![(Part 2 of 3) 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]](https://www.phjesuits.org/portal/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Photo-in-Arrupe-Part-2.jpg)
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.
After his tertianship in Cleveland, and right before he left for Japan, Father Arrupe, who like some Jesuits cannot stand not doing anything, took on pastoral work in a maximum security prison in New York, where he ministered to Spanish-speaking inmates. Each day, he would say his Mass at four in the morning, and afterwards head for the prison. The story is told of his first encounter. Arrupe was nervous, despite the seemingly calm exterior. He approached the guard, explained his mission, and asked that a cell be opened for him. The guard asked which beast he wanted to be released to. Don Pedro asked for the list, and easily singled out the Rodriguezes and Garcias and Lopezes on the list, and he chose one arbitrarily, Cell 279. The guard looked at the name and said: “Bad egg, that one, one of the worst. Does he know you are coming?” Arrupe answered, “No, he knows nothing.” The guard hesitated and commented that he was not sure how this criminal would receive a priest. And Arrupe said: “Neither do I, but we will find out soon enough.” And he went in, strengthened only by the knowledge that it was the Spirit that led him here, and that would see him through.
God’s Spirit never let Don Pedro down. There were always surprises. In that New York jail, he saw through the harsh language and the hesitation, the cursing and the anger, as he listened to the inmates tell him of their lives, and about the people they had hurt and the people they were longing to return to, and about their hurts and their hopes. Arrupe faithfully reported to that jail for those three very intense months of 1938. And on his last day, a small party was organized, at which the inmates sang the old baladas and boleros of Latin America. And at the end, Father Arrupe spoke saying that the best thing to do would be to sing them a song as well, and he sang a zortziko from the País Vasco, after which he received a warm and resounding applause from his new friends. There and then, Arrupe knew that he had broken through, that the Spirit had led him through those prison walls and through those prison hearts, and discover in them Christ’s sheep without a shepherd. All hostilities had disappeared, and Arrupe learned from the Spirit that true apostolate meant loving the people you worked with and worked for, and being with them as a friend.
The world needs this kind of a man, who, as Fr. Ivern says, “was careful never to put limits to the Spirit or to confine it within narrow human categories”, who was “always looking for signs of the Spirit in the world and in people … however new and strange its ways might appear” – the Spirit from which he “drew his contagious optimism and apostolic enthusiasm, his strength, fearlessness and audacity.” This kind of man presents a stark contrast and a challenge to our world which places such a high premium on predictability so as to prepare, on certitude so as to control, on clear and strict rules so as to increase profits, whose main strategy is subjugation and power, through force, through the conquest of minds and hearts, through the subtle power of media, through commercialism, through standards of “reasonable certainty”.
I am struck by this man of the Spirit. I am struck by his availability, his openness, his sense of adventure, his willingness to open new doors and seek out new worlds – not just any thing new, but anything new for the Kingdom. It was this man of the Spirit that led us to GC32, that gave flesh to the Jesuit Refugee Service, that called attention to inculturation, and in the 70s, the Theology of Liberation.
Today, Arrupe challenges us to review our ways, not in the categories of his time but in those of ours, to ask ourselves whether we still have that sense of adventure, to seek out new ways of bringing Christ to the world, to challenge our own fixed routines, to expand our boundaries of what is worthwhile, to consider for just a moment –every now and then –yanking ourselves from the little corners we have carved out for ourselves and the little Kingdoms we have built in our own institutions, and the circle of friends we have so carefully nurtured through the years.
Father Arrupe shows us that if we allow the Spirit to move, then we can also learn to live a little better with discomfort, with tension, with dissent, with people whom we do not like or do not agree with, even in our own Jesuit communities. One of the things that have impressed people was the way Arrupe was able to receive with much respect and even warmth, the very people who criticized him bitterly, with no grudges, no avoidance, no ill will. It was the Spirit that led him through this – the Spirit that allowed him to be faithful to the Church and to the Pope, while dialoguing with openness and sincerity with those on the periphery of the institution; the Spirit that made him live such a simple and ascetic life while at the same time championing the most modern means of communication for the sake of the mission; the Spirit that he discovered in long hours of prayer and the Eucharist, that he constantly finds incarnated in surprising ways in the daily run of things and in the lives of ordinary people around him.
Part 1: ARRUPE, THE MAN WHO SET HIS HANDS ON THE PLOUGH AND DID NOT LOOK BACK