Ignatian Year: Ignatian Wisdom in the Classroom

By Lesley Clinton
An Interview with Jorge Roque, S.J. 

LC: For this Ignatian Year, “we ask for the grace to see all things new in Christ” (Jesuits.org/spirituality/ignatian-year/). How do you help your students see all things new in Christ through your work in the classroom?

JR: With the Incarnation, Christ sanctified our humanity. Everything that makes up the human condition–sin, suffering, moral ambiguity, trial—is a point of access for God. In this light, I think of Terence’s famous statement that “nothing human is alien to me.” Because of Jesus, God Himself can say that statement.

In my English class, my initial hope is that the literature we read helps students learn more about the dramas in which a person can find themselves and become more reflective. One of the most gratifying parts of teaching English is reading a student’s paper and seeing their minds and hearts come alive on the page. It just took exposure to Dante or Kafka along with the challenge to grapple with the text.

In my Theology class, conversation about faith in Christ is, of course, far more explicit. I love talking about Catholic theology. However, I would say something similar: among my favorite moments is reading a journal entry from a student where he notices how God is active in his life. I’m left amazed by the student’s spiritual perceptiveness and by the Lord’s characteristic goodness. Even if it’s in someone else’s life, His grace feels familiar.
 
LC: How have you seen God continue to invite each of your students “into a deepening relationship, to ongoing conversion” through your shared exploration of literature and writing (Jesuits.org)?

JR: If we don’t find God in all things, the only step we need to take is to seek Him in all things. Many students are rather blunt in their distaste for English because it feels like work. In a certain way, it is. The philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch talks about the exploration of art, of which the reading of literature is an example, as a spiritual exercise. It tests a student’s ability to exit their own qualms and see something thoughtfully crafted which is outside themselves. To see something without reducing it to one’s own grasp of it is a spiritual exercise.

Even more than reading to make sense of one’s own struggle, what God tries to do, using any means possible, is to get you to forget yourself and leave your own circle of concern. The challenge is to do something because it's intrinsically good instead of doing it for instrumental reasons, whether it be appearing smart or even raising one’s class average.

Christ refers to himself as a physician when he points out that he came for the sick. The healthy don’t need him. Taking this image a step further, I like to think of God as an optometrist who knows you do not see properly. We need habits of contemplation in order to see him more clearly. The spiritual exercise of engaging art is but one way to renew our contemplative sensibility.
Back