Acharyasri –
Today (31 July 2024) is the Feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola who is considered to be one of the great Saints of the Catholic Church. He founded the Society of Jesus (known as Jesuits) in 1540. The Jesuits constitute by far the largest religious congregation serving the Catholic Church for the last half a millennium. They were the pioneers in bringing about a moral and spiritual regeneration of the Catholic Church at a critical stage in her history. Can the Jesuits in India today help in bringing a much-needed integral renaissance of India? This is the point of my reflection in this article.
I have been working in close collaboration with a number of Jesuits in the past, starting with the Pratyasa Movement initiated at Hyderabad in 1986. The Archbishop of Hyderabad identified a Jesuit priest (Fr. Mathew J Kadavil, S J) who could work with me in the Pratyasa Movement as I was still a serving Indian Air Force Officer, at that time appointed in the Air Force Academy, Hyderabad, as Course Commander for the Pilots’ Course. He worked with me in the Pratyasa Movement for four years. Over the years, I had the privilege of working with a number of other Jesuits, including Padmashri Fr. Thomas Kunnumkal SJ. At present, I am closely associated with Fr. Denzil Fernandez SJ in the National Council for Reconciliation & Peace. I have experienced the spiritual vitality that the Society of Jesus still carries within its bosom. I feel the Jesuits can play an important role in bringing about a much-needed moral and spiritual regeneration of India and the Indian Church.
The Unbound Christ and Open Christianity
The power and wisdom of God revealed in, with and through Lord Jesus Christ is timeless. It is not exclusive to Christianity. The grace and truth of God that can be experienced by any sincere seeker through the living Spirit of Christ is also above and beyond the boundaries of Christianity. There are many people in India today who are living witnesses and testimonies to such an ‘Unbound Christ’ and ‘open Christianity’. The author of this article is also one among them.
It is a sad reality that the power and wisdom as well as the grace and truth of God in Christ are more or less lost to the various Christian churches in the world today. The promotions of an ‘Unbound Christ’ and ‘Open Christianity’ have become an imperative of the era for the very survival of the Christian faith as a living force in the modern world.
Spiritualisation of Christianity
Christianity as an institutionalised religion has lost its relevance to the modern world. A spiritualized Global Church of human solidarity inspired by a three-fold new vision of Christianity as a loving presence, as a dynamic process and as a liberative movement for a culture of peace and sustainable development on earth has become necessary if Christianity is to fulfil its divine purpose on earth. Such a spiritualised Globalised Church alone will be capable of bringing about the much-needed moral and spiritual regeneration of the human race. This is also the destined role of the various Christian Churches in the divine plan as revealed by the Lord Jesus Christ. Can the Indian Church take the lead and show the way in this divine mission of the millennium? Can the Jesuits provide the enlightened leadership necessary for this divine mission?
Inculturation
The Jesuits were able to unite people of different religions for the first time in the world through a method they discovered themselves. They acted through ‘inculturation’ which is a method of introducing foreign beliefs into a culture using the local terminology. The well-known British historian Arnold J. Toynbee explains the Jesuits’ method in his book titled “The World and The West” as:
“Instead of trying, as we have been trying, to disengage a secular version of the Western civilization from Christianity, the Jesuits tried to disengage Christianity from the non-Christian ingredients in the Western civilization and to present Christianity to the Hindus and to the Chinese, not as the local religion of the West, but as a universal religion with a message for all mankind. The Jesuits stripped Christianity of its accidental and irrelevant Western accessories, and offered the essence of it to China in a Chinese, and to India in a Hindu, intellectual and literary dress in which there was no incongruous Western embroidery to jar on Asian sensibilities.”
The Jesuits were sent to India in the 16th century by the King of Portugal to spread Christianity. Emperor Akbar, the Sultan of India of the time, was an interreligious man who accepted all religions with tolerance. In 1578, a Portuguese Jesuit was able to meet with Emperor Akbar. The Emperor who liked the priest’s ideas wrote to the Jesuits in Goa requesting that two priests be sent to him.
Emperor Akbar and his son Salim Jahangir became friends with these priests sent from Goa and hosted them in the palace for two years. The priests translated Catholic literature into Persian. Among the translated books were Thomas Aquinas’ “Summa Theologica” and “Summa contra Gentiles.”
‘Din-i Ilahi’ (Divine Religion)
Under the influence of the Jesuit priests, Akbar entrusted his other son to the Jesuits to be raised according to the Christian faith and to learn Portuguese. Jahangir, on the other hand, started to cover the walls of his palace with frescoes of Christian saints. This custom quickly spread among the notables of India. The Muslims reacted strongly to this, and riots broke out in places. Finally, in 1582, Akbar declared that he had established a new religion, which he called “Din-i Ilahi” (Divine Religion), in order to unite his subjects belonging to different religions and make them brothers. The Divine Religion took something from all religions, especially Islam, Hinduism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism.
In later years, new Jesuits also came to the palace. These Jesuits also published new works. In the library of the palace there was also a book called “Ayine-yi Haknüma” (Mirror That Shows the Truth) that compared Islam and Christianity. In one part, it described the debates between Muslims and Christians in the presence of Akbar and Jahangir, and in another part it presented the thoughts of Aristotle.
The new religion found popularity in the ruling class of India but it could not spread to the people much from the Mughal palace. As a matter of fact, it disappeared completely after Akbar’s death in 1605. But in Agra close to the Archbishop’s House there still remains a church that claims its legacy to the ‘Din-i Ilahi’ experiment.
Other Jesuit Initiatives
Great Jesuit missionaries like Roberto De Nobili, Constant Livens, and John Deeny were pioneers who worked in India. Fr. Jerome D’Sousa S J was a member of the team of eminent persons who wrote the Indian Constitution.
Martyrs like Fr. James Kottayil SJ, Fr. AT Tomas SJ and Fr. Stan Swamy SJ are powerful witnesses of Christian faith and inspirational role models of the Christians in India.
St. Ignatius of Loyola greatly valued spiritual freedom and individual initiative for the mission of the Kingdom of God on earth. Finding ‘God in All and All in God’ is basic to the Christian mission on earth. St. Ignatius’ famous words, “Find God in all things,” invites us to see God’s loving and living presence in every dimension of human life – economic, social, religious, political, ecological, educational, medical, scientific….
As we praise and thank God for the gift of St. Ignatius of Loyola on this his Feast, may his life and teachings inspire us to follow his footsteps to build the Kingdom of God in India through an Integral Renaissance of this ancient land of religions.
Acharyasri (Swami Sachidananda Bharathi) is a former atheist Indian Air Force Squadron Leader turned ardent disciple of Lord Jesus Christ. He is a keen promoter of an Indian Face of the Christian Faith without religious conversion and cultural alienation. Acharyasri is the founder of five Ashrams, two Missions, two Trusts, a Socio-Spiritual Organization and an Open Consecrated Society. He has authored more than 20 books and had represented India in the ‘Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders’ organised by the United Nations at New York in August 2000.