The people of San Salvador have processed every November 16 for the past 20 years to remember and honor the six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter who were murdered by the Salvadoran military. In a remarkable turnabout, the government bestowed the country’s highest award on the murdered Jesuits. The right-wing governments that have run the Central American country since its civil war always preferred to keep the case at a safe distance in the past. The new government led by a former journalist from a leftist party made an abrupt, 180-degree turn.

“We want this to be an act of recovering our collective memory,” President Mauricio Funes said in the ceremony. “For me, this act means [we] pull back a heavy veil of darkness and lies to let in the light of justice and truth. We begin to cleanse our house of this recent history.”

Funes was educated by the Jesuits; he presented golden medallions to relatives of the priests “for extraordinary service to the nation.”

The big surprise of the day came from the minister of defense who said the army was prepared to ask for forgiveness and that he was willing to open military archives to judicial investigators. For more on this story, see the account from the Los Angeles Times.

• PRAYING WITH THE CHURCH
• VOICE OF SHALOM

1st Week of Advent

• 1 Dec
• 2 Dec
• 3 Dec  St Francis Xavier, Priest, Patron of Missions
• 4 Dec  St John Damascene, Priest & doctor
• 5 Dec

2nd Week of Advent

• 6 Dec  Sunday
• 7 Dec  St Ambrose, Bishop & doctor
• 8 Dec  Immaculate Conception of Blessed Virgin Mary
• 9 Dec  St John Diego Cuahtlatoatzin
• 10 Dec
• 11 Dec
• 12 Dec  Our Lady of Guadalupe

3rd Week of Advent

• 13 Dec  Sunday
• 14 Dec  St John of the Cross, Priest & doctor
• 15 Dec
• 16 Dec
• 17 Dec
• 18 Dec
• 19 Dec

4th Week of Advent

• 20 Dec  Sunday
• 21 Dec
• 22 Dec
• 23 Dec
• 24 Dec
• 25 Dec  Christmas (Daytime Mass)
• 26 Dec  St Stephen, Protomartyr

Christmas Octave

• 27 Dec  HOLY FAMILY
• 28 Dec  HOLY INNOCENTS
• 29 Dec  Fifth Day within Octave of Christmas
• 30 Dec  Sixth Day within Octave of Christmas
• 31 Dec  Seventh Day within Octave of Christmas

Twenty years later: remembering the martyrs of El Salvador. The soldiers also murdered Elba and Celina Ramos, the Jesuits’ housekeeper and her daughter.

William Reiser

Worcester / Issues – A group of highly trained Salvadoran soldiers entered the campus of the University of Central America in San Salvador shortly past midnight on Nov. 16, 1989. While their primary target was the president of the university, Ignacio Ellacuría, S.J., they murdered and mutilated nearly the entire Jesuit community -Ignacio and five others-. A seventh member of the community, Jon Sobrino, S.J., was in Thailand teaching a course on Christology. The soldiers also murdered Elba and Celina Ramos, the Jesuits’ housekeeper and her daughter, who slept on campus that night to escape the anxiety caused by the bullets and artillery around the neighborhood where they lived.

What happened that night brought home grimly yet powerfully the prophetic dimension of teaching and research, when these activities are informed by an option for the poor. The 32nd General Congregation of the Society of Jesus, which met in 1974-75, put the entire order on record: “The mission of the Society of Jesus today is the service of faith, of which the promotion of justice is an absolute requirement”. The 33rd General Congregation (1983) reaffirmed that direction and insisted that “we wish to make our own the church’s preferential option for the poor”.

A WEAK-WILLED CONGRESS

The civil war in El Salvador lasted 12 years, from 1980 to 1992, and claimed 75,000 lives. The incompetence of American foreign policy with respect to the conditions that led to the conflict and in understanding who benefitted from the U.S. support of the Salvadoran military was appalling. As a result of the assassinations at the university, a weak-willed U.S. Congress finally began to face the problem of U.S. complicity in the Salvadoran situation. Representative Joe Moakley, Democrat of Massachusetts, was appointed to lead an investigation that turned out to be as courageous as it was eye opening. El Salvador was not the only place in Latin America where the poor were being abased. Nine years earlier, four North American women who were returning to El Salvador -two Maryknoll sisters, an Ursuline nun and a co-worker- were raped and murdered on their way from the airport. And two days before Archbishop Oscar Romero was gunned down at the altar on March 24, 1980, another Jesuit, Luis Espinal, was ambushed in La Paz, Bolivia,and silenced for his defense of the rights and dignity of the poor.

The stories of such “martyrs for justice”, as Father Jon Sobrino calls the slain Jesuits and many others, do not begin with the martyrs themselves but with the people on the bottom -the victims of poverty, miscarriages of justice and class prejudice; the throwaways and the “disappeared”.- The story of the Salvadoran Jesuits, for example, takes us to the political, social and economic oppression endured by peasants so poor that they needed to be catechized before they could imagine that the world could be different. What would El Salvador look like if God’s will were done on earth, just as it is in heaven?

Father Ellacuría and his companions understood that the mission of a Christian university as an apostolic instrument is not disconnected from the economic and political conditions of the society in which it is located. On the contrary, the university’s mission derives directly from its awareness of the everyday reality that poor people endure. But as Father Sobrino explains in his essay “The University’s Christian Inspiration”, because a university needs resources it is almost by necessity implicated in a world of economic and political power, and “this incarnation amid power tends to distance the university from social reality as lived by the poorest and most marginalized”. Indeed, even the church has to be careful never to lose sight of the world of the poor, and contact with it. Preachers and teachers whose hearts and intelligence are immersed in that world are more attuned to the deeper rhythms of Scripture. Distance from the poor leads to distance from God.

AGUILARES AND RUTILIO GRANDE

Aguilares was the village where Rutilio Grande, S.J., had been working and the place to which his close friend, Oscar Romero, rushed when he heard the news of Grande’s assassination on March 12, 1977. It was also where Romero later, as archbishop, experienced a profound spiritual awakening. The bishop’s “place”, he came to understand, is with his people; he is never more bishop than when walking alongside the poorest and most vulnerable of his diocese. Aguilares was also where the Jesuits, so suspect in the eyes of El Salvador’s elite and of Archbishop Romero himself earlier, came to be of one heart and mind. The poor were powerless. Christ became poor, which means that he also became powerless. And the reason for the impoverishment both of Jesus and the people? Because, in El Salvador, others had become rich and privileged at their expense. Poverty is visible, but the oppressive forces that create structural violence are usually hidden. One needs the lens of solidarity to perceive those forces, and Aguilares gave the archbishop the lens that enabled him to identify what he saw as crucifixion.

Father Ellacuría and the other Jesuits in his community had already undergone their “Aguilares moment”, the flash that shatters the familiarity hiding the underside of everyday life. What immediately grabs attention is that they were murdered, not the conversion process that led to the radicalization of their vision. In the case of the archbishop, however, it is less his murder that fascinates us than the story of how a conservative churchman became prophetic.

By contrast, Ignacio Ellacuría’s conversion, his embrace of the central categories that came to be associated with the theology of liberation, unfolded gradually, largely through reading, study and discussion. His theological orientation was rooted in the Second Vatican Council. He had fully digested Paul VI’s encyclical Populorum Progressio (1967) and the documents from the Second Conference of the Latin American bishops in Medellín, Colombia, in 1968. His doctoral work in philosophy sharpened his ability to decipher the historical reality that was El Salvador. Apostolic activity without a vision of the kingdom of God tends to validate itself in terms of helping people into the next life but at the risk of meekly acquiescing to the way things are now. Apostolic activity with a vision of the horizon wants to transform the world. It is a faith that does justice, which means that the church -especially its pastors and teachers- tries to make its voice heard in the political arena. As a result, Romero encountered severe opposition among the Salvadoran elites and their military, and in some corridors of the Vatican.

Because the demands of social justice often require stepping into a country’s political life, Father Ellacuría found himself immersed in negotiations between the government and the revolutionary resistance during the course of the country’s civil war. What is intriguing is how he came to his view of justice and liberation by reading and studying and through the clarification of thought and expression that results from conversation and argument. As they fulfill their mission, Christian universities facilitate such a shift in perspective. Some people actually do read their way into conversion. St. Ignatius did so while recuperating after the battle in Pamplona, although evenin his case some spiritual lessons were learned only from experience and not from books.

ELLACURÍA’S AGUILARES MOMENT

I suspect, then, that Ellacuría’s Aguilares moment was in fact extended over some time. While he read, studied and talked, the world in front of him never lost its political and social immediacy. His ability to imagine was not insensitive to “the joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted”, as the opening line of Gaudium et Spes put it, by class loyalties or ecclesiastical privilege or doctrinal mindset. Since fear keeps truth at bay, it closes our eyes to hard realities we need to face. The Jesuits’ Central American Province newsletter noted: “When people would ask Ellacu if he were not afraid he would say no, but, he added, he no more took credit for that than for lacking a sense of smell. He just didn’t have one”. The world of the poor and of victims was not outside, awaiting full access to his mind and heart. It was already within him.

Jesuit colleges and universities become effective instruments insofar as they have a critical mass of faculty members and staff who share the same Christian inspiration that Ellacuría and his companions brought to the Catholic university in San Salvador and by which they transformed it. The hard part is not assembling the critical mass, however; it is discovering that inspiration and keeping it alive. Here I draw on personal experience. By 1988 I had been teaching theology for 10 years. The theology was in line with Vatican II. I drew widely and appreciatively on liberation theology and Catholic social teaching; the forceful words of the Society’s 32nd General Congregation about justice and faith struck a deep chord. To this point, I could follow Ellacuría. But then, over the course of a weekend, I came face to face with poverty among families no more than a mile from the campus in Massachusetts where I was living and working.

A LATE PERSONAL DISCOVERY

Within weeks I was looking at the underside of life in rundown apartments, where shadows and shouts awakened long-buried fears about violence, about different lifestyles, about brokenness and isolation. The memory of Romero -not his martyrdom but his enlightenment- enabled me to make sense of what was happening. I myself was passing through an Aguilares moment, and the people I met were Latino. It was a moment of feeling terribly disoriented and unmoored, yet at the same time untied and excited. Even now, more than 20 years later, I cannot figure out why the discovery took so long in coming. Its delay was not for lack of better training or critical reflection, nor was it for want of forceful church documents and living models. More likely it had to do with fear and insecurity: not a fear of death so much as a fear of hostility, violence and failure, of not knowing how to respond to circumstances and backgrounds so different from my own and so greatly beyond my control.

The next step is obvious. We develop friendships with the very ones who have made us unsettled and afraid. While we might not be as free as Jesus when it comes to seeking the company of those at the margins, at least as a start these friendships enable us to move beyond fear and insecurity, defensiveness and hostility. These relationships reshape how we observe, interpret and respond to the world. The lesson of the martyrs is that whether we think of the world in local or global terms, there is no way to escape the route toward the mortal conflict that tears society in two, except by what Paul called “this ministry of econciliation”. Working for justice is absolutely essential. But if suspicion and estrangement are not overcome, the kingdom of God remains only partially realized. We may be able to read ourselves into the horizon of justice, but we cannot read ourselves into freedom from fear. The way to that liberation passes through the villages and homes of the poor -the road that leads from Aguilares-.
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William Reiser, S.J., is a professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. Published in America magazine, www.america,agazine.org

What is Jesuit material? The former General of the Society of Jesus had this to say to someone who wished to be a Jesuit: “Stay at home if this idea makes you unsettled or nervous…Come if serving Christ is at the very centre of your life. Come if you have sufficiently broad shoulders, come if you have an open spirit, a reasonably open mind and a heart larger than the world.”

Old friends and family whom I have seen after our six-week foray into the mountains of Bukidnon are eager to know about how I lost weight or why my skin is as dark as the earth. Words betray the depth and breadth of this extraordinary journey known as the mission trials. Pausing, smiling, coupled with a look of pregnant bewilderment would be more apt. But though I know I will fall short, I write this to tell my part of the story, and to humbly offer my piece of Jesuit material.

The mission trial is the first exposure we have outside the novitiate. After being cooped up in Sacred Heart for close to eight months, the first year novices are sent to the Jesuit mission areas in the south. I was assigned to the Bukidnon mission district with two of my brothers for obvious reasons. I have never been to Mindanao, did not know how to speak in Cebuano, and my supposedly urbane background (not true) would be perfect for the experience to be, as the name suggests, a real trial.

We spent 25 days in Miarayon, 7 in Zamboanguita, and 6 in Cabanglasan to live with Jesuit missionaries and, at times, Lumad communities. Each place was distinct in the experience it offered, and the work of the Jesuits there as varied as their personalities. Trials as such are supposed to test one’s vocation to religious life, and if we have what it takes to be Jesuits.

Come if you have sufficiently broad shoulders. People say I have broad shoulders. Experience tells me though that my shoulders are not only weak, they are extremely fragile. I was reminded of this in cold and picturesque Miarayon. We were asked to help build a chapel on the peak of Kaulayanan, a much colder place with no electricity nor running water. Being novice mountaineers we decided to stuff as much “essentials” in our backpacks in the hopes of keeping dry on a rainy day. Midway through the amazingly steep trail I felt my broad shoulders crumbling under the weight of my bag. At one point, when we made a pit stop for the nth time, someone asked me, “Ano gusto mo pang mag Heswita?” Spurred by this comment, I lifted my lead bag and, together with my injured pride, continued along. I did make it on top, but my shoulders felt like rubber for a number of days. And when I had finally recovered it was time for the trek down. Different trail but same heavyweight bag.

The same thing happened when we had to make the return trip from a Lumad community in the mountains back to our home base in Cabanglasan. It took us 7.5 hours to complete what is, by far and bar none, the toughest walk of my life. It would be another story to narrate the entire experience. But what made it all the more challenging was having to walk on foot during the toughest part since my sandals broke down (and so did another pair I borrowed). Doing so was tolerable in the knee-deep mud, but it was impossible on the pebble-littered paths. It was so painful that I wanted so much just to stop, not to rest, but to cry.

Of course my backpack still bothered me. That’s saying much considering it weighed only a third of the load I carried up Kaulayanan. But if ever there was any consolation it was that my shoulders did not bother me as much as my feet. My feet—-muddied and bloodied, just plodded along waiting to succumb at any time. When I got home, with my shoulders and feet ready to retire, I learned that I also had a weak and fragile stomach. Diarrhea kept me awake the entire night together with the incessant question ringing in my head, “Ano gusto mo pang mag Heswita?”

The mission trial was very much a physical trial. Pushed to the brink, my body would nudge my soul to ask, “Why am I doing this?” At gustuhin ko man, ni minsan hindi ko ito nasagot. Many times I would trudge along just because I was too proud to quit. As I look back and remember the battering my body had to endure, I realize though that my great pride would have wilted on its own. Surely what fueled me was more than my pride. Surely, even if my shoulders are broad and strong, it would not have mattered.

What matters is not that one can carry the world on his shoulders, as many people think Jesuits can and do. What matters is if my shoulders can endure not only my own pain and suffering, but that of the world. Thus the requirement for broad shoulders, wide enough to cast the burdens of all the peoples of God on one’s shoulders and offer this up to Him who promises to make all things well. Shoulders that could not only carry heavy loads but endure through the treacherous journeys in life and offer hope to many who are tired and just about ready to give up. Shoulders, and yes even feet, that persevere when the head asks questions that baffle, and when the heart grows weary and doubtful.

Come if you have an open spirit, a reasonably open mind. It is no secret that my dream has always been to be a rock star. Fortunately for my potential listeners, I never really made any headway in singing or playing any instrument. As a Jesuit, even if but a novice, you learn that you are a public figure. And even if you can’t sing a tune, you are welcomed and treated like a rock star.

I felt like a rock star in Bukidnon. Mostly my fans were high school students ten to fourteen years younger. They would not scream and tug at my shirt nor would they shout “Group hug!” each time my brothers and I would pass by. But the attention, curiosity, and, dare I say it, reverence that they gave me, they gave us, was nothing short of overwhelming. The immediate feeling was not even of appreciation. I felt ashamed of it all. Nakakahiya. Eventually I told myself that I would just have to learn to live with it so I did. The danger was that I got so used to the attention that I craved for it. And I could not determine if my actions were just to increase my “fan base” or simply to do things, as Ignatius would say, for the greater glory of God.

One time I carelessly teased one of the students by commenting on her prom dress. My intention was to make a joke but apparently, since the songs of rock stars are infallible, she took it seriously. And she cried over the entire thing for much of the night. As I sat beside her, waiting for her to calm down before I could talk, I began thinking of excuses and ways to save myself from a guilty verdict. But as she continued crying her eyes out, I felt really, really terrible about myself. This time I was truly ashamed of myself. I was wrong, and I did not want to own up to that. I realized at that time, rock stars could sing off key.

The next morning, when things had settled already, a 14-year old student scolded me in front of the others. He scolded me in the way my mother used to tell me off, minus the spanking. I felt that he had gone too far. After all, things were already fixed between me and the girl, and I was much older than him. I wanted to remind him of who I was and how I deserved some respect. But I realized who I was back then was someone who had made a mistake. And as much as I wanted respect, he deserved some respect from me also.
Our novice master would always tell us, “You can never go wrong with humility.” That was one painful lesson in humility. Pride narrows our perspective; it closes us to the possibilities. Being humble makes us see that even if you are the “in thing” now, your 15 minutes of fame will pass and everything else fades. Being humbled opened me up, and taught me things that I would not have learned if I remained within this self-centered image of myself. To have an open spirit, an open mind, an open self means to know that one simply cannot learn to be a better person on his own, by his own efforts. And that is the reason why Jesuits are respected the world over, they are always open to the possibilities the Lord offers them. They are ready, willing, and always available to the infinite ways to build the Kingdom of God. No work is too small, no task too great for these men who find their life’s meaning in being humbled and surrendering to the grace of God.

Come if you have a heart larger than the world. In Sapang Palay, where we have been going for our weekly apostolate the past year, one of the most consoling experiences has been giving communion. The act just strikes to the core of my reason for entering the novitiate: I want to share Christ to others. Many times I have had to shy away the tears while people line up to receive the body of Christ from me. This was the same experience on my last morning in Miarayon. I realized I had, in some way, shared my Christ to them through the almost month-long stay there. As I gave communion to the students, all of whom were strangers to me before, tears welled up in my eyes. They had become my friends. Not because I knew them already. But because we all shared in knowing the same Jesus Christ.

The trial was the first time my feet touched Mindanao, the great land of promise more known for its armed conflict and kidnapping. I had traveled outside of Manila before, seen different cultures, and heard different languages. But the mission trial was my first time to really see and be in the world. It was the first time I moved out of the comforts not only of home, but of the city, and of the things I had learned to lean on for security and soothing familiarity.

It was more than seeing a greater piece of the greater world though. What amazes me to this day is how my heart was opened up to accommodate this greater world, and the desires, hopes, and joys of the people I have met. The student whose prom night I had almost destroyed ended up my closest friend from the trial. As we got to know each other more, she became more of a sister to me, very much like my own. When she would share about the pain of loss and hopelessness I would hear the voice of my own sister. When she would weep over her past and as her hands would tremble in fear of the future, I would remember the same fragile girl back home in Quezon City. And when she sought the guidance and comfort of the kuya she had lost some years ago, I would hold out my hand and smile. It felt so familiar and right to love a stranger in the same way I love my own flesh and blood.

What brought me overwhelming consolation was realizing I could love others without having to unlove those who have always been in my heart. I always thought I was a loving person, but only to those who are convenient to love. In Bukidnon I saw that the harvest is indeed great, and the laborers few. Yet the laborers have humongous hearts, ready to welcome the world. Loving more does not mean loving anyone any less.

It has been close to a month now since our trials ended. The wounds have healed, and the questions, still unanswered, have settled. But the richness of the experience lingers within still. What a tremendous gift these days were for me. Nothing beats being surprised by the Lord’s generosity, in ways unexpected yet, somehow, never out of place. I do not know if I have fulfilled Arrupe’s “requirements”, but I guess it does not really matter. It does not even matter if I am called to be a Jesuit or a rock star or simply a kuya. Any vocation in life, the invitation is the same: Come if serving Christ is at the very centre of your life. And yes, if coming for the sake of Christ makes you unsettled or nervous better stay at home and enjoy its creature comforts. But believe me, nothing beats traveling far and wide and deep to see the world and what it has to offer you.
– Robbie Paraan, nSJ
Robbie is an Ateneo de Manila alumnus. He was an active member of the Ateneo Christian Life Community during his college days. He worked as a banker before he entered the Society of Jesus in 2008. He is now in his second year of noviceship. As of this posting, he is on pilgrimage to the sanctuary of Our Lady of Manaoag in Pangasinan –traversing McArthur Highway from Bocaue to Pangasinan by foot and with minimum provisions.