March 5, 2011
Dear anne,
"When the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified. 'It is a ghost,' they said, and they cried out in fear." Mt 14:26
So sensitive am I about hurts you've never once asked me to write - how do I say this? - why I left the Jesuits? Why I crossed the line? They are the same, an answer to God's call. I contemplate still signing my name Chris Spicer, SJ... but no, I have crossed out the SJ. I do not belong. Yet, and this is what makes it so hard, I know that I am a Jesuit in the true sense of the word, an offense to the Society. I remain a member of the body of Christ, a companion of Jesus. And how plain my heart bleeds with Ellacuria and companions -- that yes, of course my witness at the Ft. Benning gates bled in pain and suffering at how US Imperialism could spill the brains of the defenders of faith, paragons to the virtue promulgated by Archbishop Romero to be the voice of the voiceless. Like he, then the four US church women, the UCA martyrs shared in the fate of the poor.
What do I mean "offense?" The weaker notion is that I am not an offering that had an odor of sweetness for the Society. The stronger notion is that I am the vanguard. So I see myself, one blessed by God to go out on my own under cover of night to enter the camp of the enemy and, by dagger, wound the Kind of Darkness. To accept this mission I so resolved to accept the path outward bound, knowing that crossing the line at Ft. Benning in good conscience would not jeopardize a future application to re-enter the Society I love. I believe God would invite me to finish the work He started in me, allowing me with grace to entertain such a fantasy, burning zeal to endure a repetition of the more humbling stages of formation so that one day I emerge a fully formed man of the Exercises -- a trustworthy administer of the faith that does justice.
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam.
Chris
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