requires that we must "get over ourselves," disabuse ourselves of the comforting myth that what Fr. Brackley calls our "middle-class tribe""is somehow the standard for all to achieve. Compassion manifests itself in solidarity, what Henry Nouwen calls the "profound felt sense of human sameness." God loves all equally, and Jesus died for all. It is important to recognize as well, however, that Jesus died as one of the poor, outcast and marginalized.
People who take seriously the desire to be companions of Jesus with the poor go through stages:
- Horror - "My God, I didn't know it was that bad."
- Determination - "Let's fix it."
- Despair - "We can't fix it. Let's forget it."
- Solidarity - "They" become "we" and "those people" become "my people."
Getting past stage three is only possible with grace, but it is grace God wants to give us, if we have the courage to ask. It has a price. One way or another, it will cost us our lives. But how better to live than entirely in God's hands?
Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, SJ, superior general of the Jesuits, summed it up in a talk he gave in Caracas in 1998: "For us Christians it is an elemental expression of our faith in God: to base one's life in God is to look at the world with God's eyes, be affected by reality like God and take the same determination as God. Even more, it is to be God's hands, so that God's designs may be carried out through us. In the option for the poor, we are the carriers of the mercy of God. And in giving it we receive it ourselves. In this way the option for the poor is our salvation. It is the intuition of Saint Ignatius, of clear Gospel origin: our salvation is achieved only by contributing to that of others."
Solidarity, then, must lie at the root of my own life and commitment to the Lord. It is a terribly challenging prospect, but I find myself excited and energized by the possibilities that God's grace holds out.
