Ignatian Corner: Hope in a postmodern world

I may be 72 years old, but fortunately, I have student friends who honor me by their friendship. They ask me into their dorms, apartments, discussions, and-a greater honor-into their minds and hearts. They tell me about their worldviews-about those values and convictions that give their lives order and meaning, or that give disorder and chaos. For some, life is ironic, painful, postmodern, with minimal hope and little long-term value. Some can just laugh in their pain.

Worldviews fascinate me, for they involve and express people's deepest hopes and fears. In my freshman course, Texts and Contexts, I study worldviews of the past-how people understood the world in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Modernism-and in Honors and upper-division courses, I probe twentieth-century Modernism and Postmodernism. I find that my students are, of course, affected by today's fragile or shattered hopes. One freshman said, "Nothing surprises me," and for some students, laughter and parody offer the only answer in the face of absurdity, lost meaning, and lost belief.

Such shattered hopes affect me in many ways: as a person, a professor, a priest, and a Jesuit. Can I offer an alternative? Are there grounds for hope and order and meaning? Is there a spiritual world-even a hope beyond death?

For some students, such questions invite a discussion about whether there is a postmodern way of believing; with them, I'll gladly walk through such a discussion. But others may respond to my own-my Catholic and Jesuit-worldview and spirituality, a spirituality based on the Christian Humanism of the Renaissance, with provision for evolution and modern science. What is this worldview?

In his Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, sketches Jesuit spirituality-my spirituality-while speaking always within the framework of a loving Trinity: of the Father-Creator, the Son-Christ Jesus, and the Spirit-Sanctifier. In briefest form, this is the Jesuit worldview.

All humans-you and I-are made by God and for God. We are created to praise, honor, and serve the Trinity during our years on earth, then called to live with God forever in joy.

Everything that exists is created for humans to help us to God. Everything-quite literally everything-is a means to God, to be used when it helps us in this journey or avoided when it hinders us.

Christ gives ultimate meaning to all human life. As a God-become-human, he has lived, laughed, served, wept, loved, suffered, died, and (blessedly) rose from the dead-all this for love of us. As a result, all of us-all humans-live in Him, as He and the Spirit work to bring us to endless life with God and with all the good men and women who have ever lived.

Our life on earth is best lived in union with Christ, as we work to know him, choose him as a model, pray to him to forgive sins, walk with him in pain and joy, imitate his generosity, hope to rise with him, and ask always, "What have I done for Christ? What am I doing for Christ? What ought I do for Christ?"

Our major decisions-about lives, careers, marriages, children-are best made in the company of Christ and in the light of his life.

At every moment, Christ, the Father, and the Spirit express their love of us: in every breath we take, in the sun and rain, in blossoming dogwood trees, in food and beer and kisses, in the Eucharist, and in our friends and family and fellow students-even our professors. In short, everything that exists tells us about God and about God's love and generosity. Everything is "news of God."

With such a generous God, shouldn't we also be generous, giving ourselves to God and to our fellow humans-especially to the poor and those who most need us?

Such a worldview-this Jesuit worldview-is a spirituality of generosity that offers us both a full humanity and an eternal life. It is a spirituality of love and lover, of God and human, of a Christ walking and dying and living, of a divine presence in all creation. Blessedly, God can be found in everything. But God also remains a transcendent Trinity offering us a grand hope even of eternal life. Such a spirituality-especially such a God-is surely worthy of our loving response.