On February 2, 2007, the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, the Oregon Province will celebrate 75 years as an independent Province of the Society of Jesus—75 years since we separated the five states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska from what had previously been the California-Rocky Mountain Mission Province and began to take up the works of the Northwest on our own.
1932 was not the best of times to begin such a bold new endeavor (the Great Depression nearly destroyed the novitiate in Sheridan before it even got started); yet, somehow, it seems appropriate that it was the support of the community—from Seattle to Spokane, the Yakima Valley to Eastern Montana—and the courageous faith of our founders that brought us to this place. And though I am sure planning and calculation had some role in our survival, I have been thinking more and more that it was the Spirit’s gift of courage, which accepts no limitations and will be conquered by no adversity, that has been our greatest grace and most consistent benefactor.
Winston Churchill said that courage is the first of the virtues, since it enables the rest—turning them from good intentions to acts of will and substance. Courage is the power of the Spirit by which Christ not only loves us, but stands constant in that love, despite the rejection of the world and the suffering of the cross. Courage is the grace by which each Jesuit lives his vow of obedience—even when the decisions are difficult and his own understanding is incomplete. It is the power which moved Fr. Peter DeSmet to answer the invitation of the Flathead people to come to the Northwest, when reason and respectability would have kept him in St. Louis; and the light which guided Fr. Cataldo to start an Indian school on the banks of the Spokane River, in honor of Aloysius Gonzaga. Courage empowered the Oregon Province—Jesuit and lay partners, together—to take the good idea of a Nativity School in Portland and make it a reality, despite shrinking numbers of Jesuits and a world that called us to do less and think smaller. Courage is that grace in all of us which will not allow us to think smaller, but pushes us—body and soul—towards the more, the magis, that Ignatius knew so well.
I have been thinking a great deal about courage during these last few months, about how rare it is and how often it is misunderstood. Watching the terrible violence of the war in Iraq as it engulfs, not just the good women and men sent to wage it (whose courage in defense of their companions is, itself, noble) or the many innocents caught in its wake, but the very spirit of our nation and our people. I have thought of the false courage of those who send others to die for their bravado; who make casualties of thousands and tens of thousands (for the truth is that all who fight this war are casualties of it), not because these leaders are courageous, but because they lacked the courage to be prudent, to listen to the moral voices that would have stopped this war before it began—voices like John Paul II and the Bishops of the world. Hubris and vainglory—as Ignatius would call these spirits—are the opposite of courage; for they give one not the strength of virtue, but only the stubbornness of the ideologue, the cowardice of one who cannot admit error.
In our 75th year, we can see the many errors and failures of our Province, and we can see how many of these failures come from a failure of courage, a fear that God might not be enough, that we might not be sustained if we are not careful and do not hide in the bushes of fear. But as we look back, we should also see something more: an ongoing revelation that God has been present and that, with courage, we will come to know the fullness of His reign. And so, on the edge of a new year, at the start of our Diamond Jubilee, let us pray for the courage of our ancestors, who “made their paths by walking them;” let us pray for the courage of our companions, who each day enter the classroom and the pulpit, the refugee camp and the soup kitchen; let us pray for the courage of the elderly, who hold us in prayer when their bodies are wracked in pain, and the courage of the young, who follow their hearts when their minds are unsure. Let us pray for the courage of Christ Jesus—who braved Incarnation so that we might find our hearts. Blessed with such courage, how can we help but save the world?
John D. Whitney, S.J.
Provincial
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