Dhwani Rawal, Sophomore, College of Health Sciences
Bomb blasts, school shootings, serial killings, random acts of kindness, putting self in danger for someone else, or doing work for the betterment of humanity all happen in one world. Why do each of these things and others happen; what is the motivation behind the bad acts and good acts? People have claimed some of the bad acts as following God’s word; however, I know the good acts are truly done in the name of God.
Being of Hindu faith I am taught to do as much good as I possibly can without harming myself. Lord Krishna decided to take human form and come to the world and teach the people to love everyone. He said not to love just your family and friends but love those around you, especially your enemies. When I read a specific part of the Holy Scripture known as the Bhagavad Gita, I was in tears reading about Lord Krishna’s struggle to avoid fighting. Lord Krishna, a powerful Hindu God, gets on his knees, joins his hands with tears in his eyes and literally begs; he begs the opponents to sit down and talk about their problems instead of going to the battlefield. He explains how no good will come from this and everyone will be left alone and lonely after it is over, but human nature decided to challenge the Lord. Humans caused evil and bloodshed on this earth; God did not plan any of this evil.
Remembering my Lord Krishna on his knees begging humanity not to fight brings me also to my knees. However, if Lord Krishna’s words were not heard, how can a 21-year-old college student’s word get heard? I cannot just talk; I must act. That is exactly why I am a part of the Marquette University Center for Peacemaking. I try to do all the good I can because words are just not enough, even if they are the words of the Lord in flesh. Some of the things that we do at the center include praying for the people living without peace, bringing in speakers who have worked with making peace in the world, getting students on the Marquette campus to understand what is going on around the world, and sending students to different places in our country and our world to work with people who are actively, nonviolently making peace. Those are just some of the projects that are currently in the works at the Center. All those projects are trying to inform people about the world that we live in and how we all need to act to make it better, not by fighting, but with peace in one hand and love in the other. I am involved with these projects because my faith in God, in humanity, and in myself tell me that it is the right thing to do.
Working at the Center for Peacemaking is the most rewarding experience I have had at Marquette University. I work there and participate in the activities because of my faith in God and my understanding of what Lord Krishna came down to earth to teach. I strongly believe that God has given all of us freedom to do what we choose. And I choose to promote love and peace in the world, because we are all people of God and God deeply desires peace and love for all of His children.
Rev. Thomas Hughson, S.J., Associate Professor of Theology
Growing up Catholic, I absorbed a view of how faith has consequences. Faith, a gift, received God’s revelation centered in Christ that the Church taught a set of beliefs summed up in the Creed. These beliefs entail general ethical norms such as the Ten Commandments and particular value-judgments that invite or demand decisions. Decisions produce good actions such as observing the Third Commandment on keeping the Sabbath by going to church on Sunday. Faith leads to practice. Practice involves worship of God.
Years, life as a Jesuit, travel, knowing people of many backgrounds, languages and cultures, along with prayer and theological inquiry have led to development in that view. A primordial faith is a universal dimension of the human condition insofar as God loves what has been brought forth as creation, a love that extends to humanity as fallen. Somehow the never-distant Creator affects all people in a manner able to be experienced as simply awareness of our finitude (time, multiplicity, temptation) and as a depth in our humanity ever open to the absolute in light of which we perceive the finite and relative and out of which love arises.
The world’s religions, and local religions too, each draw upon and give concrete expression to this primordial faith in beliefs, practices and value-judgments of the most various sorts. A decisive point is what God is like, because that is the norm for all else. Christianity believes in Christ as the definitive, God-given manifestation of what God is like and as the one whose message is salvation. Heeding the Third Commandment to keep holy the Sabbath remains in force as a mandate to worship God through the Eucharist. I believe so I act in the mode of worship. Liturgy is among the most immediate consequences of Catholic belief. A second decisive point in any religion is what humanity is like, and how we are to treat one another, and on this Christianity has a mandate from Jesus to imitate divine, universal love. Many have come to see that this involves social justice.
A parallel consequence of believing in Christ and his message occurs in the form of attention to what the world’s religions have in common on how to treat human beings. For Christians, Matthew’s Gospel chapter 25 pictures Jesus laying down our connection with suffering humanity as the measure of the authenticity of our belief in him.
In all, I act in consequence of my belief by awakening to the universal, primordial faith somehow active in all religions and doubtless in those active for social justice apart from religion too. Christian belief leads to openness to the hand of God in other religions. I act by learning, seeking, seeing, forming relationships, choosing social justice and human rights.
I strongly believe that God has given all of us freedom to do what we choose. And I choose to promote love and peace in the world, because we are all people of God and God deeply desires peace and love for all of His children.
~ Dhwani Rawal, Sophomore, College of Health Sciences
Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius
The exercises are a pathway to recognizing God's activity in our deepest desires and growing in unity with God. Emerging from the experience of St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, the Exercises provide a structured opportunity to mature in spiritual freedom and make choices that are responsive to God's call in one's life.