By Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator, S.J.
This piece is excerpted from a talk given at Marquette University’s Faber Center for Ignatian Spirituality in February, 2019.
Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator spoke to members of the Marquette community about Jesuit education. Photo by Jordan Johnson
One day, out of devotion, Iñigo was going to a church situated a little more than a mile from Manresa. I believe it is called St. Paul’s and the road to it goes by the River Cardoner. Occupied with his devotions, Iñigo sat down with his face toward the river running deep below. While there, the eyes of his understanding began to be opened. Not that he saw any vision, but he understood and learned many things, both spiritual matters and matters of faith and of scholarship, and with so great an enlightenment that everything seemed new to him. According to his Autobiography, this experience left Inigo’s understanding so very enlightened that he felt as if he were a new man with a new intellect.
The year was 1522. Ignatius of Loyola–or Iñigo, as he was known then–was 31, and although the Society of Jesus would not come into existence formally for another 18 years, that singular combination of illumination and enlightenment, revelation and understanding, reflection and inspiration on the banks of the Cardoner marked a decisive and pivotal moment in the life and ministry of Ignatius. It created a disposition that would influence his behavior for the rest of his life (Gill K. Goulding, “The Cardoner Imperative,” in The Way, 245). Yet, Ignatius neither embellishes his narrative nor exaggerates the content and substance of his experience–saying “only that he experienced a great clarity in his understanding.” Nothing more, nothing less. Successive generations of commentators agree that Ignatius’ experience in Manresa on the banks of the Cardoner forms the cradle of Ignatian spirituality. However, to my mind, there is no obvious connection between the Cardoner and the educational tradition of the Jesuits. This article looks at that in three contexts.
First, I am a convert to Christianity. My childhood and adolescent years were set and spent in a context of a faith tradition commonly referred to as African Religion–some would say , erroneously , African Traditional Religion. It is a religion that has left its deep imprint on me. I lived and breathed this religion from birth to age 16. To borrow a line from the biblical Paul of Tarsus, in African Religion I lived, moved and had my being. There are many dimensions to this religion, but I would like to dwell only on one.
African Religion accords particular significance to water as an ordinary but essential element of everyday living and existence, and also to water as a place of mystical encounter between the material world and the immaterial world, between the world of human beings and the world of spiritual beings, between the visible world and the invisible world. Wherever there is a body of water, people would congregate to commune with the realms of spirits, because they believe such water bodies function as canals and channels of communication between two distinct but interconnected worlds. To this day, all over Africa south of the Sahara, river banks and beaches are popular spaces for ritual gathering and worship for African-instituted churches and indigenous Christian movements. A body of water is believed to be a place of enlightenment where devotees of a particular spirit, god, or goddess could be the privileged beneficiary of a mystical encounter that imparts special knowledge or extraordinary skill.
The second context is this: In Benin City, Nigeria, where I grew up, I was always fascinated by the simple act of looking into a puddle of water after a heavy tropical downpour. The vast and boundless sky reflected on the surface of water filled my innocent mind with wonder and amazement. To this day, looking into puddles of water in search of that view is an instinctive act. When Ignatius of Loyola speaks of awe and wonder from looking into a deep, running stream, I believe him. As the Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said, “nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see.” Ignatius knew how to see.
And finally, I am not a product of Jesuit education. There wasn’t a Jesuit school in Benin City and, frankly, had one existed, it would have been impossible for me to cross its doorsteps. Jesuit education would have been be yond the slender means of my polygamous father for me and my 24 brothers and sisters. Public school was the norm for those in my family fortunate enough to receive an education. When Ignatius had his vision at the Cardoner, establishing a school was the farthest thought from his mind. That singular and profound experience enkindled a burning passion in him to set the world on fire and education was a particularly effective means for achieving this objective.
Yet, looking at it from the perspective of one who wasn’t privileged to experience Jesuit education, I would like to propose for your consideration four elements I believe speak more powerfully of Jesuit education in contemporary times.
Conversion
Conversion can mean different things in different contexts and to different people. But however we choose to render it, conversion, for me, entails a transforming and enlightening movement of heart and mind. To be a practitioner of Jesuit education is to accept the privilege of patiently midwifing learning and understanding, passion and compassion, imagination and creativity, thought and action, not as ideological enthusiasts, but as authentic witnesses to the finest manifestations and capabilities of the human spirit. And in this vocation as midwives of conversion, personal witness and testimony of life are vital components.
On April 2, 1983, when I was baptized in the Parish Church of St. Joseph, and on Sept. 8, 1986, when I entered the novitiate of the Jesuits in Benin City, what initiated my conversion were not the fiery declamations of a charismatic preacher. It was above all else the witness and example of life of the first Jesuits. Like the band of founding Jesuits in 16thCentury Europe, they were learned men, but humble and close to the poor. It was their commitment of service to the poor and to people with disabilities, as well as their ministry to a leper colony of untouchables that made the greatest impression on my adoles cent mind. Cardoner was an experience of conversion; at the heart of my first encounter with Jesuits was a style of life and a practice of ministry that moved me to begin to see the world in a new way . Such, I believe, is the power and promise of Jesuit education that draws inspiration from the life and narrative of Ignatius of Loyola that it does not leave us the same.
Transformation
The transformation I characterize as conversion is not only personal, it is an eminently social transformation. For me, this represents a second constitutive dimension of Jesuit education, particularly in the context of a university.
Last summer, at a world meeting of universities entrusted to the Society of Jesus in Bilbao, Spain, Fr. Arturo Sosa S.J., the Superior General of the Jesuits, envisioned the university as a “project of social transformation.” As such, he stated, a Jesuit university, “moves towards the margins of human history, where it finds those who are discarded by the dominant structures and powers. It is a university that opens its doors and windows to the margins of society. Alongside them comes a new breath of life that makes the efforts of social transformation a source of life and fulfilment.” (The University as a Source of Reconciled Life, July 2018.)
I believe that part of the defining characteristics of the tradition of Jesuit education is this worldoriented movement. While some would call this a movement to the margins, others prefer designating it a movement to the frontiers. Either way, Jesuit education is an invitation to venture into the interstices of questions, issues, and situations that shape and define life in its concrete manifestations, locally and globally.
Difference
Let me introduce the third constitutive dimension of the tradition of Jesuit education, as I see it, by pointing to my name. My name, Agbonkhianmeghe, is a 15-letter statement that roughly translates as “I have seen many sides of the world; the world has revealed many lessons to me.” It is a name that not only rejoices in learning the lessons of life, but also announces the concomitant commitment to constantly explore, discover, create and shape lessons of life in a manner that honors the “joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted,” to quote Vatican II (Gaudium et Spes, 1). I am amazed at how my Jesuit experience has borne out the meaning of my name. Jesuit education rarely leaves us unchanged and untouched by the issues of our times, be they joyful or jarring. As I have come to know it, learning the lessons of the world does not exhaust the ideal of the tradition of Jesuit education; this tradition invites us to reach into the heart of the world with passion and compassion. Reaching into the heart of the world requires making a difference in the world.
Depth
We have no clarity about what Ignatius actually saw on the Cardoner for Ignatius is at a loss about how best to describe his experience. He merely contents himself to maintaining “that this single experience had taught him more than all the other experiences of his life put together” (Goulding, 246). The account suggests that Ignatius looked at a deep and fast flowing water. You know, there is a lot you can see when you look into deep water with attention, purpose, and focus. As I mentioned earlier, peering into puddles of water was my earliest way of reveling with profound wonder and awe at the vastness of the sky. Jesuit education prizes depth. The word depth may seem ill-advised in a world where instant, fleeting and compulsive digital gratification in all forms serves as the norm. Adolfo Nicolás, the former Jesuit Superior General, once decried a world where the “globalization of superficiality” – of thought, vision, dreams, relationships and convictions – short-circuits the hard work of serious, critical thinking and “of forming communities of dialogue in the search of truth and understanding.” (“Depth, Universality, and Learned Ministry.”)
I remain convinced that Jesuit education invites its practitioners to depth, to go against the grain of superficiality. Here, the antithesis of depth is not shallowness, but mediocrity. At its best, Jesuit education brooks no mediocrity. Rather, it pushes boundaries and expands horizons. So, now, picture in your mind the thousands of graduates we send forth from our Jesuit universities every year. How many of those who leave our institutions do so with both professional competence and the experience of having, in some way during their time with us, a depth of engagement with reality that transforms them at their deepest core?
And so, Jesuit education calls us to journey into the heart of the matter. That is why, in the face of complex challenges and opportunities, the Jesuit educational enterprise functions best as a “ministry of depth” that combines learning, intelligence, spirituality, dialogue, research, imagination, and creativity (Adolfo Nicolás S.J., “De Statu,” 2012). I agree with Nicolás that depth of thought and imagination are distinguishing marks of the Ignatian tradition of education.
For Ignatius, the Cardoner event was both spiritual and pedagogical; it was “the acme of Ignatius’ experience of being taught by the [God], unifying heart and mind in a single orientation. … The important thing was that God had been instructing [Ignatius],” (Goulding, 246). Yet the experience at the Cardoner does not mean Ignatius knew and understood all things, “but rather that the many things he already understood were so transformed that they all appeared new to him.”
Conversion, transformation, difference and depth. These are hallmarks of the tradition of Jesuit education, the practice of which makes all things new.
Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator, S.J. is a theologian and president of Jesuit Superiors of Africa and Madagascar.