Fr Arrupe's speech, 50 years later

50 years of being men and women for others

Renee Nuevo

In 1973, Pedro Arrupe SJ, then the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, delivered an address to a group of Jesuit high school alumni in Valencia, Spain. This groundbreaking speech—a call to become men for others—would ultimately shape the way Jesuit schools around the world formed and taught their students. Those who heard this first-ever version of the address were predominantly male, a reflection of the times, and so it was not yet the dictum we recognize today: to be men and women^[1] for and with others.

At the time, political instability and turmoil reigned supreme all over the world: wars fought covertly, wars fought openly. Human rights abuses, discrimination against women, prejudice against those whose skin color is different. Since Fr Arrupe delivered that trailblazing address, much of the world has changed, yet much of it has not, either. Human history is full of strife, and the world continues to turn without waiting to see if anyone has been left behind. 

In his address, Fr Arrupe admitted that students from Jesuit universities have not been “trained for the kind of action for justice and witness to justice which the Church now demands of us”—and so he offered a solution. 

“It means that we have work ahead of us,” he said. “We must help each other to repair this lack in us, and above all make sure that in future the education imparted in Jesuit schools will be equal to the demands of justice in the world.”

This call from the Superior General at the time rang true and loudly across the world: even fifty years later, the adage is still something closely associated with and taught in Jesuit universities—and Ateneo de Manila is no exception. 

After all, a Jesuit education—and an Atenean one, specifically—has always been founded on the tenets of Ignatian spirituality. For St Ignatius, the call of God has always been clear: to live a life in service of Him—ad majorem Dei gloriam—but also to care for others and creation and strive toward the common good, always. 

1973 saw the United States disengaging from the Vietnam War; the beginning of armed conflict between Israel and several Arab states; an oil crisis; the Troubles in Northern Ireland; frequent coups, economic and political upheaval, civil wars, terrorism. 

For the Philippines, it was a rocky and difficult decade with the early years of Martial Law, that harrowing time that would eventually be chronicled in books like Lualhati Bautista’s Dekada ‘70 and Jose Dalisay Jr’s Killing Time in a Warm Place. 

It was a period of incredible political friction. Youth leaders and student activists across universities in Metro Manila began making their voices heard, fighting for themselves and for the powerless. From Ateneo de Manila, eleven young Ateneans^[2] would give up their lives for their convictions and principles: Ferdie Arceo, Bill Begg, Jun Celestial, Sonny Hizon, Edjop Jopson, Eman Lacaba, Dante Perez, Ditto Sarmiento, Lazzie Silva, Nick Solana, and Manny Yap.

And while student activists were “not always well-received in the Ateneo,” as Antonette Palma-Angeles wrote, forty years have made all the difference in seeing the kind of examples that these young men were for their commitment to justice and to their beliefs. 

“They questioned our traditions, disturbed our complacency, even set us against each other while they were with us,” Palma-Angeles wrote in the book’s foreword. 

“But now, we see with a clarity enhanced by time, that these young men did indeed absorb the best of our lessons to them, giving themselves up for justice, truly living as men-for-others,” she added. 

Fr Arrupe, following in the ideals of St Ignatius and the teachings of Jesus Christ, envisioned students of Jesuit universities to become men and women “who will live not for themselves but for God and his Christ – for the God-man who lived and died for all the world.” 

He emphasized this “going out of ourselves”: to give ourselves to others in love, love, which he says is “our definitive and all-embracing dimension, that which gives meaning to all our other dimensions.” This love for others—and being with others—is what, ultimately, will connect us closer to God, and allow us to live a more full, realized life. “Only by being a man-or-woman-for-others does one become fully human,” Fr Arrupe said. 

50 years later, as we celebrate the speech that transformed Jesuit education for the better and into what it is today, fashioning a new generation of students, young leaders, and citizens of the world, we cast our gaze upon the present and what’s to come. Our world is becoming increasingly digital, boundaries and borders between nations and people continuing to blur. Disinformation plagues these online spaces, influencing our physical world, creating division and conflict that is even deeper than we have ever imagined. 

Through it all, this call to become persons for-and-with others rings even truer and even louder. “It lies at the very core of the Christian message; it is the sum and substance of the call of Christ,” wrote Fr Arrupe. “Saint Paul put it in a single sentence: ‘Do not allow yourself to be overcome by evil, but rather, overcome evil with good.’”

“Evil is overcome only by good, hate by love, egoism by generosity,” Fr Arrupe continued. “It is thus that we must sow justice in our world. To be just, it is not enough to refrain from injustice. One must go further and refuse to play its game, substituting love for self-interest as the driving force of society.” 

^[1] The text, now made readily available for those interested in reading it, has since been adapted to be more inclusive.

^[2] Their stories would be memorialized in the 2007 book Living & Dying: In Memory of 11 Ateneo de Manila Martial Law Activists by Cristina Jayme Montiel.

Image sources: Jesuit Refugee Service, Agimat.net, and Anvil Publishing