25 años
+
(1991-2016)
Tan cerca de nosotros no había estado el Señor, acaso nunca;
ya que nunca habíamos estado tan inseguros.
Padre Arrupe
El 14 de noviembre de 1980 el Padre
Arrupe, por aquel tiempo Superior General de la Compañía de Jesús, anunciaba la
creación del Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS). La idea había surgido durante las
Navidades del año anterior, en las que había quedado “profundamente
impresionado y conmovido por las penalidades de los miles de prófugos del mar y
de los refugiados”. Entonces eran los que huían de Vietnam.
Quizá obedeciera simplemente a una
hermosa casualidad, pero me gusta pensar que el hecho de que el JRS “naciera”
en Navidad tiene que ver con algo que se ha ido encarnando en la vida del que
ha hecho los Ejercicios Espirituales. El que ha escuchado esas palabras que hablan
de “hacer redención del género humano” y luego ha contemplado cómo el Señor
nacía “en suma pobreza, y a cabo de tantos trabajos de hambre, de sed, de calor
y de frío, de injurias y afrentas…”, tiene que acabar oyendo esos gritos
arrinconados en los márgenes.
Redacción de Espiritualidad Ignaciana
(PART 1 OF 3)
ARRUPE, THE MAN WHO SET HIS HANDS ON THE PLOUGH
AND DID NOT LOOK BACK
Fr. Jose Cecilio J. Magadia,
SJ
*Note: Pedro Arrupe, SJ was the 28th Superior
General of the Society of Jesus whose vision and leadership guided the Society
in the post-Vatican II world. He died on February 5, 1991. The following
reflection was originally part of Fr. Jose Cecilio J. Magadia, SJ’s (former
Provincial Superior) points for the Philippine Province Recollection last
January 1, 2002, on the occasion of Fr. Arrupe’s 10th death anniversary. This
year, as we commemorate Fr. Arrupe’s 25th death anniversary, we are re-posting
the reflection in three parts.
There are those who would say that we have in
Pedro Arrupe, a real saint. G.K. Chesterton says: “The Saint is a medicine
because he is an antidote…. He will generally be found restoring the world to
sanity by exaggerating whatever the world neglects, which is by no means always
the same … in every age. Yet each generation seeks its saint by instinct; and
he is not what the people want, but rather what the people need.”
I submit that for us, Jesuits living in these
early years of the 21st century, Arrupe is a saint in this Chestertonian sense
of being an antidote to the world, of providing the world, not what it wants
but what it really really needs.
After three months in Lourdes in the summer of
1926, and after having witnessed the miraculous cures attributed to Our Lady,
the young medical student Pedro Arrupe decided to put his hand to the plough.
On his return to Spain, he made the necessary arrangements with the Jesuits of
Loyola, without telling anybody. Then, in January of 1927, he broke the news to
his sisters, who were completely surprised by the decision. They were
especially pained because their father had just passed away, and they looked to
Pedro as their source of hope and consolation. And now, this, another
separation. They didn’t sleep that night; they just talked and cried, and his
sisters saw that Pedro’s heart was set. They knew.
A brother-in-law, Joaquin, accompanied Pedro
from Bilbao to the novitiate in Loyola. When they arrived, they found out from
the Master of Novices that there was still one other document lacking. Joaquin
proposes that they go back to Bilbao. But, surprisingly, Pedro says no. He
tells Joaquin to go to Bilbao, while he waits in a hotel in Loyola. Why?
Because that was the way of Pedro Arrupe: once he has made that step forward,
nothing and no one can make him turn back.
This world needs men who do not turn back. Ours
is an age of great complexities, where the divisions between peoples have
become more pronounced, where problems are built on top of older problems, and
they meld into, and exacerbate, and feed on, each other. In search for an
answer, many have found themselves lost and confused, as if in a maze of ideas
and ideals that blur the ideological boundaries, and soften distinctions, and
throw away many of the old fundamentals. There are those who have turned to a
distinct kind of atheism, which insists on living only for the moment and
rejects all transcendence. There are others who have become content with
individualism, who have ran to forms of religiosity which are a cheap imitation
of the noblest ascetical practices of non-Christian religions, but which are
devoid of any contact with a loving and personal God. There are also others
who, in the midst of the many ambiguities and ambivalences of today’s world,
have fallen into the trap of relativization, and the abandonment of absolutes,
rejecting hard and fast judgments of any kind, emphasizing a destructured and
decentered way of life, treating tradition with irreverence – yes making for
great creativity of expression and playfulness and spontaneity, but also
creating a world of fence-sitters, without spine.
In this complex world, Arrupe provides a
distinctly Christian response of undying commitment to bringing back a sense of
the sacred, a love for God, that leads to the creation of, to use Arrupe’s own
words, “men and women for others” – men and women who dare to commit to an
absolute and to place a stake in caring for those who have been victimized by
the processes that have come to be tagged as “development”.
It is said that Arrupe’s determination, his
setting his hands on the plough, sometimes approached that stubbornness that
has been identified with the Basque people. But it was always a healthy kind of
stubbornness, that was not easily dissuaded or discouraged. Fr. Francisco
Ivern, a Jesuit who has worked closely with Don Pedro, recounts that when
Arrupe would come up with a new project or think of a new idea, which happened
quite often, his counselors would sometimes deliberately ignore him, as if what
he was proposing was so unrealistic and impossible. But they knew, Ivern says,
that he would come back, again and again and again, with the same proposal,
until he was persuaded that, after all, it would not be so practical.
My friends, in the face of the world that can
tempt us to compromise on some of our ideals and commitments, to give up easily
in the face of complexity and confusion, to try wishy-washy principles and short-term,
temporary, stop-gap responses: Arrupe’s example of life invites us to ask
ourselves once more some very critical questions. What are the ploughs I have
set my hand onto? Where does it lead me? Does it bear the mark of God? Does it
fit in God’s scheme of things? Have I really given myself so completely to it? What
am I willing to give up for it?
Hoy esa misión es ocasión de
agradecimiento por poder estar junto a quienes son -misteriosamente- presencia
de Dios, recordándonos nuestros despistes y trabajando por arrancar el egoísmo
de nuestro corazón.
Part 2: ARRUPE, THE MAN WHO LISTENS TO THE SOUND THAT THE WIND MAKES WHEN IT BLOWS, NOT KNOWING WHERE IT COMES FROM NOR WHERE IT GOES. [Jn.3:8]
Part 3: ARRUPE, THE MAN WHO, LIKE CHRIST, SEES THE CITY AND WEEPS [Lk.19:41], WHO SEES THE PAIN OF THE WORLD AND RESPONDS WITH AN OFFER TO HEAL.
