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I've walked by the place thousands of times. Yesterday I paused there to reflect and pray with others -- at the peace garden tucked against Bellarmine Chapel on our campus.
It wasn't the first November 16 that I'd met others there, and not the first time we'd stopped to remember the eight martyrs of the University of Central America, most of them faculty, staff, or administrators: six Jesuits and two women, mother and daughter, all murdered on campus by U.S.-trained soldiers in 1989. Their names are inscribed there, as they are in sister spaces at many other Jesuit universities. This year once more we read each name aloud.
But yesterday's visit was different. This time the familiar stones transported me nearly 1,800 miles away, to the original site in San Salvador. There Tom Strunk and I walked with our ICP colleagues only days ago, part of a river of thousands crossing the UCA's campus to remember the commitments of those who were killed for them.
Over the past two decades, I've had many chances to learn what it means to belong to a Jesuit, Catholic university. Yet the experiences of the past week in El Salvador added a new depth of understanding that I hadn't anticipated.
I won't try to describe all I learned from the people of that place -- those that worked alongside the martyrs, those that have carried on their pursuit of social justice, and those who now study at the university committed to their legacy.
Many others before me have visited that place, heard the same stories, and walked the same path. Listen to them, if you want to know more.
For now, I'll add only this: that in El Salvador I began more deeply to fathom the context that helped inspire the third Universal Apostolic Preference: Walk with the poor, the outcasts of the world, those whose dignity has been violated, in a mission of reconciliation and justice.
And I have a better sense than ever of what is at stake -- at El Salvador, here, and throughout the world.
David Mengel
translation: "Because the fight is just, hope does not falter."
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