Finding God in All Things

THE FIRST PRINCIPLE AND FOUNDATION From the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola God who loves us creates us and wants to share life with us forever. Our love response takes shape in our praise and honor and service of the God of our life. All the things in this world are also created because of God’s love and they become a context of gifts, presented to us so that we can know God more easily and make a return of love more readily. As a result, we show reverence for all the gifts of creation and collaborate with God in using them so that by being good stewards we develop as loving persons in our care of God’s world and its development. But if we abuse any of these gifts of creation or, on the contrary, take them as the center of our lives, we break our relationship with God and hinder our growth as loving persons. In everyday life, then, we must hold ourselves in balance before all created gifts insofar as we have a choice and are not bound by some responsibility. We should not fix our desires on health or sickness, wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or a short one. For everything has the potential of calling forth in us a more loving response to our life forever with God. Our only desire and our one choice should be this: I want and I choose what better leads to God’s deepening life in me.

David L. Fleming, S.J., What is Ignatian Spirituality

One of the major tenets of Ignatian spirituality is finding God in all things. As we continue to wrestle with a viral pandemic and have a long overdue confrontation with the racial pandemic in our nation, I venture to say that many of us have struggled to find God amid so much suffering.

As I write this in late July, more than 140,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus, which has disproportionately impacted communities of color. In late May, a national reckoning with racism, our nation’s original sin, burst forth after the killing of George Floyd. We are also confronting the painful realities of massive unemployment, how to educate our children while keeping them safe, and how to balance caring for our children while working from home—if we are fortunate enough to remain employed and work at home. (In my own very small corner of the world, my curly-haired 2-year-old often makes guest appearances during virtual meetings, and he enjoys throwing everything on my desk or all over our apartment if I am too focused on my computer screen or on a phone call.) Many of us are mourning the loss of experiences and long-awaited moments of joy we had been anticipating, including graduations, anniversaries, reunions, and weddings.

As students, teachers, staff members, and alumni of a Jesuit school, how does our experience affect our response?

Our Ignatian tools teach us that in times of despair or desolation, we should pray more, but this may be difficult as we continue to witness or experience unbearable suffering and feel paralyzed about how to alleviate it. While I intrinsically know that God does not want us to suffer and will always shoulder our burdens with us, I wonder how much more we can tolerate and what we can do.

I recently found myself returning to my basic Ignatian training to try to find some guidance or nuggets of hope. St. Ignatius Loyola’s First Principle and Foundation reminds us that as we encounter the realities of everyday life, we have a choice in how we use the gifts God has bestowed on us to respond and grow as loving persons.

David Fleming, S.J., explains that the First Principle and Foundation is actually a life vision: “All creation is a gift coming from God and leading toward God … the choices we make in our daily life in this world push us away from God or draw us closer to Him. Ignatius sees God as present, not remote or detached. He is involved in the details of our life. Our daily lives in this world matter.”

I saw a beautiful embodiment of this life vision in early July when student leaders of Spectrum hosted a virtual town hall for our community with Breana Lamkin of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) to discuss the film Just Mercy and the work of EJI. EJI is a non-profit organization founded by Bryan Stevenson, author of the book Just Mercy, in 1989. According to its website, the organization “is committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society.”

Quite simply, our young men chose to use their great gifts to respond to suffering, injustice, and illness with love. They thoughtfully led and moderated the discussion, asking Ms. Lamkin about her work and what they could specifically do as youth leaders in their communities to help challenge racial and economic injustice and help the most vulnerable among us. They chose to engage the world around them with great faith and hope, growing closer to God in the process.

During these challenging days I have witnessed many other examples of members of our community choosing to draw closer to God by using their gifts to respond with love. Many of our alumni and parents are medical professionals who have spent countless days and hours caring for the sick, including Dr. Daniel Duque P’23, an ER doctor at Elmhurst Hospital, who grew up in the community he serves.

Xavier faculty and staff traveled all over the Tri-State area in May to personally deliver care packages (from a safe distance) to our graduates and congratulate them on their accomplishments. Midnight Chicken, a talented band composed of four Xavier seniors, organized and recorded a special remote performance for Xavier’s first virtual gala, and many of you tuned in to support our scholarship fund from afar. Esteban Rivera ’19, a mechanical engineering student at Johns Hopkins University, manufactured face shields in his home for front-line workers.

The devastation and chaos of illness, loss, injustice, and unemployment is real and overwhelming. It can certainly make it difficult to be consistently attentive to God’s presence. My hope and my prayer for all of us during these trying days is that we are able to find those small moments to choose to respond and grow in love.