A
s I pen this from Hong Kong on the last day of October, the feast day of famous Jesuit brother, St Alphonsus Rodriguez, I realise that I am not only a long way from home but also a substantial time from the publication of this Autumn edition. Hong Kong is not only a resting place for me to catch up with long standing Jesuit friends like Marciano Baptista, but it also affords me the opportunity to prepare for an Ignatian pedagogy and spirituality symposium next week at the sacred site of Manresa.
It is a symposium with a difference. Since March this year there has been a virtual component where Ignatian educators across the world have been discussing four keynote papers online. Next week seventy of us representing all Jesuit conferences across the globe are meeting in person to further the conversation and, we hope, translate ideals into practical realities for our schools.
In his paper on ‘The Compassionate Person’, Irish Jesuit Peter McVerry, who has worked all his priestly life with homeless people in inner-city Dublin, challenges Ignatian educators to take their students ‘beyond compassion for the poor to a solidarity with the poor … to have a passion for justice.’
That little word ‘beyond’ has stuck with me, like a pebble in the shoe or a burr in the saddle. As I read Peter McVerry’s paper, I not only became more uncomfortable, but I kept thinking of a dear friend of mine, Jim Skerl, who died just eight days ago from pancreatic cancer. Jim was an outstanding Ignatian educator, someone who had a passion for justice and was at ease in taking himself and his students beyond their comfort zones.
During the first three months of 1986, I was given the opportunity to visit and teach at St Ignatius High School in Cleveland, Ohio, during their centenary year. It was a very rich time for me personally—teaching English and Theology with wonderfully committed Jesuits and their lay colleagues. Jim Skerl was the lay head of the Theology Department at that time, and we became firm friends. I marvelled at his teaching ability to inspire his students, his palpably deep spirituality, and his passion for a faith that speaks justice.
Although the mighty city of Cleveland is a good day’s flying time from the east coast of Australia, Jim and I had occasion to nurture our friendship over the years. He was an exchange teacher at Xavier College in 1990 and took the place by storm. During my most recent visit to Cleveland in 2012, I stayed with him and his lovely wife, Kym, and Jim’s commitment to justice was evident at every turn.
One Sunday night I joined him and about three busloads of students as they prepared food and drink to take to the homeless around Cleveland. Before our buses left the school, we went to the beautiful school chapel to pray and commend ourselves to the patronage of St Benedict Labre, the patron saint of the homeless. It was a routine that Jim followed every Sunday night, and the prayer service was characteristically an essential ingredient in the program.
As we threaded our way under bridges, around bush paths and lonely streets, it was inspiring to meet these homeless people and see their affection for Jim. He was living what Peter McVerry in his paper was challenging us all to be—passionate about a faith that does justice.
Jim Skerl’s large heart for justice and Peter McVerry’s paper on ‘the compassionate person’ reminded me of two other pieces of writing from my past. The first is from Peter Nicholson’s 2003 report ‘Beyond the Comfort Zone: A consultation with young adults involved in the Edmund Rice network throughout Australia’. He wrote:
‘On a cold Sunday morning in a bush setting south of Perth, I listened to a group of young adults talking with great honesty and intensity about their lives. They spoke about their dreams, their hopes and their search for how best to live as human beings. They talked in a way that I or my contemporaries could never have done. I asked how the congregation of the Christian Brothers and the Edmund Rice network might help them.’
Among the replies, not the first, were the words, take us beyond our comfort zone. All of us need to be taken beyond our comfort zone. That is where we find human growth and human authenticity. That is where we find love, justice and community. That is where we find hope for ourselves and our world. That is where we find our God. Jesus looked at the rich young man with compassion and invited him to move beyond the comfort zone of his current lifestyle.
The second piece was written by Dr Edmon Barnola, a former parent at a French Jesuit school talking about his expectations of a Jesuit school. His utmost concern was for what he termed the students’ ‘quality of soul’, and in this context he wrote:
‘One arrives at a fresh stage of life only by freeing oneself from the last: by a renunciation. The process of growth is a series of renunciations: renunciation of womb-life, of breast-feeding, of exclusive love of the mother; renunciation of the cushioned atmosphere of home in favour of the brisker one of school; renunciation of the self-satisfied comfort of intellectual sufficiency in favour of the adventurous one of the spirit. There can be no checks, no resting-places. Stop at any stage of the journey and you will find that you settle down, you make yourself a refuge.’
As I pen these words about adventurous spirit, I can hear Jim Skerl saying to me, ‘If you have to eulogise me, so be it; but please don’t canonise me.’ Well, I think there is a very happy appropriateness in the fact that Jim’s Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated on All Saints’ Day at the Gesu Church in Cleveland.
One is privileged to meet some special people along the journey of life, and I count it as a wonderful blessing to have known Jim Skerl. I now wear a wristband he sent me a month ago with the inscription: Trust & Hope, Joshua 1:9. I wrote back a note of gratitude: ‘Thank you very much for the beautiful wristband which arrived in the mail today. I thought only trendy young Jesuits with long hair and earrings wore such items, but knowing how close I am to you and Kym, I will wear it with pride.’
It was the poet Yeats who said once: ‘Think where men’s glory begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.’ Vale, Jim, for now.
