Enlightenment – Endurance – Engagement
As we are gathered here to reflect together on our walking with St Ignatius as co-pilgrims, we participate in his enlightenment, endurance, and engagement with our cumulative knowledge and experience over the past 500 years.
Enlightenment: Our engagement in our mission originates in the cannon ball experience of St Ignatius. The cannon ball, while shattering the leg of Ignatius, changed his outlook and goal in his life – A person who had been dreaming and striving for his name and fame became now a person to love and serve his fellow human beings. The change was from self-centered dream to other-centered vision and his allegiance was no more with any earthly king but only with the divine Majesty. His reading The Life of Jesus made him relook at his own life and his encounter with the saints in reading their lives enlightened him. He wanted not only to follow the footsteps of St Francis and St Dominic but he wanted to excel them and he did so. This enlightenment gave him goal-clarity and made him move from Possession, Position, and Power to the service of others who were Poor, Discarded, and Powerless. The vertex of his enlightenment is: Education is the key for any transformation, for education eradicates inequality at all levels.
Endurance: Enlightenment on his sick bed taught him to develop endurance in life. He became so much strengthened so as nothing would stop him once the goal is set and he has taken his first step towards it. He gave up his riches (by exchanging his clothes with a beggar), he gave up his worldly valour (by surrendering his soldier weapon at Montserrat), and he gave up his identity (by not going back ever to his home). At the age of 30 he began his journey of endurance starting with his academics, then growing as a spiritual Master in order to cater to the needs of the society, and ended up as an administrator par excellence to transform the world through dedicated men as Company of Jesus. The cave of Manresa over 14 months gave him the growth from enlightenment to endurance to empowerment.
Engagement: His conviction of seeking the glory of God in the service of the needy, opened up the next phase as engagement. He needed a team. And this friends in the Lord started their engagement as care of the soul. This spiritual engagement soon expanded as intellectual, giving way to social as human rights, leading to political (as lived out by Stan Swamy, Michael Pro, Jesuits at University of Central America, and many others), and culminating today as preferential option for the poor and the marginalized. From there we derive our option for the poor, the Dalit Catholics, the Tribals in our Province.
Jesus model: In any engagement we need a model to inspire us and we need conviction to make us go upward, onward, and forward. For Ignatius, Jesus was the model. In forming his disciples Jesus envisioned four phases: i. He had self-knowledge that He was the Son of God who had come down to redeem the humankind; ii. He built and nurtured one-on-one interaction with the disciples and influenced them and hence they had personal loyalty to Jesus; iii. But he wanted to build an effective team and so he sent them two by two, a kind of noviciate experiment, to learn to work with others of different outlook, ability, conviction etc; and iv. Finally, Jesus could entrust to them the organizational responsibility with His command: Go forth and proclaim the Goods News. This echoes through Ignatius in his words: Go forth and set the world on fire.
Heroic Leader: Today we remember this heroic leader Inigo, who had i. Understanding of his strength and weakness, especially the need for human as well as divine values in life; ii. He was confident of innovating and adapting to embrace a changing world; ii. He felt the need for engaging others with positive and loving attitude to accomplish the mission after him; and iv. Energizing himself and his partners in mission through heroic ambition, which we label as audacity of hope and apostolic aggressivity (C. Lowney, Heroic Leadership, 2005).
Four-Agreement: And in the light of Ignatius’ enlightenment and in the shadow of this great giant, we see that our life should be built on the matrix of four agreements or four pillars: i. to be honest in our words (as Jesus said: say what you mean, yes/no); ii. not to take anything personally but in the context, especially any criticism; iii. not to make arbitrary assumptions as it might be biased based on prejudice; and iv. to give the best to others (D.M. Ruiz, The Four Agreements, 2018). These would be the basis of our mission.
Atomic Habits: The summary is be honest to yourself and transparent to others and do your best wherever you are sent and whatever you are expected to do. And this is possible by building up atomic habits that ensure remarkable output or outcome with tiny changes in our attitude and habits. We need to look at the goal not as an achievement to reach but as a process to live out, where we move from easy to moderate to difficult and finally to impossible task to accomplish (J. Clear, Atomic Habits, 2018).
And what is the ultimate end is not again success but meaning in life and mission. If we know ‘why’ we live or ‘why’ we do such and such a mission, then we shall by all means find out ‘how’ we can fulfill it. This is the insight we get when we contemplate and journey with St Ignatius, the Pilgrim, who was restless but one who walked with hope in the Lord and confidence in himself. We find Ignatius relevant, meaningful, and useful even after 500 years. Let it bring in an evolution within us to be and to do the same as our Founder.
Loyola (Chennai) welcomes you all to a day of reflection, inspiration, and sharing in order to do ever better and ever more in the spirit of magis.
Francis P Xavier SJ
02Apr2022