Fools for Christ:excerpts from a homily

July 29, 2007
Ateneo de Manila University
Province Celebration of the Feast of St. Ignatius

What is the first word that comes to your mind when you hear the word “Jesuit?” I’m sure that if we asked each one of you for an answer to that question, we would get some pretty interesting, even unexpected, answers. But I suspect that, for many, one word that would immediately pop into your mind would be “intelligent,” “matalino.” We Jesuits hear it all the time. “Heswita ka? Ay matalino ka siguro.”

I suppose this reputation for being brighter than we actually are is expected. After all, St. Ignatius and the first Jesuits were all Masters of Theology from the greatest university of their time, the University of Paris. Our official Jesuit documents remind us that our special contribution to the Church is that we are called to “learned ministry.” People see our universities and schools and hear about our superstar lawyers, theologians, writers and scientists, and mistakenly conclude that we’re all like them! There is the famous story of the young man in the vocation seminar who was intimidated by the Jesuit reputation for intelligence. “Ay, ayoko nang mag-Heswita. Hindi ko yata kaya. Ang gagaling, ang tatatalino ninyong lahat kasi,” he tells Fr. Mario Francisco. The unforgettable answer of Mario: “Ay, hwag kang matakot. Hindi yan totoo. Konti lang kami.”

Whether Mario is right or not, on this feast of St. Ignatius, and in the light of today’s Gospel in which Jesus proclaims the craziness of the Cross, I believe we are called to remember that however intelligent or talented or competent we are, we, Jesuits and members of the Ignatian family, are called first of all to foolishness. It is not enough that we be known for excellence, important though that may be. I think that in our time, it is more important that we be known as “fools for Christ.”

I have not invented this phrase. It is at there, at the heart of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. In the consideration on the Three Degrees of Humility, which are really the three degrees of love, Ignatius describes the most perfect kind of humility this way: “I desire more to be thought worthless and a fool for Christ, who first was taken as such, rather than to be esteemed as wise and prudent in this world.” (SPEX 167) A fool for Christ: “loco por Cristo que primero fue tenido por tal,” “isang hangal para kay Kristo, na syang unang itinuring na hangal.”

What does this foolishness for Christ mean? Rather than give you a theological explanation, let me share with you a few pictures of this holy Ignatian foolishness.

First picture of foolishness. This is literally a picture, a photograph. On the wall of the parlor the Jesuit Curia in Ho Chi Minh City, there is a large photograph taken over thirty years ago in 1975. A group of around twenty Jesuits are standing around Fr. Pedro Arrupe, on the balcony of the Jesuit Curia in Rome, with the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in the background. If you look closely at the picture you will recognize some familiar faces: Nil Guillemette, a surprisingly slender Felipe Gomez, a thirty-something Roger Champoux. These were the foreign Jesuits expelled from Vietnam by the Communists after the fall of Saigon in April 1975. They had come to Rome with only one purpose: to place themselves at the complete disposal of Fr. General, to be sent anywhere he felt there was need. What foolishness, what utter imprudence! After the trauma of explusion, of being uprooted, rejected, unappreciated, they should have known better, should have learned to be more cautious. And yet here they were, risking again, making themselves available again. Kahangalan!

Second picture of foolishness. Earlier this week, I was in Yangon. Myanmar is a land that has suffered for over forty years under a harsh military dictatorship that has made the country one of the poorest in the world. All Catholic schools have been closed; university students undergo “distance learning” which means they attend classes only ten days a year, after which they take an exam, in order to get degrees that are recognized no where else in the world, because they are obviously worthless. The Church survives under great constraints: to repair the roof of a parish church, one needs permission from the government, and it is accepted as a fact of life that the government regularly sends "agents" to listen to the ordinary Sunday homilies of priests.

In this situation of fear and hopelessness, a small Jesuit community labors. None of them can be there as religious, so each one is officially a "business consultant." Their ministry, as foreign religious, is severely limited. All they can run is a small house for candidates to the Society; and an English Language Institute with less than 200 students. Again, what foolishness! Why stay in Myanmar when you are not wanted, when what you can do is so limited, when life is so hard and the risks so many? And yet there these Jesuits choose to stay, struggling to serve the suffering people of Myanmar amidst so many constraints and limitations.

Third picture of foolishness. Last December, I visited a young Filipino Jesuit priest, Fr. Gabby Lamug-Nanawa, in his place of work in Battambang, in the northern part of Cambodia. Gabby is parish priest of Nikkom, a very poor village. He has about 15 parishioners. In the past two years, he has had to struggle with a difficult, completely unknown language and culture. Last month, though, I was surprised to receive a short SMS message from Gabby, which said: “Dear Danny, I arrived in Cambodia 2 years ago on June 11. I am very grateful for the past 2 years, for I have seen God in the eyes and hearts of people who have never uttered the name Jesus. God is everywhere! Thank you for sending me.” Surely there is something foolish about that text, something abnormal: how can one be so happy amidst hardship, so hopeful amidst a people who do not share your faith, so grateful for being sent to such a mission?

Fourth and final picture of foolishness. In one of our two infirmaries for aging and sick Jesuits, I recently spoke to an old Jesuit, who because of illness, can do very little work, after a life of active and creative service. When I asked him how he spent his days in the infirmary, he told me that loneliness and regret were two constant companions: loneliness, because so many of his friends and contemporaries are dead; regret, because with so much free time in the infirmary, he is haunted by memories of all the times in his long life that he has failed people and failed Christ. And yet, he said he is not overcome by these feelings when they come. He looks to death with peace, because he will be reunited with his friends. He can accept his failures with peace, because he believes that Christ in his mercy will somehow "make good" all his failures. What a foolish old man--placing his hopes on someone he cannot see, looking forward to extinction with peace, even longing?

I think St. Ignatius would be well pleased with his foolish sons, because he would see in them something of his own spirit. He would recognize himself in the foolish availability for mission of the Jesuits expelled from Vietnam; in the imprudent courage and faithfulness to service of the Jesuits in Myanmar; in the abnormal happiness in hardship of the Jesuit in Cambodia; in the immoderate, humanly unfounded trust in Jesus of the Jesuit in the infirmary. True: Ignatius was a prudent administrator who always sought effectiveness in the apostolate and who counseled that Jesuits always practice discreta caritas, prudent, discerning love. But he was also always a fool for Christ, a fool who gave up worldly power and position to follow Christ; who gave away all his money so that he could make pilgrimage to the Holy Land without any source of security but his trust in God; who embraced the sufferings of imprisonment with courage and joy, because as he told a pious lady who had pity on him: “There are not so many fetters and chains . . . that I would not want more for the love of God.” And this is the point: he was a fool because he was possessed by a passionate love for Christ that went beyond reason, that pushed him beyond safety, that made him risk all, if only he could be like Christ and share his saving mission.

Two weeks ago, in Vietnam, Fr. General told us that the Holy Father is worried about what he called the embourgeoisement of religious life: a word that means that we religious (including us Jesuits) do good work, but we look too comfortable, too secure, too domesticated, too safely middle class, too at home in the world. Our institutions run well, are economically viable, do some good, bring us prestige. Which is fine, but . . . the edge, the craziness, the disturbing and inspiring witness of being possessed by a love and a passion that make you out of synch with this world and its ways . . . much of this is gone. Is this perhaps why, although we do well, we often do not capture the imaginations and awaken the passions of the young? If everything, or practically everything in our lives can make sense to a person without faith, if everything can be rationally justified according to the standards of the world, if there is nothing that seems foolish and incomprehensible in what we do and how we live, if nothing in our service or lifestyle disturbs or raises questions, then perhaps we have become too wise.

I am certain, however, that when Jesuits see the availability, the courage, the joy in hardship and the total surrender of our brothers, something deep inside is touched, and we realize that this is what, in our best moments, we want most to be as Jesuits. We see in their folly borne of love and faith something of what we longed to be when we entered the Novitiate years ago. On this feast of St. Ignatius, then, please pray that we Jesuits become truer to our best selves, and become more truly fools for Christ, because we are more deeply possessed by the love of Jesus, who calls us in our sinfulness to be his companions in friendship and mission. Pray that Jesus becomes more real for us; that he becomes, as he was for Ignatius, what is most real, most valuable, worth any sacrifice and any service, no matter how imprudent and foolish that sacrifice and service may seem in the eyes of those without love. Pray that we may be ready to let go of the security and safety of our familiar institutions, careers, works, ways of doing things, for the sake of God’s greater glory. Pray that when people think of Jesuits, they do not just see intelligent and respectable men, but men in love, filled with a passion that makes them a little crazy, daring, different, unconventional, as people in love are, as Jesus and Ignatius were.