MEN AND WOMEN FOR OTHERS: ONCE MORE WITH FEELING

Men and Women for Others: Once More with Feeling

Fr. Victor R. Baltazar, S.J.

Id quod volo [That which we desire most]:

“A renewed fire that enkindles other fires,” that with
eyes fixed on Jesus who is our exemplar for the ministry
of social change and social formation, we may genuinely
feel passion for guiding people entrusted to us as they
build their own life’s response to God’s call to loving
service of and right relationships with others,
especially with those in the frontiers.

Points for Reflection

1. “Person.” Awakening to oneself as foundational to genuine service.
a. We need to notice the “I” who is capable of genuinely noticing and
caring the “the other.”
b. After genuinely grounding ourselves on “the I,” when then transcend
our own narcissism, to put the other on center stage and ourselves
in the periphery to genuinely redirect our gifts, talents and energies
to the direction of “the other.”
2. “For and With.” The effects of our real and more real intensifying ocus
on the “the Other.”
a. Conversion from “for” to “for and with”: a movement from a
“benefactor-beneficiary” relationship to “partnership-in-mission, or
even to Saint Pope John Paul’s “solidarity,” and Pope Francis’ “social
friendship” and “fraternity.”
b. “Other” elaborates as the scope of our loving and compassion
broaden in reach. Our answer to the question “who is our
neighbor?” expands and includes more and more people we might
have unwittingly excluded till now. For Jesus, the question is more
properly framed “To whom and with whom am I neighbor? And we
are neighbor to everyone God loves.
c. “Other” purifies us and builds integrity in us: The more we choose
to include, the greater sense of wholeness we experience. We drop
down discomforts, we widen our limits, we reach out to further
frontiers, we strengthen ourselves for more important missions.
Many times the excluded “other” mirrors to us those shadow parts of
ourselves we tend to reject and exclude, and greater inclusivity of

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Appropriating the Ignatian Spirit Fr. Victor R. Baltazar, S.J.
 MEN AND WOMEN FOR OTHERS: ONCE MORE WITH FEELING

others reflect greater inclusivity of all aspects, dimensions, and facets

of myself.
3. From “others” to “Other:” Our service to “others” prepare us for en
even closer engagement with God who is the Total “Other.” By our
service we are stretched and our hearts become Sacred Spaces in which
God may pitch tent, and God’s Spirit indwell.

Scripture Texts to Pray on and Ponder:

1. Micah 6, 8. “He has shown you, O Mortal, what is good, And what it is
the Lord requires of you. To act justly and love mercy, and to walk
humbly with your Lord.”
2. Matthew 15, 21-28. “Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of
Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman for the vicinity came to him, crying
out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-
possessed and suffering terribly.” Jesus did not answer a word. So his
disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps
crying out after us. He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of
Israel.”
The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord help me”! she said. He
replied, “It’s not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the
dogs.” “Yes it is Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall
from their master’s table.” Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have
great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at
that very moment.
3. John 21, 15-19. 15 When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to
Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He
said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to
him, “Feed my lambs.” 16 He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of
John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love
you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” 17 He said to him the third
time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because
he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him,
“Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to
him, “Feed my sheep. 18 Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were
young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but
when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will
dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.” 19 (This he said to

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MEN AND WOMEN FOR OTHERS: ONCE MORE WITH
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FEELING
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show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.) And after saying this
he said to him, “Follow me.”
Other Readings:
4. GC 36, D1, §§31-38
31. All our ministries should seek to build bridges, to foster peace. 33 To do this,
we must enter into a deeper understanding of the mystery of evil in the world and the
transforming power of the merciful gaze of God who labors to create of humanity one
reconciled, peaceful family. With Christ, we are called to closeness with all of crucified
humanity. With the poor, we can contribute to creating one human family through the
struggle for justice. Those who have all the necessities of life and live far from poverty
also need the message of hope and reconciliation, which frees them from fear of
migrants and refugees, the excluded and those who are different, and that opens them
to hospitality and to making peace with enemies.
32. The Congregation calls the entire Society to a renewal of our apostolic life
founded on hope. We need more than ever to bring a message of hope, born of
consolation from our encounter with the Risen Lord. This renewal focused on hope
includes all our diverse apostolates.
33. We do not want to propose a simplistic or superficial hope. Rather, our
contribution, as Father Adolfo Nicolá s always insisted, should be characterized by
depth: a depth of interiority and “a depth of reflection that allows us to understand
reality more deeply and thus to serve more effectively.”34 To this end, Jesuits in
formation should receive solid intellectual preparation and be helped to grow in
personal integration.
34. Our educational apostolates at all levels, and our centers for communication
and social research, should help form men and women committed to reconciliation and
able to confront obstacles to reconciliation and propose solutions. The intellectual
apostolate should be strengthened to help in the transformation of our cultures and
societies.
35. Because of the magnitude and interconnectedness of the challenges we face,
it is important to support and encourage the growing collaboration among Jesuits and
Jesuit apostolates through networks. International and intersectoral networks are an
opportunity to strengthen our identity, as we share our capacities and local
engagements in order together to serve a universal mission.
36. Collaboration with others is the only way the Society of Jesus can fulfil the
mission entrusted to her. This partnership in mission includes those with whom we
share Christian faith, those who belong to different religions, and women and men of
good will, who, like us, desire to collaborate with Christ’s reconciling work. In the words
of Father General Arturo Sosa, Jesuits are “called to the mission of Jesus Christ, that does
not belong to us exclusively, but that we share with so many men and women
consecrated to the service of others.”35
37. In all we do, we want to heed Pope Francis, who has urged us to promote
dynamics of personal and social transformation. “What we need is to give priority to

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actions which generate new processes in society.”36 Prayerful discernment ought to be

our habitual way of drawing closer to reality when we want to transform it.
38. Aware of the urgency of the present moment and of the need to involve all
the Society and its apostolates in responding to these calls, this Congregation asks
Father General, working closely with the Conferences and Provinces, to develop clear
goals and guidelines for our apostolic life today.
5. Laudato si, §§65-75 esp. §§65-66
65. Without repeating the entire theology of creation, we can ask what the great
biblical narratives say about the relationship of human beings with the world. In the
first creation account in the Book of Genesis, God’s plan includes creating humanity.
After the creation of man and woman, “God saw everything that he had made, and
behold it was very good” (Gen 1:31). The Bible teaches that every man and woman is
created out of love and made in God’s image and likeness (cf. Gen 1:26). This shows us
the immense dignity of each person, “who is not just something, but someone. He is
capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering
into communion with other persons”.[37] Saint John Paul II stated that the special love
of the Creator for each human being “confers upon him or her an infinite dignity”.
[38] Those who are committed to defending human dignity can find in the Christian
faith the deepest reasons for this commitment. How wonderful is the certainty that each
human life is not adrift in the midst of hopeless chaos, in a world ruled by pure chance
or endlessly recurring cycles! The Creator can say to each one of us: “Before I formed
you in the womb, I knew you” (Jer 1:5). We were conceived in the heart of God, and for
this reason “each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is
loved, each of us is necessary”.[39]
66. The creation accounts in the book of Genesis contain, in their own symbolic
and narrative language, profound teachings about human existence and its historical
reality. They suggest that human life is grounded in three fundamental and closely
intertwined relationships: with God, with our neighbour and with the earth itself.
According to the Bible, these three vital relationships have been broken, both outwardly
and within us. This rupture is sin. The harmony between the Creator, humanity and
creation as a whole was disrupted by our presuming to take the place of God and
refusing to acknowledge our creaturely limitations. This in turn distorted our mandate
to “have dominion” over the earth (cf. Gen 1:28), to “till it and keep it” (Gen 2:15). As a
result, the originally harmonious relationship between human beings and nature
became conflictual (cf. Gen 3:17-19). It is significant that the harmony which Saint
Francis of Assisi experienced with all creatures was seen as a healing of that rupture.
Saint Bonaventure held that, through universal reconciliation with every creature, Saint
Francis in some way returned to the state of original innocence.[40] This is a far cry
from our situation today, where sin is manifest in all its destructive power in wars, the
various forms of violence and abuse, the abandonment of the most vulnerable, and
attacks on nature.
6. Fratelli tutti, §§198-224. Confer-
http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/docume
nts/papa-francesco_20201003_enciclica-fratelli-tutti.html

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https://www.catholicapostolatecenter.org/blog/fratelli-tutti-on-
fraternity-and-social-friendship-top-quotes-from-pope-francis-latest-
encyclical

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MEN AND WOMEN FOR OTHERS: ONCE MORE WITH
VICTOR R. BALTAZAR, S.J.
FEELING