The Jesuit Martyrs and their Legacy for Jesuit Education: Personal Reflections
Christina Darr, Georgetown University
Segundo Montes. Ignacio Martin Baro. Juan Ramon Moreno. Amando Lopez. Joaquin Lopez y Lopez. Ignacio Ellacuria. Elba Ramos. Celina Ramos.
I did not know them, I was barely alive when they were murdered on November 16 of 1989, yet they have had a profound impact on me, through what I know of their lives and what I know of their people, the Salvadorans
Last semester, I had the opportunity to study in El Salvador through Santa Clara University’s program Casa de la Solidaridad, House of Solidarity. Through this program, I lived in community with 26 other US students in 3 houses. I attended classes 3 days a week at the UCA (University of Central America). 2 days a week I spent in a poor urban Salvadoran community with 2 other students in my program. Calle Real, communidad Dolores Medina is a community of 43 families who had been forced to relocate from the country side during the war. I spent my days there teaching English and getting to know the people. They are a people who have formed me, who I hold close to my heart. Through them, I know the martyrs.
Martyr comes from the Greek word for witness, and so from the witness of the UCA martyrs, from the witness of the Salvadoran people I learn how I want to live: to speak the truth, to love and care for the persecuted and the poor, to not be afraid, to risk everything for the integrity of who I am and what I believe to be true.
This is the purpose of a Jesuit education: to teach life, how to live, to educate the whole person, cura personalis, to be and to recognize that same being in the other, so that together we work for justice, recognizing our common humanity and the fact that we are all in this together.
I saw this in the martyrs, but it was the Salvadorans – the people I knew and lived with and worked with, ate with, talked with, and loved that taught me how to live this way.
On my first day in El Salvador, we visited Mariona, a community where three other students in my program would be spending their Mondays and Wednesday. Later, I noted:
On my very first day, I was struck with this unbelievable willingness to encounter suffering in order to witness to the life of a friend and in witnessing to this pain, Oti also witnessed to an unnamable hope.
In my philosophy class with Father Mark Ravizza, S.J., we began talking about the hope of the martyrs, picking it apart, trying to understand what it meant, this seemingly contradictory phrase that was being lived everywhere around us: these men were killed for speaking the truth, where is the hope in that? It could so easily be catalyst to despair that even these men, respected priests, could be killed.
I talked with one of the women in my community, Juana, and I asked her if she had ever lost hope, she told me:
My faith will never come to an end. My faith and hope go together because hope is quite important. I never say, “ No, through what has happened, difficult trials,” it is easy to think of the worst things, but then I would only conform to that. I have faith and when I say, “this I cannot endure,” I kneel and I pray to God that he would draw me forward and the Lord helps me and the Lord blesses me… Faith and hope are things that must be together throughout life. …It’s not only about living life in the way that is already known, because life is a university where one never stops learning.
This is a woman whose father and brother died during the war, who was forced to leave her home in the campo to seek safety from the war violence in the capitol. This is a woman who, despite her limited economic resources, has taken in and raised for the pasts seven years two children abandoned by their parents (I don’t have enough money for them, she told me, but I have enough love). There is a living martyrdom in the way she lives her life.
Her faith and hope, the faith and hope of the Salvadoran people, is not in a life that is easy, nor in a life in which there is no suffering. It is however a faith that believes that life is not about conforming to those “worst things;” it is a hope in a God who is present and will draw one onward; it is a faith that the journey of life, of continuing onward, is good and worthwhile even amidst bitter hardship
Scott Wright, a gringo who spent many years during the war in El Salvador with the war refugees, came to one of my classes and spoke to us. In his book, he writes of the Salvadoran people, saying that “They teach us a deeper sense of what it means to live –to be able to give up your life for others, to have this capacity and this love to give up your life in a struggle so that all people may have life “ This is what we see in the martyrs. This too is what I saw in the Salvadoran people.
In a church in Chaletenango, there are pictures of the Stations of the Cross painted on the walls. For each station there are two paintings: one of Christ and one of an image from the war. In walking the passion with Christ, in allowing themselves to share his suffering, and in sharing theirs with him, these people name their loss and suffering and pain, but also the hope of redemption, of new life amidst death.
There is hope in the human dignity recognized by the Jesuit martyrs– a recognition which led to their death. A common human dignity I found I share through the martyrs, through the Salvavdoran people like Juana and Oti. I learned, and am learning to let suffering and loss, joy and hope sit right next to each other, not mutually exclusive. In reflection I wrote,
I cry a lot here. Sob is really more like it. So hard that I have a headache even still the next day. I cry for the kids in my class -- for their hard situations… I cry for myself, as I am learning to deal with conflict, as I am learning to embrace myself. Some days I am more angry and hurt at myself for my imperfections, screw ups, letting others down than others. Some days I can love my self with all of those imperfections.
What a gift it is to feel: to cry with tears welling up from deep within me, to laugh so hard I cry. There is a freedom in this feeling, as well as a feeling of danger and of risk, to feel so deeply. In Calle Real, I live in this freedom with this risk, walking with a community who knows both laughter and tears, yet have welcomed me, a newcomer, foreigner and stranger, as one of them—or if not one of them, someone already loved by them.
In the tears and in the laughter, and the freedom and acceptance to do both, a freedom given to me in a way by these Salvadorans, is the result of a learning through example: in the Salvadorans, in the martyrs, I see the courage to embrace the difficult, the painful, the horrible. The courage, as Oti did to share that pain, years later, and yet to not become trapped in despair, but rather from the sacrifices and from the ashes to still be able to appreciate the life in themselves, in their community and to continue hope. It is a courage drawn from the passion of Christ, a courage drawn from identification with the martyrs
This identification is very powerful. A Salvadoran said, “There’s no difference between Monsenor Romero and a neighbor because they’re all our martyrs and we are human beings.”
It is this identification that allows the martyrs to still be a source of hope today Jon Sobrino, a Jesuit from the UCA who was traveling at the times of the killings, warns : “…beware of the well-known mechanism of admiration in order to avoid imitation, or in religious language of ‘canonizing,’ ‘sanctifying’ in order to create distance.” If the martyrs are only looked upon us heroes, they are awe inspiring, but removed; they have little to do with how I live my life because one so small as myself couldn’t live the great life they chose.
So the Salvadorans tell stories about the martyrs: keeping them human, keeping them involved in their daily lives, being challenged to live in truth and integrity even in the face persecution. So the martyrs are a source of comfort on several levels: first that the these Jesuits would risk staying in el Salvador, risk speaking up for the persecuted poor knowing their lives are at risk—sending the message that you are worth it. Second, So the martyrs they are a present day challenge to live whole, holy, completely; to feel pain and joy, to be and to live as I believe.
Ellacuria says beautifully what it means for a university to live such a life: “If our university had not suffered we would not have performed our duty. In a world where injustice reigns, a university that fights for justice must necessarily be persecuted.”
So to the martyrs have something to say not just about how I live my life, but how we as a Jesuit university must conduct education: through engaging students beyond the classroom, through being engaged in the community in which we are situated, through living and educating in a way that fights for justice and so leads to persecution.
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