Thursday, February 10, 2011

More Than Service

Kolvenbach's speech regarding Jesuit education and ideals is a celebration of the Jesuit mission, and a call to action to continue said mission. Kolvenbach declares that the beauty of Jesuits and their corresponding universities is that they have a deep heart for not only service for others, but justice for others. They are not, he implies, the same thing. Service is well and good, and something that the Jesuits have always practiced with their Christ-centered attitudes, but recently the service of justice has become part of the official mantra. Kolvenbach uses the example of affirmative action in Jesuit universities to show the dedication to giving opportunity to those less fortunate. While this is a service to them, it is more strongly a justice given to them because it is giving them a chance that the circumstances of their lives never allowed them to have.

As I was reading this article, I admit I was confused about how it is relevant to the class or the discussion of homelands. As I've been thinking about it, I've been considering that perhaps the issue is the apparent division between the poor and well, the not-so poor. Someone who has grown up in the inner-city will have had a very different experience than someone who has grown up in a rich suburb. The Jesuit mission would be to find justice for the inner-city person so that they might have all the chances at education and success that the person from the suburbs would have. Let's say, for example, that these two people both come to Loyola. They will have very different homelands which they come from. But under the Jesuit mission, these homelands, (and here we use homeland to imply a difference in background), might grow thinner as justice and equality becomes more apparent. Though from a disadvantaged background, the person from the inner city may no longer be from "so far away," because he is now an equal.

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