The Universal Apostolic Preferences in a Time of Corona

Your joys are my joys. Your sorrows and suffering are mine

These are deep cries from the heart and must be listened to. Bringing the first UAP to people is an important way of doing this by listening, responding to some of these appeals, and giving people hope. The responses need to be on two levels, namely the theoretical, and the practical. Very briefly, and generally, let me make two sets of suggestions: i. The theoretical. If people can understand what Ignatian spirituality and discernment is all about, it can help them see all these tragedies with new eyes, and to derive strength and consolation from them. It gives them faith, hope, and love in this critical time. Let me take just one aspect of Ignatian spirituality to explain how discernment can bring this about.

Ignatian spirituality is essentially TRINITARIAN. Ignatius recounts how, when God revealed the Trinity to him, he wept for joy and could not stop talking about it. For him Trinity is not some abstract doctrine, but a living reality, which has deep practical implications for our lives. We all know life is

bigger than us. We yearn for a higher, transcendent reality, which gives ultimate meaning and purpose to our lives, and helps us make sense of the puzzles and sufferings within this bigger framework. It is something which provides trust, in which we have FAITH, and to which we can commit our lives. This is the transcendent GOD ABOVE, the FATHER – the origin, the source, and the ground of all life. It convinces us that God has not abandoned us. How can he if: “in him we live and move and have or being”? (Acts 17:28). Within this bigger picture everything makes sense and all is for the good, though, with our puny minds we cannot grasp this. Just as a little child cannot understand why parents can be so cruel as to take her to the dentist and inflict so much pain on her. Discernment connects us to this transcendent reality.

But we do not want a higher reality which is distant, abstract and impersonal. We want this reality to be a person - someone close to us, whom we can relate to, who walks with us on our journey of life, who shows us the way, brings us new life, and makes us a new creation. He is the GOD WITH US (Emmanuel). He is God as SON -the incarnate God made visible to us in Jesus Christ; the ‘image of the invisible God’. (Col.1:15). At the same time, he is Jesus, ‘The Son of Man’ – ‘the human one’, just like us, who knows all our human joys and sufferings from his own personal experience, and with whom we can relate and identify. We know he is always there with us on our human journey, spurring us on and drawing us ever deeper into his love and life, no matter what the circumstances. This gives us great HOPE. I can never lose hope, even if I suffer and die; for through his death and resurrection he lifts me out of my broken humanity and makes me a new creation. (2 Cor.5:17). I reach the fullness of that new creation after I die. Suffering and death are not futile, but redemptive. Death is not the end. It is a glorious beginning. (1 Cor.2:9). There is nothing to fear.

Lastly, we long for all this to be, not just an idea in our head, but a living experience in our heart. We yearn to experience this God, and his love, within us. He is the IMMANENT GOD – the SPIRIT OF

GOD’S LOVE WITHIN US

AND ALL THINGS. No, God cannot be angry with us, or punish us, because he is love itself dwelling in me and all things. It means that at the deepest level we are all one, because we share the same spirit. To experience a ‘oneness’ with someone is called love. This love of God, in which we participate, is the love by which we love him, and reach out to all humans and creatures. It builds our lives and that of others and brings about the Kingdom. How can we despair when we experience such love? It is what drives the other three UAP’s, namely love for the poor, for youth, and for God’s creation and our environment.

i. The practical. If we can make what I have said above, not just an idea in our head, but a lived experience in our heart, it will change our lives and the world. Prayer is the practical Ignatian way of doing this. Ignatian prayer and discernment are about connection, relationship, and ultimately union with God. Covid-19 can offer an opportunity to make our personal prayer a more inner exercise of meeting God at the centre of our being. And it can present us with new and more inner and imaginative ways of practicing communal prayer. Traditionally, going to church for community prayer, worship, ritual, sacraments, Mass and eucharist etc, have been the ways of doing this. But this is no longer possible, at least for as long as the Cover-19 threat obtains. So, we have to find new ways of assisting people with these practices. This is already being done with the help of the internet. We have online Masses, spiritual and inspirational talks, guides for daily prayer, opportunities for online discussions, counselling,

spiritual direction, and online retreats. This needs to be developed. It is the way to go and the door to the future.

SECOND, THIRD AND FOURTH UAP’S.

I think we can easily see how these three UAP’s follow from the first one. They take on a particular urgency in this time of the corona pandemic. Thus:

SECOND UAP.

If we all originate from the Father, created in his image through his Word, the Son, in the love of the Spirit, then it means at base we are all one. Your joys are my joys. Your sorrows and sufferings are mine. Ignatian spirituality, like that of Jesus, is essentially a social and service spirituality. Church and Jesuit social teaching display this in three principal ways:

i. By relief of those lacking basic human needs; feeding the hungry, curing the sick etc. This is more urgent than ever because the pandemic and lockdown have hit the poor the hardest. In Zimbabwe the United Nations estimated that up to 7 million were in need of food before corona. It is much worse now.

ii. By empowering the poor and not keeping them dependent. Thus, Ignatius started schools and Jesuits run development and skills programs for self-reliance. At a time of corona, when the economy, institutions and structures, are under pressure and collapsing, there is a crying need for this.

iii. By advocacy. We need to not only reach out to the poor, but ask why they are poor? What are the policies, structures and systems, the corrupt practices and bad governance, that make them poor? And we need to advocate against these. There are always corrupt people who thrive in a time of suffering. Corona is such a time.

THIRD UAP.

All this is about creating a better society; the ‘Kingdom’, as Jesus calls it. For this ongoing process we must look to the future, and the youth are that future. It is essential that we care about giving them the spiritual foundation upon which to build that Kingdom in the hearts of people. Hence the emphasis given to youth in the UAP’s. Covid-19 has negatively affected the educational and developmental opportunities for youth. Jesuits have created many innovative forms of education for disadvantaged youth, like Cristo Rey schools for the poor, the Jesuit Worldwide Learning programs providing online education for refugees and marginalised youth etc. We need to continue and expand this.

FOURTH UAP.

The Ignatian spiritual vision outlined above, shows us that we are one with all of creation because God’s spirit is in all things. Thus, everything is interrelated and interdependent in one beautiful ecological web. Destroy one, or some strands of the web, through carbon emissions, destroying biodiversity etc, and we damage the whole, including ourselves. Pope Francis’ encyclical letter Laudato Si spells out the catastrophic consequences of not taking this seriously. As corona impacts on economies and impoverishes many, the danger of such destruction increases. Thus, Jesuit environmental projects have sprung up throughout the world, for example the Jesuit Centre for Ecology and Development (JCED) in Malawi.

These are a few general reflections on the UAP’s in a time of the coronavirus pandemic. We should continue reflecting on these universal apostolic preferences in response to the Lord in our time.