All along life's road back home we are faced with both monumental and quite ordinary moments requiring our engagement. How shall we respond? Simply put, we either stand and watch, or we commit to a response.
Beginning from the mid-1800s a rural to urban style transformation raged at many locations surrounding the outskirts of Chicago, particularly south of the city. The story of how this transformation found a now-famous caretaker in the person of Arnold Damen SJ is compelling if not for the considerable contradictions that seemed to characterize his commitment to assuring the dignity of life for immigrant Irish, Germans, Italians, Polish and Russians. Aside from providing for the spiritual and basic economic needs of an evolving community, Fr Damen expressed his dedication to its growth largely through a commitment to educational excellence. Even when faced with perilous shortages of life's most essential requirements - safe housing and adequate food and health resources - an education in both the classic sense and as expressed to meet the demands of life in the here and now, for all its challenges, accomplishments and disappointments, did not waiver.
Today, facing Roosevelt Road on Chicago's near southside a statue of Arnold Damen, SJ occupies the front lawn of St Ignatius College Prep (which adjoins his early faith and social community gathering nexus - Holy Family Parish Church). Service, Justice, Education, Faith: a compendium for all those who live out a commitment to different thinking, action not complicity, and outrage at social, political and moral transgressions.
... "The truth of the matter is the justice at stake. Every person has their Gethsemane. At any such pivotal point in one's personal history, with a heightened consciousness for the underserved or vilified among our family of man, who among us will be found asleep? Or who shall by the grace of their convictions be seen and heard, fully alive, compelled to do the right thing?" ...
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