We are delighted to share this interview with Maria Verónica Paredes Sanchez, religion teacher and a member of the school ministry team at Istituto Leone XIII in Milan, Italy, who participated as a facilitator in the Four Key Practices of Ignatian Spirituality course. This course is a facilitator-led global course that offers a new synchronous global learning experience for Ignatian educators. A new course modality that allows members of our global community to learn together in global groups with educators from different Jesuit schools around the world.

Maria Verónica’s participation as a facilitator not only contributed to delivering on the holistic vision of education offered by Jesuit schools but it has also helped us, as a community, to keep growing as contemporary Jesuit educators. Thank you Maria Verónica!

Without further ado here is Maria Verónica’s facilitation experience.

If you are interested in knowing more about our facilitation opportunities, please contact Géllert Merza at info@educatemagis.org

Q1. What is your full name, current job title, job responsibilities, school name, city and country where you work? 

My name is Maria Veronica Paredes Sanchez MMX. I’m a Xavierian Missionary of Mary sister since 1998. My main mission assignments were:

·       2005-2009: Parma, Italy

·       2010-2021: Worcester, Massachusetts (USA)

·       2022: Milan, Italy

Presently I’m a religion teacher and a member of the school ministry team at Istituto Leone XIII in Milan, Italy. I teach religion 10 hours a week to 9th-10th grade students. I work 10 hours per week in the school ministry. That means I’m in charge of the student room (a place where high school students come to study together, to spontaneous “counseling”, and to attend spiritual conversations for a student group). Together with the school ministry team, I organize the weekly spiritual conversation student group and a monthly a larger conversation group, among other activities of the school ministry (e.g., retreats, confessions, mass, etc.)

This year, I’m also helping with some lessons in Spanish in the “Fe y Alegria” School.
I serve as a singer and musician at the Sunday mass at school.

Q2. Where were you born? Can you briefly share with us a special memory from your own biography that relates to your first interest (curiosity) in Christian faith and Jesuit/Ignatian spirituality?  

I was born in Toluca, Estado de Mexico, but I grew up in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, Mexico. I grew up in a normal Catholic family, but I had my personal encounter with Jesus when I was 19 years old. Since that time, I was practicing the daily examen and “finding God in everything” without knowing it. When I discovered it, I was in awe.

It was in the mission in the United States when the desire of going deeper in the Ignatian spirituality became more intense. Overall, it was due to the need of learning how to accompany people spiritually – many people came to talk with me and my “good will” to help them wasn’t enough. But also, thanks to the experience with the Jesuit community in Worcester, the spiritual exercises in Campion Center, the theological formation at Boston College, and the work in the parish with the catechism program “Finding God” – a Jesuit program for the faith formation of the children and teenagers, I became increasingly involved with the Jesuit ministry.

While I desired and looked for a formation program in Ignatian spirituality for a while, it wasn’t until I came to Milan that it was given to me as a grace during my sabbatical year.

I attended EVO (the Ignatian month in daily life), I started teaching religion in the Leone XIII and attended the Educate Magis course “Four Key Practices in Ignatian Spirituality”, “Ignatian Intercultural Communication” and “Global Citizenship.” I am still nourishing and cultivating Ignatian spirituality.

Q3. What is your relationship to the Jesuit/Ignatian spirituality? How important is it for your life, your personal ethos, to work for or be part of the Jesuit/Ignatian global community?  

For me the Jesuit/Ignatian spirituality is essential. As I mentioned before, since my youth, I was guided through this spirituality without knowing it. It is the way in which Jesus came -and comes- to me, the way that is for me. It has become a part of my inner self.

It is essential because by myself I can’t make it, I can’t walk, I can get lost and distracted very easily. I need a local and global community with which I live, work, share, grow, walk, and give/offer to others who I am and what I have.

Q4. Based on your personal experience, and your participation and facilitation of the Four Key Practices of Ignatian Spirituality course how do you feel it integrates with the global context of the document “Jesuit Schools: A Living Tradition in the 21st Century”?  

I think the Four Key Practices course and the IPP in action are very much in tune with the document which encourages us to continue in this perennial – and essential – process of reflection, conversation, discernment, and action (A Living Tradition n. 287-290).

It is crucial that everyone of us – who are called to be part and collaborate in this Ignatian mission – know, learn, live/model these four key Ignatian practices (reflection and the Examen, spiritual conversation, Ignatian discernment and becoming contemplatives in action). It is crucial to embrace them as a personal lifestyle because, as the document states, “the faculty and the staff are joining a global network and that they have a role to play in animating it (A Living Tradition n. 60).”

Q5. What other examples of global education projects or intercultural initiatives can you share with us from your own past in which you have been involved and what would you like to be involved in in the future? 

In the past, I was also involved in programs related to the protection-formation of women. When I was in Parma, I was working in an association “Pozzo di Sicar” whose main goal was to rescue and integrate in society foreigner women who were clandestinely brought to Italy for prostitution. In the USA, I also worked with a support group for women who were survivors of domestic violence. I haven’t yet had the opportunity to work on it on a global level, but I would like to be involved. It is one of the points of the 2030 agenda or the Global Compact on Education of Pope Francis.

During the pandemic, I attended interfaith online meetings in the USA organized by the Xaverian Fathers in Holliston (MA). There were Hebrews, Hindus, Lutherans, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics, and Catholics. We met to share about the celebrations we have in common, the meaning and the way we celebrate them. I would like to have the opportunity to be involved in this again.

Q6. What has been your experience so far (positive/challenging aspects) in your active participation as a participant and facilitator in the Ignatian Spirituality course cohorts hosted by Educate Magis?  

I have attended three courses as participant and one as a facilitator. For me each one of them has been a very positive and significant experience. I have found the possibility to interact with people from all over the world and learn from their experiences and life. I have also the opportunity to offer what I am and have to others with sincerity and simplicity and contribute to the growth of others.

The challenges I find are very practical: to find the right time for the majority, the language, the internet connection (not all the countries have a good one). Furthermore, how to involve more colleagues? How to keep them involved? How to nourish the first encounters with the Ignatian spirituality courses?

Q7. Why do you think (if you do) it is important for Jesuit educators to learn about, practice and model Ignatian practices, such as the Examen, Discernment, Spiritual Conversation and being Contemplatives in Action in Jesuit schools around the world? 

For me the main reason is not because we are working in a Jesuit school or Jesuit program and “we need to be on the same page.” For me it is significant because the four practices are really key, a way to connect first with ourselves and then be able to find Jesus inside and outside of ourselves and connect with others. Our frenetic world and school rhythms can distract us easily from what is really essential, vital for us as human beings and children of God. The four practices are the right help to keep us on the right human path.

Q8. What is your favourite quote/phrase related to Ignatian Spirituality, from a historical or a modern figure that you admire?

There are three quotes (highlighted below) that are deeply significant for me:

The Suscipe

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding,
and my entire will,
all I have and call my own.

You have given all to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.

Everything is yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace,
that is enough for me.

Fr. Arrupe sj (attributed to)

Nothing is more practical than finding God,

Than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way.
What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.
It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.

Teilhard de Chardin sj

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.