To be just, it is not enough to refrain from injustice. One must go further and refuse to play its game, substituting love for self-interest as the driving force of society.
Pedro ArrupeRead
More than ever I find myself in the hands of God. This (illness) is what I have wanted all my life from my youth. But now there is a difference; the initiative is entirely with God. It is indeed a profound spiritual experience to know and feel myself so totally in Godβs hands.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a deep trust and surrender to God's will, especially during challenges like illness.
Pedro Arrupe articulates a transformative spiritual experience where he recognizes his complete reliance on God during a time of illness. This recognition goes beyond mere acceptance; it highlights a longing fulfilled to be wholly in God's hands, suggesting that true peace and understanding come from surrendering control to a higher power.
In practice
In a speech about overcoming adversity, I would quote this to emphasize trust in a higher power.
To be just, it is not enough to refrain from injustice. One must go further and refuse to play its game, substituting love for self-interest as the driving force of society.
Today our (Society of Jesus) prime educational objective must be to form men (and women) for others; men (and women) who will live not for themselves but for God and his Christ - for the God-man who lived and died for all the world; men (and women) who cannot even conceive of love of God which does not include love for the least of their neighbors; men (and women) completely convinced that love of God which does not issue in justice for others is a farce.
Only by being a man or woman for others does one become fully human.
I don't think the world will destroy itself in a nuclear cataclysm. On the contrary, we have the capacity to save ourselves and save the planet, and we will use it.
Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.
O youth or young man, who fancy that you are neglected by the gods, know that if you become worse, you shall go to worse souls, or if better to the better... In every succession of life and death, you will do and suffer what like may fitly suffer at the hands of like. This is the justice of heaven.
The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
You are always in the process of creating. Every moment, every minute, every day. You are a big creation machine and you are turning out a new manifestation literally as fast as you can think.
Whence comes war and fighting, and factions? Whence but from the body and the lust of the body? Wars are occasioned by the love of money, and money has to be acquired for the same and service of the body.
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