By Maria Arul Raja SJ
Chennai, May 24, 2020: The life and mission of Father Adolfo Nicolás, a former Jesuit superior general who died on May 20 in Tokyo, have had deep impact on my Jesuit vocation.
The impact was experienced in the following three areas: Universal Reach-out, Depth Dimension and Learning from the East.
Let me explain more. The Ignatian criterion of the universality of the mission was at times misconstrued as contradicting the Ignatian criterion of the inculturation of the mission. But Father Nicholas ably dispelled this dichotomy with an integrated outlook. He had the clarity to emphasize that Ignatian universality is not a flight into rootlessness and Ignatian inculturation is not limiting oneself to narrow ghettoization. When a mission is dynamically universal, it becomes progressively inculturated and vice versa.
Depth Dimension
Father Nicolás identified the growing culture of superficiality as the root cause of all our crises in the contemporary global scenario both at the personal and collective levels. He challenged the Jesuits, collaborators, students, alumni and other people of good will to sharpen the critical consciousness flowing from the depth-dimensions of life, whether called by the name ‘faith’ or ‘life-stream’, or ‘energies from within’. This awakening and awareness could enable all of us to raise appropriate questions on appropriate times with appropriate intensity and intention for leading a relevant life of commitment in our mission.
Learning from the East
As the one well-groomed both from the Western Wisdom and Eastern Rationality, Father Nicolás challenged all of us to learn from the Affective Rationality of the East and Critical Religiosity of the Asia. He expected that each Asian Jesuit should ask himself on the Asian contribution to the entire humanity in the global context in alleviating suffering and experiencing salvation. He further questioned the Jesuit world whether the Jesuits have been open enough to learn the spiritual insights from the Asian cultural soil.
Sparks of Insights from Father Nicolás
The Jesuit life and mission is a continuum at once rooted into the cultural soil of the mission field and ramified into far-reaching branches with universal outlook. The culture of readily addressing the appropriate questions raised from the faith-triggered critical consciousness will lead us into fruitful apostolic planning and execution in collaboration with all people of good will. The Asian spiritual contribution to the entire world of humanity has to be identified from the spiritual resources of the suffering masses of the Dalits, the Tribals, and the migrants of Asia and these harmonious spiritual insights are to be systematically gifted to the world torn to pieces with the pandemic fundamentalism and capitalism.
(Maria Arul Raja is the coordinator of the Commission for Spirituality and Dialogue, Jesuit Chennai Province. He stays at Loyola College in Chennai.)