Fr. Emmanuel Alfonso, SJ
Feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola
July 28, 2019
I was in first year college in 1988 when tragedy struck. Fire broke out at the Naga City Supermarket and in a matter of hours, it burned our store, the family’s only source of income, into ashes. In the following days, I would be able to call my mom who painfully told me “You have to stop schooling, Nono. Everything is gone. I can no longer afford to send you to Ateneo.” I felt the world collapsing on me at that time, but I remember going to the Office of Admission and Aid and talking to Fr Bill Kreutz, and telling him what happened, and begging for a scholarship. I was just an average student; I knew I had very little chance. But he looked at me, and said, “Don’t worry about it now, Nono. I’ll take care of it.” I remember running away from his office to break the good news to my mom. That was a long time ago; now I am 11 years a Jesuit priest. And all because someone took a chance on me. Someone believed in me, saw promise in me, and took a chance on me.
Not every young man or woman is as fortunate as I was. In fact, many young people today are in serious dire straits, facing a very bleak future. For example, according to a latest survey conducted among Filipino youth aged 15 to 24 by the National Commission on Youth, 24.6 percent of our youth already have children, 31 percent are actively engaged in sexual activities, oblivious of being infected with HIV/Aids from their promiscuous behavior. The same survey furthermore says that 24.2 percent no longer attend school, while 33.8 percent are already doing part time work, including 7.4 percent who are into child labor. Finally, 14 percent think of committing suicide, while 26 percent think that “life is not worth living.”
As for a global perspective, in Christus Vivit or Christ Lives, Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation on the youth issued after last year’s synod on the youth, the Pope writes: “The Synod Fathers acknowledged with sorrow that many young people today live in war zones and experience violence in countless forms: kidnapping, extortion, organized crime, human trafficking, slavery, sexual exploitation, and wartime rape…Other young people because of their faith struggle to find their place in society and endure various kinds of persecution, even murder. Many young people, whether by force or lack of alternatives, live by committing crimes and acts of violence: child soldiers, armed criminal gangs, drug trafficking, terrorism and so on. This violence destroys many lives.”
On his part, Father General Arturo Sosa, who participated in the Synod on the Youth, could only echo Pope Francis in his letter concerning the Society’s universal apostolic preference for the youth. He writes: “young people, most of whom are poor, face enormous challenges in our world today, including reduced job opportunities, economic instability, increased political violence, multiple forms of discrimination, progressive degradation of the environment and other ills, all of which make it difficult for them to find meaning in their lives or to draw closer to God.”
In a recent interview I had with Amnesty International Philippines at Radio Veritas, I was told the shocking news that in the current drug war of our government, 100 minors have already been killed. We know some of them by name, Kian de los Santos, 17, and recently, Myca Ulpina, only three. We can now only wonder, hey, Kian, Micah, what would you want to be when you grow up? Another controversy we followed in media was a proposal in Congress to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 15 to 9. Instead of giving erring children another chance, instead of taking a chance on them, our congress it seems would just prefer to let them rot in prison.
There is a saying, “A society or a nation is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable member.” Has this become an obsolete principle? This however is not the case for Scriptures. In Christus Vivit, Pope Francis writes, “Jesus had no use for adults who looked down on the young or lorded it over them. On the contrary, he insisted that the greatest among you must become like the youngest.” Indeed, Jesus had the harshest words for those who lead children astray: “If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”
It is in this difficult if not worsening context then, my dear friends, that the Church, through the Synod of Bishops and Christus Vivit, the Philippine Bishops, through this Year of the Youth, and the Society of Jesus, through its Universal Apostolic Preferences, are all renewing our commitment to the young. In particular, for us Jesuits and you our partners and friends, it is “to accompany the young in the creation of a hope-filled future.” But before we rush into a flurry of activities or a bevy of big projects and programs, Father General reminds us that more than anything else the Preferences are not about doing but being. They are more about dispositions of the heart than blue prints for action. They are a spiritual path. More than anything else, they are calling us for conversion, on various levels, personal, communal, institutional.
In last week’s Philippine Conference on New Evangelization, Cardinal Chito Tagle’s annual symposium on the faith, young speakers shared that one quality or trait that made Jesus attractive was his sensitivity to people especially the young. While entering Jerusalem for instance, Jesus noticed the woman of Naim and her dead son. In a crowded place, he noticed the touch of a sick woman, or a short man’s frenzy to see him. He felt sad for the rich young man who could not follow him. In our Gospel today, he was walking with a large crowd, he turned around, and spoke to them. Perhaps this is the basic conversion that is needed from us. We simply dismiss the young as a large, unruly crowd. We simply pass them by or let them pass by our consciousness. We don’t turn around, we don’t notice them anymore. In Christus Vivit, Pope Francis tells us that the fundamental question to ask ourselves is: “Can I weep? Can I weep when I see a child who is starving, on drugs or on the street, homeless, abandoned, mistreated or exploited as a slave of society?” Indeed, are we still moved by the plight of the youth around us?
Admittedly, we may have become too numb or cynical. That is perhaps why Jesus tells us that unless we become like children, we can not enter heaven. Children call things as they see them. They don’t equivocate or rationalize. Right is right and wrong is simply wrong. They can lead us and teach us. Father Ignatius whose feast day we celebrate today in advance, began his new life when at Manresa, God, he wrote, was like a school-master, leading him as if he were a child again. In his letter on the Preferences, Father General says, “the young can help us to understand better the epochal change that we are living and its hope-filled newness.”
Maggie Doyne was 19 years old when she graduated from high school. Before taking the College plunge, she decided to go around the world. While trekking in Nepal, she met a child who was carrying a heavy bag of stones from the foot of a mountain to sell them in the market. She could not understand why a girl of three or five could suffer so much. And when their eyes locked up, Maggie’s life was changed forever. Maggie has stayed in Nepal, taking care of some 200 homeless children.
Like many of us, 6 year old Alex Myteberi of New York saw Omran Daqneesh on TV news, the 5 year old Syrian Boy who was covered with dust when his hometown suffered bombings that killed some relatives and friends. Unlike many of us, who can be moved but only for a moment, however, Alex wrote to President Obama, asking him to bring Omran to the US so he could adopt him as his brother.
In closing, I remember in one Christmas homily, Pope Benedict XVI preached about how we are always looking for the sign of God, his presence. We try to discern it in power, in strength, in the spectacular. But the sign was given us: God was in the vulnerable, powerless babe in the manger. He writes: “God’s sign is simplicity. God’s sign is the baby. God’s sign is that he makes himself small for us. This is how he reigns. He does not come with power and outward splendour. He comes as a baby – defenceless and in need of our help. He does not want to overwhelm us with his strength. He takes away our fear of his greatness. He asks for our love: so he makes himself a child. He wants nothing other from us than our love. God made himself small so that we could understand him, welcome him, and love him.”
My dear friends, the youth are counting on us. They need us to believe in them and to take a chance on them. Jesus is with them, waiting for us, to love him in the powerlessness and vulnerability of the young. Yes, the spiritual path lies before us. Amen.
Originally preached during the Philippine Province celebration of the Solemnity of St. Ignatius of Loyola on July 28, 2019 at the Ateneo de Manila High School Covered Courts. Fr. Emmanuel Alfonso, SJ is the Executive Director of Jesuit Communications Philippines.