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 #5 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 #5 “ST IGNATIUS AND ‘IGNATIAN’”.

ST IGNATIUS AND ‘IGNATIAN’

In 1965, when photographs of Fr Pedro Arrupe were sent to Jesuit communities around the world after his election as Superior General, people began to make comparisons between his features and those of Ignatius, which they closely resembled. Both possessed a slight build, high, domed forehead, beaked nose, and a demeanour that exuded firmness, gaiety, and meekness.

There were significant similarities in their life-stories, too.

_ The two were the only Basques elected Jesuit Superiors General. Their birth-places in northern Spain, were about 40 kilometres apart.

_ Each was the youngest child; Pedro’s mother had died when he was ten, just as Ignatius’ mother also died when he was very young. Their fathers too died fairly young, so they were on their own early in life.

_ The first career of both had no direct connection with religious life: Ignatius was a courtier-soldier, Pedro took up medicine.

_ Both had “conversion” experiences: Ignatius while recuperating from battle-wounds at Loyola, Pedro after witnessing the three miracles at Lourdes. Loyola and Lourdes are about 240 km apart.

_ Each of them made friends with their fellow-students during their University studies. Ignatius won over a small group that would become founder-members of the Society of Jesus. Pedro, too, reached out to his fellow-students in Madrid in different ways. One in particular, Chacón, who was studying mining engineering, was greatly indebted to Pedro through whose encouragement and attention he managed to pass a difficult exam.

Like Pedro, Enrique joined the Jesuits, and became a well known scholar. Another fellow-student to join the priesthood was [Father] Vasco, who went in for social service, living in poverty in a suburb in Madrid.

_ Each of them took time out from their studies to serve the poor.

_ Pedro joined the Society at Loyola, next to Ignatius’ birthplace, then left his homeland, as had Ignatius. Each first dreamed of going to serve the Lord in a non-Christian country, the Holy Land for Ignatius and Japan for Fr Arrupe.

_ They both experienced imprisonment without trial for a month or more.

_ Each served as Superior General for about fifteen years. Care for the poor and the homeless was a main focus of each of them.

_ Ignatius asked to resign after a decade; his companions persuaded him to stay on. He did, but shortly after he became ill and never fully recovered. Fr Arrupe first suggested his own resignation on completing fifteen years but his proposal was turned down. A year later he suffered a stroke that virtually ended his term.

_ Each of them served in turbulent times. For Ignatius, there was the follow-up on the Council of Trent; for Fr Arrupe it was the new challenges the Church faced after Vatican Council II. One of his top advisors referred to Fr Arrupe as “a second Ignatius, a refounder of the Society in the light of Vatican II.”

_ Each professed loyalty to the Pope [in both cases Pope Paul], while sometimes holding different viewpoints.

_ Each of them displayed extraordinary serenity in situations that would crush or discourage lesser mortals.

_ Fr Jerome Nadal wrote of Ignatius: “He died when he had accomplished his mission.” The same may be said of Arrupe.

Ignatius, Fr Arrupe noted, was both the Founder and the first General of the Society. As General he had to apply his ideas as the Founder to the circumstances of his own age.

“I must imitate the Founder but not necessarily the General. I have to apply Ignatius’s inspiration as Founder, to the Jesuits and the circumstances of the present day.”

Fr Arrupe’s Ignatian charism

In his ‘autobiographical conversations’ with Fr Dietsch just before his disabling stroke, Fr Arrupe reveals how he imbibed the spirit of the Founder.

“Perhaps I am a ‘connoisseur’, as you say in France when speaking of wines! To understand that, one must first remember that I made my novitiate in Loyola, and that I received much from our proximity to the ‘Santa Casa’ in which Ignatius lived and had his first spiritual experiences. I was close, so to speak, to the vineyard from which we all spring.

“A decisive moment occurred at the time of our expulsion from Spain. The young Jesuits were leaving for Belgium and had two weeks to visit their families. I didn’t go home; I took a room in a religious institution and for two weeks I studied the volume of the Monumenta historica societatis Iesu [that collection of early years of the Society] which treats of the Spiritual Exercises. I had taken it – I remember, without asking permission! – in the little baggage we were able to take with us for the exile. This period of reading, prayer, and reflection allowed me to enter deeply into the thought and spirituality of St Ignatius.”

***

It is well known that Arrupe was deeply immersed in Ignatian spirituality. He made constant appeals to Jesuits to return to the spirit of the Founder even as they strive after ‘inculturation’ of Jesuit ideals.

It has been said of St Ignatius that one of the most significant facts of his personal history is that he readily went to school as an adult: he was a good listener, with a receptivity that went beyond mere intelligence, and which he himself called “interior knowledge”.

But there was much more than that to the similarity between Ignatius and Arrupe. Ultimately they were at one in what may be regarded as the core of the charism of the Founder: the paradox of Loyalty as Liberation. Loyalty is something that binds, but loyalty to Christ is a release, a redemption from all that hinders true and total growth, for it leads into the experience that the man Jesus had of his Father, of God as Absolute and all else as relative..

This is the truth that makes us free, and enables us to embrace everything: the Church and her ponderous institutions, the world and all its messy problems – not as a burden or a bondage, but rather as opportunities for greater service, for a larger liberation.        Parmananda Divarkar SJ

***

Don Pedro’s mandate as General was to promote the renewal of Jesuit life. As Vatican II had indicated, this involved two simultaneous processes: a continuous return to the original inspiration and charism of St Ignatius, the founder, and at the same time an adaptation to the changed conditions of the times. These two processes were at the centre of Pedro Arrupe’s life and action throughout the 18 years of his generalate.

One reason for his tremendous appeal was precisely his ability to combine these two principles to a remarkable degree, in his own person. He manifested an inexhaustible knowledge and skill when dealing with all that is fundamental in Jesuit life: the Spiritual Exercises, the Constitutions and the letters of St Ignatius. But at the same time he was keenly aware of contemporary problems and of the needs of the Church, and he was open to change.”                                          Vincent T. O’Keefe SJ

“When Fr Arrupe made a first visit to the Jesuits in Paris,” said Arrupe’s successor Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, “I was a student and my obligations prevented me from being present when he spoke. At table that evening, I asked a Jesuit about the speech of the new General. Clearly indignant, he told me that the General had made a scandalous affirmation when he said that a Jesuit who is faithful to his religious obligations was not necessarily a good Jesuit…

“In spite of the negative reaction of my colleague, Fr Arrupe was in perfect harmony with the most traditional interpretation of Ignatian spirituality which was to insist on ‘magis’ [‘more’], understood not necessarily as ‘more activities’, an increase of work, but rather as the effort to let oneself to be guided more and more by the Spirit in order to become servants of Christ’s mission. A mission that demands total availability, [is] open to surprises, to the conversion of the heart, to walk new paths without fear of risks.”

An American Jesuit, realizing the intense pace at which Fr Arrupe worked
invited him to go to a pizzeria with him. “But everyone would recognize me,”
Arrupe pointed out.

“Then put on a wig.”

“But what shall I do with my nose” Arrupe joked.

Sketch by Père Bouler SJ [1972]