23 May 2019
Thursday of the Fifth Week of Easter
My Jesuit mentor Fr. James V. Schall, SJ died last month during the Holy Week. He was a father figure to me and to many. One of his spiritual daughters wrote, “The death of a father is an earth-shattering event. When my father died in 1993, I felt disoriented. I had never been in a world that did not include him. I could feel myself move up the generational ladder. No one is above me any longer. No one who matters stands above me. When I tried to describe this to older people, they immediately understood. Old men spoke to me of the deaths of their own fathers, in the hushed tones normally reserved for the sacred. I thought of this when I learned that Father James V. Schall, S.J., had died…We have all just taken a step up the generational ladder. He won’t be there anymore. Younger people will look to us now at times when we would have looked to him” (Jennifer Roback Morse, On the Death of Great Men).
In the Gospel reading today, we hear Jesus say, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.” The Father loves Jesus by showing Him all that the Father is doing and Jesus loves His disciples in the same way. Jesus conveys a message to His disciples that God’s love for them encompasses the Father’s command to Jesus to lay down His life for all of humanity. This is the highest form of love the Father can possibly give to the world. As Jesus keeps His Father commandment, He also asks his disciples to keep His commandments, especially to love one another and to show their love like Jesus did.
At the funeral mass of Father Schall, one of a Jesuit priests said to me that I should continue the legacy of Father Schall. Of course, I feel that I have a responsibility to live up to the legacy that Fr. Schall left us. But I am also aware that no one would replace him exactly, including me. At the very least, I can try to do something that Fr. Schall did to me, that is to mentor and inspire numerous young people. In our prayer today, we can reflect on the invitation to share the love of Christ with others. Or perhaps we can recall the love of our biological father or any father figure in our lives and the legacy of this person. In your prayer, take the time to tell Jesus what you feel about the legacy of this person. As you have moved up the generational ladder, ask God in what way that you can respond more fully to share the love and continue the legacy of your “father.”