The Messenger - May 2008 - Editorial The Will of God
By John Looby, SJ - 01 May 2008
In January this year just as the Americans were beginning the process of electing a new president, some 220 Jesuits were meeting in Rome to elect a new Superior General of the Order.
We wonder at the American system with all its inherent drama, as the opinion polls try to predict the outcome. We wonder if the system can find some one person who is what America wants. Nothing of the same world attention surrounded the Jesuit process as they sought what God wanted. That must surely astound a secular world that can hardly fathom that anyone could imagine what God wants. Yet since the Incarnation at least, we have become aware that God does intervene in human history. Ignatius of Loyola had a profound sense of God interfering in his life, leading him and his companions to found the religious Order we call the Jesuits today. Now for the thirtieth time, Jesuits came together to elect a successor to St. Ignatius, confidently expecting that as God began this Order, He will continue to guide it.
The American presidential candidates confidently assert their insight into what the American people want and brush aside the claims of their opponents. Ignatius’s experience was so different as he felt God moving him. He had to relinquish personal ambition, recognize his own inadequacy, open himself to whatever God might want, even if it might not be what he would have chosen himself. One would need a strong sense of doing God’s will in that endeavour. One would certainly see the need of prayer.
It is awesome, the power entrusted to an elected president or Superior General. Think of a president’s decision to go to war. Think of the decision of the religious leader to send out missionaries even when it leads to conflict with dominant and powerful oppressors. In El Salvador, after the assassination of Rutilio Grande SJ in 1977, the government-assisted death squads threatened: ‘We will kill all forty-seven Jesuits if they do not leave the country now!’ The Superior General, Pedro Arrupe, replied: ‘They may end up as martyrs, but they are not going to leave, because they are with the people of El Salvador.’ He had consulted with his men before making this reply.
His own experience led St. Ignatius to believe that God dealt individually with everyone. The Daily Offering is some effort to invite each reader to meet God in the events of the day. The evening thanksgiving is for the times they recognize they have met with him that day.
John Looby, SJ