This year, 2023, as we celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Fr. Pedro Arrupe’s famous exhortation “Men and Women for Others” we are delighted to share article #4 of the series Beloved Don Pedro “Man For Others”.

This series of articles written by Fr. Hedwig Lewis SJ, a great Jesuit writer of Gujarat Province in India, covers anecdotes from Fr. Arrupe’s life, his writings, lived experiences, and spiritual thoughts.

All educators in our global community are invited to learn and reflect on who Fr. Pedro Arrupe was and his legacy to Jesuit education!

We will be sharing one article per month. You are all welcome to share your reflections and comments in the comment section located at the bottom of each article.

We wish you an enjoyable journey getting to know Fr. Pedro Arrupe and the roots of his famous exhortation “Men and Women for Others”.

Here is article #4 “FORMATION FOR MAGIS”.

FORMATION FOR MAGIS

Pedro Arrupe entered the Jesuit novitiate at Loyola, Spain, on 15 January 1927, at the age of 19. In his first year of novitiate, he wrote out reflections on his devotion to the Sacred Heart. These were later reproduced as El disco de Arrupe and handed out to the community. In the second year of the novitiate Arrupe was made guardian to a novice, Benjamin Mendiburu. Benjamin records how much he benefited from his acquaintance with Arrupe, ‘a real saint’.

In July, Arrupe set out with two other novices for the pilgrimage ‘experiment’. While passing through the University of Deusto, they were welcomed by none other than the ‘Blessed’ Brother Gárate himself. One of the Jesuits, Brother Xavier de Liédena, who had met Pedro Arrupe during that time, describes him as athletic well-built, with angular features and pointed nose – “like Ignatius”. Arrupe was a man of natural charm and great courtesy.

Novitiate was followed by Juniorate at Loyola. Arrupe revealed: “My desire to go to Japan goes back to my first year in the Juniorate. During my annual retreat, I had a clear ‘vision’ that my vocation was to be a missionary in Japan.”

“My vocation was not a straight line,” he would admit. “Opposition, difficulties, contradictory orders. … all this precisely because God wanted me to be there, in Japan.”

In the autumn of 1931 he began the study of Philosophy in Oña [Burgos]. The early 1930’s were times of great social turmoil in Spain. In the elections held in April 1931 the Socialists were victorious.The Society of Jesus was to be dissolved and all its assets nationalised. The Jesuit scholastics were sent to Marneffe in Belgium to complete their courses.

Arrupe did not have a regency period but instead was sent, in 1933, to begin Theology in to Valkenburg in Holland. In the course of his theological studies he became interested in questions of ethics, especially medical morality. He was fortunate to specialise in moral medicine under the well known moral theologian Fr Hürth. While at Valkenburg Arrupe came into contact with the Jesuit Province in Lower Germany, the very Province that had founded a Jesuit mission in Japan.

Toward the end of his third year of Theology Arrupe and 39 of his companions got ready for their great day – their ordination. Their retreat in Marneffe, under Fr Leturia, began on 16 July 1936. Their orders of sub-deacon and deacon were conferred on 27 and 28 July respectively. They were ordained at a quiet ceremony in Marneffe on 30 July 1936, by the saintly Bishop Kerkhoss of their diocese. Since civil war had broken out in Spain, there was no possibility of relatives being present.

Early in September of 1936 Father Arrupe received a laconic telegram from his provincial: “Plan immediately a trip to the United States.” It was followed by the name of the sender, nothing else. On 15 September Fr Arrupe boarded the Jean Jadot, the steamship which was the ultimate in luxury, with magnificent cabins, double-beds, huge wardrobes, running water, electric lights. He was not amused, to say the least, because he wanted to travel poorly like St Francis Xavier.

For his Fourth Year of Theology [1936-1937] he was sent to St Mary’s College, Kansas (Missouri Province), followed by Tertianship at St Stanislaus College in Cleveland, Ohio.One of his tertian companions recalled:

The summer before, he [Arrupe] used 99 clergy [discount travel] tickets of the book of 100. As we berated him for his wanderings, prodigality, and violations of poverty, he answered: “I did my best to use them all but could not; so that number 100 went to waste.” Evidently his superiors had ordered him to get to see as much as possible of the American assistancy.

For three months during Tertianship Fr Arrupe did pastoral work in a prison in New York City with Spanish speaking immigrants, especially Puerto Ricans. At the end the prisoners gave him a grand farewell party on the baseball field. The atmosphere, which minutes earlier had bristled with obscenities and blasphemies, was replaced by over 700 voices singing Latin-American songs in Spanish, accompanied by rustic, homemade instruments. When the nostalgic serenade ended, there was pin-drop silence on the field. An emotion-filled Fr Arrupe then expressed his thanks and in his splendid baritone voice sang them a Basque zortziko, a lullaby, full of tenderness. Reflecting on his prison experience Fr Arrupe said:

“It is impossible to express the mystery of the lives of these great men, perpetrators of outrageous acts, and at the same time able in their own way to show a great deal of sensitivity and tactfulness.”

On 30 September 1938 he left for Japan, the country on which he had set his heart, in the footsteps of St Francis Xavier.

Arrupe’s description of the young Jesuit

“What portrait would you draw of the young Jesuit  today, especially in Europe?” was the interviewer’s question. Fr Arrupe responded as follows:

First of all, he should be, as St Ignatius says, “over his childhood”. He should have had the experiences that every good young Catholic has in normal surroundings: family life, student  life, and the like, and even, perhaps, the experience of being in love with a young girl; that is one adolescent experience that, you may be sure, one cannot have in the Society!

In other respects, it is important that he be a man of commitment, who can take on a commitment to follow Jesus Christ for his entire life. And also he should be an idealistic man who has the desire to do something great for the Church and for the world. Finally, he is “a man for others”.

Arrupe on Jesuit Types

In his document on “Our Way of Proceeding”, Fr Arrupe presents five “models” — with the cautionary note that  “they are only rough sketches that in real life will very likely have redeeming features in any particular case.”

The first type is the full-time protestor. No doubt, denunciation can be a prophetic and evangelical duty. But it is equally true that one must know how, when, about what and whom, and in what form to denounce, and in virtue of what principles, so that the protest will be truly evangelical and constructive….

The second type is the professionalist who lets himself be totally absorbed by the secular aspects of his profession, even though it may have an undoubted apostolic value. He should not let his work put him in a practically independent life, disconnected from any community and any dependence on a Superior. He is in a particularly dangerous situation if he gets into such a work more by personal initiative than by a mission that the Society gives him after due discernment. …

A third type is the irresponsible Jesuit who sees no real value in such things as order, keeping appointments, the value of money, moderation in his recreation, etc. Often he has an unjustified allergy toward any check on his output of work, whether in studies or any other activity. And there can be danger, too, if he lets himself be irresponsibly freed in his dealings with young women, even if they are religious. The image of the Society that such an individual offers is, to put it mildly, a bad one.

A fourth type is the political activist, which is something quite different from the social apostle. …

Finally, there is the fanatically traditionalist type of Jesuit who builds his life around the symbols and practices of a bygone era: his mannerisms, the rigid schedule of his life, the formation of his personal and liturgical practices and spirituality. He can adopt an intolerable prophetic stance, making himself an infallible interpreter of the gospel and a judge of the living and dead, speaking and writing passionately against persons and institutions. Or he can lapse into a depressive defeatism, a combination of bitterness and living in the past.

ARRUPE on the “MAGIS”

I am afraid that we Jesuits may have little or nothing to offer this world, little or nothing to say or do in this world to justify our existence as Jesuits. I am afraid that we may repeat yesterday’s answers to tomorrow’s problems, take a way men no longer understand, speak a language that does not speak to the heart of living man. If we do this, we shall more and more be talking to ourselves; no one would listen, because no one will understand what we are trying to say.

THOUGHT FOR REFLECTION

Charity, like every other virtue, aims at growth. But in Ignatius, man of the ‘magis’, this growth is an insatiable thirst. ‘To grow’, ‘to increase’, ‘to move ahead’ are terms which recur again and again in his writings. ’To grow in his service’ is a favourite expression. ‘To move ahead’ appears again and again in his letter of direction, with the pressing exhortation that it be ‘more every day’, ‘from day to day’, ‘continually’, ‘even unto perfection’. His eagerness for the progress of his sons is such that, in the Constitutions, he goes so far as to suggest to superiors the pedagogy of provocation to encourage the progress of those who are in probation “by testing them” (as he himself might have seen in his youth at Arévalo the bulls for the contest being “tested” to make sure they were of quality breed ) “that they may give an example of their virtue and grow in it” Pedro Arrupe SJ