In my Benedictine soul, there are a number of Jesuit images — all of them powerful, all of them
personally impacting.
My first image came in grade school. Sister never let us turn in a paper without first writing A.M.D.G.,
"all for the greater glory of God" (Ad majore Dei gloriam — the Jesuit motto) in the upper left hand
corner of the page. Before everything else. Before our names, before the date, before the title of the
paper itself. After that, all the things that I was told were important, essential, really central to life,
paled somehow.
The second Jesuit image that marked me deeply came with the search for higher education. All of a
sudden I discovered that the majority of Catholic colleges in the country were Jesuit colleges. Most
Orders I knew had a few small colleges. These people had apparently devoted their entire community
life to the development of the Christian mind. Why, I wondered?
The third Jesuit image that burrowed underneath in me and stayed in consciousness over time was the
number of people I knew who were suddenly going off to make thirty-day retreats or traveling for miles
to find Jesuit spiritual directors. Having just come out of a period of mechanical rigidity into a world of
Vatican II license, I was comforted by the fact that there was someone, apparently, who knew what
holiness was all about.
The final and most profoundly impacting of the Jesuit images, the one that has burned its way into my
mind and stretched open my soul and tore at my monastic heart is the sight of the Jesuit men who
have pounded at the steel doors of a corporate military world with the cross in one hand and the
gospel in another for the sake of the liberation of the poor and oppressed. They are images made in
Central America and here, at the Pentagon and in the pueblos, outside churches and in the public
squares. That image is Dan Berrigan talking to the judges who would sentence him to prison, making
nonviolence a greater crime than nuclearism. That image, whether anybody wants me to remember that
it was Jesuit spirituality that fueled him or not, is Bill Callahan with a smile on his face collecting money
for Nicaragua or holding signs asserting the baptismal dignity of women. That image is Ignatio Ellacuria
and his companions face down in their own blood in the school they ran in El Salvador. That image is
the Jesuit provincial and his community brothers on their knees outside the Federal Building in New
Orleans on behalf of Jesuit martyrs killed with U.S. support, shot with U.S. weapons, murdered with U.
S. approval, sabotaged by U.S. money. I knew that my own life was out of sync unless I was in sync with
the Jesus who could die resisting without fighting back.
I have come now to realize that those images are of the essence of Jesuit spirituality, that they are
true to the primitive vision, that they are totally in tune with a smoldering drive to total pursuit of the
will of God, to a lifelong engagement to imitate the Christ and to an unremitting commitment to do
everything "for the greater honor and glory of God."
They are, of course, harsh and disturbing, challenging and discomfiting images for people who want
spirituality to be a ritual of pious exercises rather than a passion for the Will of God. But not for me,
whose misdirected piety they helped to cure and whose own monastic spirituality they have inflamed.
— excerpt from “A Benedictine’s Jesuit Images,” by Joan Chittister, Compass Magazine, July/August 1991
personally impacting.
My first image came in grade school. Sister never let us turn in a paper without first writing A.M.D.G.,
"all for the greater glory of God" (Ad majore Dei gloriam — the Jesuit motto) in the upper left hand
corner of the page. Before everything else. Before our names, before the date, before the title of the
paper itself. After that, all the things that I was told were important, essential, really central to life,
paled somehow.
The second Jesuit image that marked me deeply came with the search for higher education. All of a
sudden I discovered that the majority of Catholic colleges in the country were Jesuit colleges. Most
Orders I knew had a few small colleges. These people had apparently devoted their entire community
life to the development of the Christian mind. Why, I wondered?
The third Jesuit image that burrowed underneath in me and stayed in consciousness over time was the
number of people I knew who were suddenly going off to make thirty-day retreats or traveling for miles
to find Jesuit spiritual directors. Having just come out of a period of mechanical rigidity into a world of
Vatican II license, I was comforted by the fact that there was someone, apparently, who knew what
holiness was all about.
The final and most profoundly impacting of the Jesuit images, the one that has burned its way into my
mind and stretched open my soul and tore at my monastic heart is the sight of the Jesuit men who
have pounded at the steel doors of a corporate military world with the cross in one hand and the
gospel in another for the sake of the liberation of the poor and oppressed. They are images made in
Central America and here, at the Pentagon and in the pueblos, outside churches and in the public
squares. That image is Dan Berrigan talking to the judges who would sentence him to prison, making
nonviolence a greater crime than nuclearism. That image, whether anybody wants me to remember that
it was Jesuit spirituality that fueled him or not, is Bill Callahan with a smile on his face collecting money
for Nicaragua or holding signs asserting the baptismal dignity of women. That image is Ignatio Ellacuria
and his companions face down in their own blood in the school they ran in El Salvador. That image is
the Jesuit provincial and his community brothers on their knees outside the Federal Building in New
Orleans on behalf of Jesuit martyrs killed with U.S. support, shot with U.S. weapons, murdered with U.
S. approval, sabotaged by U.S. money. I knew that my own life was out of sync unless I was in sync with
the Jesus who could die resisting without fighting back.
I have come now to realize that those images are of the essence of Jesuit spirituality, that they are
true to the primitive vision, that they are totally in tune with a smoldering drive to total pursuit of the
will of God, to a lifelong engagement to imitate the Christ and to an unremitting commitment to do
everything "for the greater honor and glory of God."
They are, of course, harsh and disturbing, challenging and discomfiting images for people who want
spirituality to be a ritual of pious exercises rather than a passion for the Will of God. But not for me,
whose misdirected piety they helped to cure and whose own monastic spirituality they have inflamed.
— excerpt from “A Benedictine’s Jesuit Images,” by Joan Chittister, Compass Magazine, July/August 1991
Images That Disturb, Challenge
and Discomfort
and Discomfort
 |  |  |  |  |
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Home||Benedictine Sisters of Erie||Catalogue||Joan in the News||Contact Benetvision Fund for Prisoners||Retreats||About Benetvision||Ideas in Passing Benetvision • 355 East Ninth Street • Erie, PA 16503-1107 • Phone 814-459-5994 benetvision@benetvision.org • Fax 814-459-8066 Copyrighted © 2007 Benedictine Sisters of Erie, PA |
November 16, feast of Ignacio Ellacuria,
martyred with five other Jesuits and a
Salvadoran housekeeper and her
sixteen-year-old daughter November 16,
1989. Icon © 1991 Br. Robert Lentz, OFM
martyred with five other Jesuits and a
Salvadoran housekeeper and her
sixteen-year-old daughter November 16,
1989. Icon © 1991 Br. Robert Lentz, OFM