EVERYBODY'S CHALLENGE - Jesuit Refugee Service | USA

through learning packets containing printed and audio materials
which could be studied independently, or under the guidance of
qualified refugees or JRS volunteers.
· On-site teaching: Colleges and universities could release faculty
members who would provide on-site teaching in specified
areas identified as needed by the uprooted population.
· Scholarships: Refugees who have shown dedication to their
fellow displaced persons and who seem to have the capacity for
higher education can be offered scholarships to come and study at
a college or university, on the understanding that they will return
and use their newly acquired knowledge and skills to help the uprooted
population of which they are members.
If our higher education institutions could join in this effort, the
Society would be sharing one of our most precious resources with
some of the poorest yet often very gifted people. As I pointed out in
my recent letter on the Society’s Apostolic Charity Fund (FACSI):
Jesuits cannot conceive of being able to come to the aid of the really poor
without being concerned as well for their education (FACSI Information,
89/17, 15 July 1989).
I have spoken in this letter of the reasons why the most recent
General Congregation has affirmed and reinforced Fr Pedro Arrupe’s
original call that the whole Society dedicate some of its resources to
the service of refugees. Those reasons referred principally to the spiritual
and physical needs of the refugees. In concluding this letter I
wish to stress another dimension. As Companions of Jesus, we must
be the same as Christ Jesus (Phil. 2,5). We are called to share our life
with the refugees because He gave up His equality with God in order to
assume the condition of a slave, and became as men are (Phil. 2,6f). We
cannot meditate on the Gospel account of the Holy Family’s flight,
the fear of persecution and the harshness of homelessness and exile
in a foreign land, and what it meant for Joseph to be woken up in the
middle of the night and be told to take his family and flee to save the
child from the murderous hand of Herod (Sp. Ex. 269) – without
recognising His face in the faces of the refugees we encounter today.
Because Christ chose to express His love for us by walking the
road into exile and, later in His life, making the journey to Jerusalem
to suffer torture and death (Lk 9,51 - 19,28), our service and presence
in the midst of refugees, if rooted in fellowship with Christ, can be a
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