Pedro Arrupe, SJ - RLPDA
by Br Robert Lentz OFM
Title
Pedro Arrupe, SJ - RLPDA
Artist
Br Robert Lentz OFM
Medium
Painting - 22k Gold & Acrylic
Description
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Pedro Arrupe knew conflict. As a young Jesuit, he had to leave his native Spain because of civil war. As a young priest in wartime Japan, he was imprisoned; and he was in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb was dropped. As Jesuit superior general in Rome, he guided the order through the social and religious chaos of the 1960’s and 1970’s.
In times of conflict, people looked to Pedro Arrupe for peace. In Hiroshima, after the atomic blast, while celebrating mass in the Jesuits’ ruined chapel now crammed with the wounded and burnt, he turned at one point to these people, who had no idea what the Eucharist meant, and overwhelmed by the sight he stood as if paralyzed, his arms outstretched. "They were all looking at me," he said, "eyes full of agony and despair as if they were waiting for some consolation to come from the altar." While Jesuit superior general, he knelt before the pope to receive his blessing; photos of this were an image of peaceful fidelity.
Pedro Arrupe’s trust in God never wavered, and he communicated this in his soft, warm smile. This was not the smile of denial but of insight. This smile sprang from a heart that knew God’s love and loved God’s creation. It was the smile of one who could challenge students to be "men and women for others," challenge them in fact to be like himself. The smile, rare in the icon tradition takes on the symbolic power of a material object.
In 1981, Pedro Arrupe suffered a severe stroke, and for the next decade he showed how one can find God in suffering and decline. In 1983, he ended his last public message, "I am full of hope!" Someone had to read the message for him, but Pedro Arrupe was smiling.
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March 6th, 2016
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