In July of this year, a team of 15 students and 4 staff from St. Paul’s High School in Winnipeg completed a service mission to El Salvador. This was the seventh mission to that country for St. Paul’s. In their daily verbal and written reflections, students often spoke of their increasing friendships with the adults and children of El Salvador and with each other. They were inspired by how quickly they were accepted by a community that had only just met them. They felt the joy and gratitude expressed to them. They were moved when they saw the poverty that some of the children live in. They came to understand the pain and tragedy that the Salvadoran people have suffered because of the injustices of the past and also the present, and by the cruel civil war that lasted from 1980 till the peace accords of 1992. They let themselves be affected by the suffering of those they met but they were also inspired by their resilience and faith. In all of this, the students developed solidarity with the Salvadorans.

At St. Paul’s, students study the themes of Catholic Social Teaching. One of these themes is solidarity. As part of their course work, students are required to define and elaborate on what solidarity means. However, this kind of academic exercise is just a beginning. To really understand what solidarity means we must go further than academics. As Peter-Hans Kolvenbach SJ, former Superior General, said “We must therefore raise our educational standard to educate the whole person of solidarity for the real world. Solidarity is learned through “contact” rather than through “concepts” as the Holy Father (referring to Pope John Paul II) said at an Italian university conference. When the heart is touched by direct experience, the mind may be challenged to change. Personal involvement with innocent suffering, with the injustice others suffer, is the catalyst for solidarity which then gives rise to intellectual inquiry and moral reflection.” (Santa Clara University, 2000)

We have often been told that what is most valued is our presence in El Salvador. If one year, we have no funds to contribute to a project, we are not to worry. It is not our charity that it is most important; it is our relationships, our mutual understanding and our solidarity. In Spanish we might use the word “hermanamiento,” a twinning, one of shared values and friendship.

In his letter to the Galatians, Paul wrote that our relationship with each other should be one of carrying each other’s burdens (Galatians 6:2). In the gospels, we read that the greatest commandment consists of two parts, love of God and love of neighbour. Jesus gives us the great parable of the Good Samaritan. If solidarity is closely tied with love of one’s neighbour, making primary the life and dignity of the human person, of justice, then it is a path to God and the only way to be truly human.

In our work in El Salvador, are we moving towards the vision of Pedro Arrupe SJ, who in his famous “men for others” speech said “Today our prime education directive 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 who died for all the world; men and women who cannot even conceive of love of God if it does not include love for the least of their neighbours.” (Valencia, Spain. 1973)

In El Salvador, our students developed a much better understanding of what solidarity, love of God and neighbour, and being a man for others is about.

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Source for photos: Dennis Kuzenko