Joining the struggle to be men and women for others

“Men [and women] for others” – Society of Jesus Fr. General Pedro Arrupe, SJ first circulated this phrase 30 years ago in an address to Jesuit alumni. Now nearly a cliché in Jesuit parlance, his words still retain their relevance while challenging those who bear the legacy and influence of the Society.

My own introduction to the man was in high school, as a youth attending Creighton Prep. I wondered who the old bald Jesuit with the protruding nose was whose picture was hanging in various classrooms and appeared in an occasional school brochure or yearbook.

JOHN SEALEY PROVINCIAL ASSISTANT FOR SOCIAL AND INTERNATIONAL MINISTRIES

I got my answer in Prep’s Awareness Workshop course which combined theology, social reflection and direct service. Fr. Arrupe’s face assumed an identity, and his identity inspired a worldview which has remained with me.His example continues to stir and excite my heart. Somehow his image, as the man himself, is simultaneously agitating and attractive – as is his call to become, like Jesus, a person who lives for others. (See page 21 for more about Fr. Arrupe).

The call appears agitating because living for others is at crosscurrents with social norms. Ethicist Fr. John Kavanaugh, SJ observes that our culture’s understanding of the good life is the accumulation and consumption of marketed products. Since these products cannot deliver the satisfaction we crave, we fall prey to a breathless material pursuit that simultaneously shapes our economic priorities, our social relationships, and our political policies.

Fr. Arrupe was clear on this and suggested a three-step alternative strategy, one that encourages us to live intentionally for others:

• Have a respect for all people (which forbids us to use them as instruments of profit)
• Never allow ourselves to be induced by power deriving from privilege, for this is equivalent to active oppression. Even to be passively enticed by privilege and comfort makes us contributors and beneficiaries of injustice.
• Actively refuse and “counterattack” injustice.We are called to work in solidarity with others to dismantle unjust structures.

His successor, Fr. General Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, SJ, has continued and even fine-tuned his predecessor’s social commitment. For example, Fr. Kolvenbach has lamented the frequent English translation “to promote” justice as saying too little about Jesuit commitment to justice, as though it were a mere marketing campaign.He prefers the Spanish term “lucha,” (struggle) – which better connotes the Jesuit stance toward justice. Like Jesus, we are to struggle to bring justice, illuminated by faith, to all, especially the voiceless and the oppressed, whose lives are diminished by being excluded from fully sharing God’s abundant creation.

In understanding and supporting these principles, the Wisconsin Province has established four priorities:

• Remaining rooted and grounded in The Spiritual Exercises
• Living and working in solidarity with God’s poor
• Forming and educating agents for God’s justice
• Renewing our apostolic community life.

Recent Jesuit documents describe the social mission of the Society in similar terms. Therefore all Jesuits (and by extension those institutions affiliated with the Society) are to advance this mission, making it the work of all – not just the isolated efforts of a few. It is at the core of the Society’s mission to serve the Church.

In this era of globalization, our increasingly interconnected world necessitates that the struggle to be men and women for others is indeed an international mission. And the Wisconsin Province is blessed to participate in two vibrant international twinning partnerships – one with the Eastern Africa Province and another with the Kohima Region in northeast India (see story on page 12). Furthermore, with support from our Province and provinces throughout the world, Jesuits labor in other areas of international concern: Jesuit Refugee Services, the Africa Jesuit AIDS Network, the International Jesuit Network for Development, and extensive ministries to indigenous, untouchables, and care for those affected by war, disease and famine.

Future columns will attempt, in part, to share more news about these innovative projects and other inspiring works undertaken by Jesuits and their colleagues. In a world that is measurably more divided between the poor and the non-poor and polarized between the powerful and the powerless, Fr. Arrupe’s vision speaks as urgently today as it did to the Jesuit alumni gathered 30 years ago.