Portrait of Fr. Adolfo Nicholas, SJ,
General Superior of the Society of Jesus
Acrylic and Ink on Printed Photograph
August 2009
THE FRONTIER OF DEPTH
excerpt from "Challenges & Issues in Jesuit Education"
(Keynote Address of ARPN Adolfo Nicolas, SJ,
Superior General, Society of Jesus
On the Occasion of the 150th Anniversary
Of Jesuit Education in the Philippines
Irwin Theater, Ateneo de Manila University)
(12) The first frontier I would like to propose is the frontier of depth. Depth, for me, is perhaps a better translation of Ignatian Magis. The trouble with translating Magis simply as “More” is that it can too easily be understood as the “More” of a competitive, consumerist culture. If we have more awards, higher rankings, more computers and sports facilities, more faculty members with advanced degrees, then we can too easily fool ourselves into thinking that we are living the Magis. I am not saying that these are not important; they are vital for a good school. But to be a good Jesuit school, they are not enough.
(13) Ignatius was always concerned with depth. You have heard many times, I am sure, his principle of Non multa sed multum, literally, “Not many, but much,” originally one of the annotations in the Spiritual Exercises, but applied often to Ignatian pedagogy as well. One could paraphrase this as “not quantity, but depth”: “what satisfies the soul,” Ignatius says--in other words, what really matters in the business of becoming human and Christian--is not many superficial bits of knowledge and information, but a deep understanding and appreciation of what is most important.
(14) When one looks at the Gospels, we see that Jesus always responded in depth. Look at any healing story: the way Jesus heals the paralyzed man brought in by his friends through the roof; the leper; the woman with the issue of blood. Jesus first responds to a concrete, immediate need: the healing of a sickness. But then he goes on to respond to a deeper need: the burden of guilt or the sense of hopelessness or rejection and isolation. Finally, he goes deeper still and offers what they long for most, often without knowing it: the gift of the Kingdom of God, of friendship with a God of unconditional love, in a way that transforms them at the core of their persons.
(15) What is the depth of the education we provide, and how might we be called to go deeper? Let me offer a few questions that might help explain what I mean.
(16) How deeply do we respond to our students’ needs? If our instruction is good and up-to-date, then we respond to their need for forming and developing their talents. But beyond that are deeper needs. Even the brightest and most talented of our students are struggling. Beyond the normal struggles of youth, many of them struggle with families that are broken, wrestle with problems of isolation and misunderstanding and insecurity deeper than their minds. And how do we respond to their deepest hungers for meaning and purpose, for strength and hope that is the Kingdom of God experienced in their lives?
(17) These days, in the liturgy, we have been reading from the story of Jacob and his struggle with God. His first vision is consoling, promising, full of light: he sees angels ascending and descending on a ladder to heaven. But his last vision is much darker and more mysterious because it is deeper. He wrestles with a stranger, who turns out to be God, and Jacob wins the struggle, but comes out limping, walking a little like Ignatius did. Perhaps this should be the image of what our students turn out to be: not just walking out of our schools straight, tall, completely confident and sure of themselves, but rather, limping, even a little, because they have struggled deeply.
(18) How deeply do we help them see? When you live in Rome, you enter many beautiful churches adorned with glorious images, frescoes, statues, paintings, stained glass windows, and you realize that in an earlier age, these were the images that filled people’s imaginations. They were images that taught people to aspire to a certain model of humanity. But our young people are growing up in a world where the media floods them with other glittering images, on billboards, on websites, on magazine covers and MTV’s. They are images that are filled with promises. They sell dreams that tell them that they become more human when they have the right gadgets and wear the right clothes. What these images do is hide the face of the poor and the suffering, and make them invisible. How can we help them see more deeply, to truly see the real beyond the virtual, to see beyond these images that make false promises so that they can see the face of the hidden humanity of the poor in a way that moves them to want to serve in compassion?
(19) How deeply do we invite them to think? Our students today, as you know, are flooded with an incredible amount of information that keeps entering our houses, our computers, our lives. The sheer amount of information and the ease with which one can “surf” from one page to another can promote superficiality. How deeply do we help them screen, digest, connect, decide about this flood of data and the accompanying (albeit camouflaged) values that accompany them? There is evidence that the capacity of people for sober understanding and a critical sense have weakened. When I look around and see so much fundamentalism and fanaticism around the world, and the suffering that these escapes from sober thinking have produced, I wonder whether we have to think more creatively of how we can ensure that our students learn how to think deeply?
(20) How deeply do we form their inner persons, their commitments and convictions, their faith and their strength? You are aware of how quickly even a religious culture like that of the Philippines is becoming secularized and pluralistic. All around, our young people are being given more and more choices—not just choices of websites on the Internet, or choices of TV stations on cable TV, or choices of stores in malls, but choices of values and beliefs. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that one cannot expect that external structures and traditions alone will support them in the Christian faith, beliefs or values. I have worked with Filipino migrant workers, and I have seen how easily, in a different environment, they have gone over to other groups. As the external supports become weaker, then the inside must become stronger. Depth of knowledge and, even more important, depth of experience, must mature into a depth of conviction that is able to remain peaceful and steadfast even in a confusing and hostile world.
(21) In the end, the test of whether our education is one of depth, is whether we are able to produce people who can “decide from inside”—which is another way of saying, the test of our education as Jesuit education is if we are able to produce people of discernment. More and more, people are making choices, not from the inner realm of faith, conscience, values, truth, but from the seductive voices coming from the outside, of gain, profit, public opinion, convenience and fashion. People are becoming weaker in the habit of finding in the depths of the heart the answers to difficult emerging questions. On the other hand, if one looks at the alumni we are proudest of as products of the Jesuit educational system, I think we will find in them a certain of depth of perception, thinking, commitment, and character, and the habit of deciding from inside.
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