By Victor Edwin

New Delhi, Aug 10, 2020: The Delhi-based Jesuit-managed Vidyajyoti College of Theology on August 10 opened its new academic session urging its students to seek answers to the challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic and brute majoritarianism of the ruling elite.

Archbishop Anil J T Couto of Delhi led the opening Mass at the Sacred Heart Cathedral in New Delhi. Some 25 people, mostly staff and students of the college, attended the 9:30 am Mass in person while other students attended it online.

“We usually conduct the inaugural Holy Eucharist in the college. However this time we decided to arranged it in the cathedral due to the pandemic,” college Principal Jesuit Father P R John told Matters India. “Certainly, it was something good for the students to partake online,” he added.

He also said that in normal circumstances they would have started the sessions in July second week.

“But this year our life is a new normal. We feel the absence of young and energetic students of theology belonging to various religious congregations, dioceses and a few lay persons, hailing from various parts of India.”

In his introductory talk at the Mass, Father John urged the students to begin the new academic year with a desire to seek eternal light in their studies and future pastoral works.

Father John reminded them the collage motto:”Tameva bhāntamanubhāti sarvaṃ (Everything reflects the one who alone shines) taken from the Katha Upanishad, one of the primary Sanskrit texts of religious teaching and ideas revered in Hinduism.

The principal later told Matters India that the students of all three years will attend classes online because of the prevailing coronavirus pandemic.

“Vidyajyoti provides high quality of theological education combined with active apostolic (sociocultural-political) involvement throughout the year which is an integral part of theological formation, for the promotion of human and kingdom communities,” he added.

Theological education, Father John says should confront all that dehumanizes, especially the poor. In India, any theological enterprise must confront the reassertion of the rightwing ideologies and emerging brute majoritarianism of the ruling elite, he adds.

Vidyajyoti, he says, will continue to train students to engage in a critical and “contextual” theological formation along with prayer, serious study and research, and neighborhood involvements.

Such training will remind the students that God journeys with the poor, healing and guiding them, Father John asserts.

Father John, head of the one of top theological colleges in India, says the current challenge for the Church is to revamp the models of ecclesiastical studies by abandoning some models that have become outdated.

Jesuit Father Valan C Antony, professor of Sacred Scripture, in his message, highlighted the need to nurture a perspective, and vision for oneself while engaged in theological pilgrimage.

He also pointed out the current “corona times” demand a deeper study of Ethics, Theodicy, Christology, Eucharist, Ecclesiology and Eco-Theology re-emphasizing God’s mission for humans.

Inviting the students to bank on the promises of God, the professor appealed them to “dream hard enough, maybe some of them will come true.”