Fr. Nicolas on Fr. Arrupe

Got this really inter­est­ing arti­cle about Fr. Nico­las’ encoun­ters with Fr. Arrupe. Fr. Nico­las is the new Gen­eral of the Soci­ety of Jesus — which means that he is the head of all the Jesuits in the world. Fr. Arrupe, was a Jesuit Gen­eral at the time of Vat­i­can II–a time of great tran­si­tions and changes in the Church. Because of his role in the re-imagining and remak­ing of Jesuit iden­tity in the 20^th Cen­tury, he is acknowl­edged by many as “The Sec­ond Ignatius”, after the Founder of Jesuits, Ignatius of Loyola.

At the time this was writ­ten, Fr. Nico wasn’t the Jesuit Gen­eral yet. It’s just cool to read the present Jesuit Gen­eral writ­ing about a for­mer Gen­eral. It’s really about Arrupe and the good­ness of his per­son. But read­ing this gives you snip­pets of the great­ness of Fr. Nico as well.

Eight Encoun­ters with Fr. Arrupe
Fr. Adolfo Nico­las, SJ

The first time I did not meet him, really. I saw him. It was late 1952 or early 1953. I was 17, in my last year of high school in Madrid. He gave a lec­ture on his expe­ri­ences at Hiroshima after the atomic bomb. The spe­cial audi­to­rium was packed. I had to sit on a stair­way. At that time I had already decided to become a Jesuit. Fr Arrupe was the great mis­sion­ary, a national hero, a man on fire.

The sec­ond time was in Japan in 1961. I had him as Provin­cial for almost four years. I remem­ber his talks to scholas­tics. He was still on fire. He tried hard to pro­tect us against the dan­gers of Japan at the time, and he was try­ing even harder to build the Japan­ese Province. He had to raise funds, recruit Jesuits from all over the world. That kept him away from us, except for Vis­i­ta­tion time. I was his per­sonal bar­ber at those times; so lit­tle to cut, but so much to hear. He was a warm per­son and a great conversationalist.

Then it was Rome, 1970. He was already Father-General and I was strug­gling through a doc­toral the­sis at the Col­le­gio Bel­larmino. Tra­di­tion had it that the Gen­eral would speak yearly to the can­di­dates for the doc­tor­ate. The first 30 min­utes were the talk of a vision­ary. Mag­nif­i­cent and inspired: the signs of the times, the post-Vatican Church, and the chal­lenges of an emerg­ing new world. The sec­ond half of the talk was anti-climatic; he felt that he had to jus­tify the­o­log­i­cally what he had pre­sented to us, and he could not. Like Ignatius, Arrupe’s vision and intu­ition went ahead of his the­ol­ogy, thank God.

We met again in Hong Kong in 1972. Col­lo­quium II was an effort to bring together 28 ‘promis­ing’ young Jesuits from East and West and look ahead to the future of the Soci­ety. Actu­ally it did not work like that. But it yielded fruit. Arrupe para­chuted into the expe­ri­ence and stayed three days with us. He had been changed by Japan. He wanted the East to have an impact on the rest of the Soci­ety. He shared with us his con­cerns and, once again, he expressed very clearly his Igna­t­ian heart and his pas­sion for the Jesuit voca­tion and life.

In his key address to us, he spoke of Obe­di­ence and stated emphat­i­cally: ‘If there is no Obe­di­ence, we will have “chaos” in the Soci­ety’. In his enthu­si­asm he pro­nounced ‘chaos’ in Span­ish, which sounds very much like ‘cows’. You can imag­ine now the con­fu­sion of the English-speakers among us. The ques­tion going around dur­ing the break was: ‘Where did those cows come from?’

Next was Penin­su­lar Malaysia in 1980. The high point of the Meet­ing of Major Supe­ri­ors was the cel­e­bra­tion of the Eucharist in the Church of Fran­cis Xavier, in Malacca. The stage was per­fect: a roof­less and dilap­i­dated Church with a dilap­i­dated empty space where the body of Fran­cis Xavier had been and from where it had been stolen (or so the story goes). Arrupe had gone through the years of mis­un­der­stand­ings and dis­trust with the Holy See. GC32 and the years after it had been rough sail­ing. The Homily of Arrupe on that day con­cen­trated on the last months of Fran­cis Xavier, his expe­ri­ence of aban­don­ment, fail­ure, lone­li­ness in the Shangchuan Island. The Saint was going nowhere and expe­ri­enced in his body the mys­tery of the Cross. That homily gave us all a glimpse at his heart and at the Igna­t­ian Spir­i­tu­al­ity we had learnt in the early years incar­nated in Don Pedro. It was also a prophetic antic­i­pa­tion of things to come.

In 1981 he vis­ited the philip­pines. He charmed staff and par­tic­i­pants at the EAPI who had the priv­i­lege to lis­ten to him. The fire was still there, as well as his open­ness and imag­i­na­tive vision of evan­ge­li­sa­tion. I had a chance to share with him a few min­utes walk dur­ing one of his very few breaks. It was in Angono. He shared his con­cern for the Soci­ety and summed it all in his last let­ter on Love. This was his last word. He was ready to go. The next day he flew to Bangkok and from Bangkok to the infirmary.

I vis­ited him in Rome three years later, 1984. I could see Fran­cis Xavier on the shore look­ing at China. Don Pedro was still burn­ing, eager to com­mu­ni­cate, to inspire, to encour­age, to con­tinue his mis­sion in each one of us. His warmth came through in spite of speech inabil­ity, the frus­tra­tion of being in chains, the pain of the moment.

The last time was very short, in Rome again. We had a Con­gre­ga­tion of Procu­ra­tors, 1987. We could not speak with him. His light was going away, although it took still another four years to do so com­pletely. We could only wit­ness his pas­sion, qui­etly, in prayer, in thanks­giv­ing. We were see­ing the end of a life of total con­sis­tency, of great love, of a ded­i­ca­tion that knew noth­ing of con­di­tions and reservations.

It was after this last visit that I heard the story. An old Japan­ese man who had received ‘instruc­tion’ and bap­tism from a younger Fr Arrupe was shar­ing his mem­o­ries: ‘I asked to be bap­tised, not because he was a good cat­e­chist; not because I under­stood what he said (in fact I under­stood close to noth­ing); not because he tried to pull me in… But because of the Good­ness of his per­son. If Chris­tian­ity, I told myself, can pro­duce such qual­ity in a per­son, it will be good for me too.’