Jesuit alumni you may know

From the 1611 arrival of the first Jesuit missionaries on Canadian soil to well after Confederation, Canada’s Jesuit priests and brothers engaged in ministry across Quebec, Ontario and into the West. But for most of the last century, they’ve also looked beyond Canadian borders and taken the Gospel message of faith, peace and justice to marginalized people in distant lands.

Almost 500 years ago, Jesuit founder St. Ignatius Loyola urged St. Francis Xavier to “Go forth and set the world on fire with the love of God,” as St. Francis departed to spread the Gospel in India and Japan. That same message carried the first French missionaries to Canada and today it inspires Canadian Jesuits around the world as they live out the order’s unwavering commitment to social justice through international development.

Today Canadian Jesuits can be found in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Europe. They are engaged in missionary work overseen by the Bureau des Missions in Montreal and Canadian Jesuits International in Toronto. The two offices co-ordinate significant international undertakings in the areas of education, pastoral care, social services, community development, agriculture, peace-building and social justice.

The term social justice may seem inseparable today from images of building schools in Africa, defending the rights of the oppressed and lobbying in the corridors of power. The image it likely doesn’t provoke is that of Luigi Taparelli D’Azeglio, the 19th-century Jesuit who coined it.

Social justice, widely used to describe the promotion of human rights and dignity of every person, was introduced in 1840, but only recently has it taken such a large role in both the secular and religious world.

Even the Jesuits, its architects, have only developed a modern understanding of social justice in the last quarter century.

In Jamaica they called Fr. Martin Royackers a “roots man.” Around the world, Jesuits and their friends call him a martyr.

He was the first English Canadian Jesuit to be killed on the job.

Royackers was born and died in farming communities. Born Nov. 14, 1959 near Strathroy, Ont., he was killed outside St. Theresa’s parish church in Annotto Bay, Jamaica, June 20, 2001.

Fr. Prosper Bernard, Fr. Alphonse Dubé and Fr. Armand Lalonde were three of more than 100 Quebec Jesuits who became missionaries in China between 1918 and 1954. They are also three of more than 300 Jesuits worldwide martyred in the 20th century.

The involvement of Quebec Jesuits in China started with an invitation from France’s Jesuits. A few helping hands were sent from Quebec to Shanghai. But their numbers quickly grew as Quebeckers embraced the mission to China. Jesuit missionaries were supported by Quebeckers through the Holy Childhood Association and parish-based missionary weeks.

“There was incredible international awareness (in Quebec),” said Jesuit historian Fr. John Meehan of Campion College in Regina.

Having abandoned a career in classical music for the Jesuit novitiate, I was quite surprised in the early days of my Jesuit life to discover it was commonly held that Jesuits and the arts don’t get along.

A stormy relationship with music and the arts had not been my experience as a young music student. I learned in music history classes that such great composers as Palestrina, Victoria, Carissimi and Charpentier had been in the employ of Jesuit institutions. Art history classes taught me of the close relationship between the Society of Jesus and such artistic greats as Bernini and Rubens.

Where did this idea come from? 

In reality, the proverbial “Jesuits don’t sing” is based on a misunderstanding of the society’s dispensation from reciting the Divine Office in common. That is, because Jesuits are a religious order that ministers in the world Jesuits praying the liturgy of the hours together has not been part of our tradition. Ignatius Loyola saw very early on it would be counterproductive to expect each Jesuit to return to his community a number of times a day to pray the office.

The most popular books in France in the 17th century were written in Canada. The Jesuit Relations told the story of brave and brilliant missionaries who stepped into an unimagined, fantastic world, learned its languages, spoke to its people about God and heroically endured incredible hardships.

From 1632 to 1664, edited collections of letters from Jesuit missionaries to their provincial superiors were published annually in book form. The letters recounted almost day-by-day the activities of Jesuits in New France, their observations concerning Aboriginals and the challenges they faced in the vast colony.

The books inspired a wave of immigration into the colony and raised the equivalent of millions of dollars from private donors and the royal court in Paris. The books formed Europe’s first ideas about the New World — both positive and negative — and encouraged a new, scientific mindset that came to define the Enlightenment.

I was 21 years old and I had come to the Jesuit novitiate in Guelph, Ont., for all the wrong reasons. Barely four months into the novitiate, I was ready to pack my bags and go home. But the novice master wisely said: “Why don’t you wait until the Spiritual Exercises in January? See what God has to say about all this.”

The little text of the Spiritual Exercises — formally approved by Pope Paul III in 1548 after many years of crafting and recrafting by St. Ignatius Loyola — proposes a spiritual journey through the mysteries of salvation and Christ’s life. By imagining themselves into the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, St. Ignatius believed retreatants would become free of all disordered attachments, “so that rid of them one might seek and find the divine will with regard to the disposing of one’s life for salvation.”

The Exercises can be made by anyone. St. Ignatius was a lay man when he first conceived the Spiritual Exercises and lay people have been making Ignatian retreats ever since. But they occupy a central role in the life and spiritual development of every Jesuit.

MONTREAL - The Archive of the Jesuits in Canada has created an exhibition to help tell the extensive 400-year tale of the first order of priests to extensively explore and evangelize the New World.

It’s a display that has made its way to Notre-Dame-de-la-Présentation Church in Shawinigan, Que., a parish getting in touch with its Jesuit past.

The exhibition, on loan from the Jesuits’ Montreal archive, is an exclusive collection that has only appeared in one other location, at the Port Royal National Historic Site in Nova Scotia, where the Jesuits began their year of celebration of 400 years in Canada this past spring.

“The exhibition brings us great pride on two levels,” said Louise Bellemare, a spokesperson for the city of Shawinigan.

Jesuit formation is famously tough, thorough and long. There are distinct stages to Jesuit formation, which can take 15 years or more to complete.

While there is no such thing as a postulancy prior to the novitiate for Jesuits, you can’t just walk into a novitiate. Once a young man expresses an interest in trying out Jesuit life he will usually be assigned a spiritual director. It may be months, a year or even longer before he is admitted to the novitiate.

As in most Catholic religious orders, Jesuits start out as novices. While novices in most other orders take vows after one year, the Jesuit novitiate lasts two years. After first vows, a Jesuit is assigned to “first studies.” Classically, these consisted of Greek and Latin literature. These days they are likely to include modern languages, philosophy and other studies that may lead to a bachelors or masters degree, depending on the education the young Jesuit had before entering the order. This period usually lasts two years.

On the 400th anniversary of their arrival to Canada, the Jesuits are thinking 500 years ahead.

The Old Growth Forest Project, an initiative of the Ignatius Jesuit Centre of Guelph, Ont., is a replanting effort that, over half a millennium, will restore 100 acres of clear-cut land north of Guelph into the type of forest that greeted the first Jesuits in the area 160 years ago.

The project is intended to help promote spiritual development and ecological education in keeping with the spiritual values of Jesuit founder St. Ignatius Loyola. It is just one example of how Jesuit social justice is being expressed through ecology.

“We understand that the root of the ecological crisis is a spiritual crisis,” said Fr. Jim Profit, S.J., executive director of the centre. “It’s important to have people of faith address these issues from a spiritual perspective.”