To lay down one’s life for another - Bill Uren SJ

My first trip overseas was in 1972. I was lecturing in philosophy in the education faculty at the University of Melbourne when I received a call from the provincial of the time, Father Peter Kelly, to go to Hong Kong for a five month Jesuit program. It was called Colloquium II and was, in Jesuit terms, an ‘experiment'. For four of those months we were to work in various social welfare agencies attached to Caritas, and to live in fairly reduced circumstances in the city itself.

 Before we began our experiment, however, in the Jesuit way we had an eight-day retreat and some introductory seminars for about another week. The week included some ‘getting to know you' sessions. There were 38 Jesuits from all over the world, and each of us was expected to tell his story virtually from birth to the present day—family, school, studies, Jesuit training, present Jesuit ministry and experiences, and expectations of the program we were entering.

The story I remember most vividly was told by a Filipino Jesuit, Gene Moran, a clinical psychiatrist. He was older than most of us—in his late forties. He was an only child, and his mother had died while he was still young. He was brought up by his father, a doctor, to whom he was very close. He entered the Jesuit novitiate about six months before the Japanese occupation. Not long after the occupation, the Filipino guerrillas opposing the Japanese in the mountains outside Manila took his father captive to attend to their medical needs. Inevitably a price was put on his head by the Japanese.

Gene said he did not know what to do. There was every chance that he would be taken as a hostage by the Japanese to provoke his father's surrender by the guerrillas. He went to the Master of Novices and told him that he should leave the novitiate and join his father in the hills. The Master of Novices advised him to wait, but he was in great turmoil. About a week later he received a note from his father telling him very definitely to remain in the novitiate, that all would be well. A couple of days after that the Master of Novices called him into his room and told him that the day before, his father had walked into the Japanese headquarters, had been taken, tried and summarily beheaded.

Gene said that he was absolutely distraught, recognising his father's sacrifice on his behalf. He said that three scriptural texts kept drumming in his head:

‘God so loved the world that he sent his only Son' (John 3:16); ‘Greater love than this you cannot have if you lay down your life for your friend' (John 15:13); and the High Priest's ironical words anticipating the death of Jesus: ‘It is good that one man should die for the people' (John 11:50).

As I said, there were 38 of us. We sat there aghast, in absolute silence, totally overcome by the story. And then it dawned upon us. Seated directly opposite Gene in the circle was Peter Yamamoto, a Japanese Jesuit. He had told us earlier, in a response to a question, that he was a nephew of the Japanese admiral who had commanded an aircraft carrier in the attack on Pearl Harbour. He was in tears-as, indeed, were many of us.

Gene got up, walked slowly across the room and embraced Peter. We were all in tears then.

It is good that we remember, as we approach another Anzac Day, that war is not an end in itself. It is a means, and it is only justified if the end that it pursues is a good of the absolutely highest order-for war is a form of violence. To be sure, it involves multiple instances of heroic self-sacrifice. Even going to war, let alone fighting and dying, are instances of this. And it is these heroes that we commemorate in our rolls of honour. But even instances of heroic self-sacrifice are only ultimately justified if the values for which the sacrifice was made are worthwhile. I am sure that there were many instances of heroic self-sacrifice even among the Nazis and the Kamikaze pilots.

War and heroic self-sacrifice are only justified if they end in a just and lasting peace, if the values of the victors are really worth fighting for, and if the vanquished are treated with respect and their peace and their good values are guaranteed. Peace in all its aspects—domestic, national and international—is the only justification for taking the extreme measure of war.

War is only justified if it ends in genuine peace-a peace symbolised by the embrace of Gene Moran and Peter Yamamoto in Hong Kong all those years ago.

‘God so loved the world that he gave his only Son'—not only to die, however, but that he might rise again and proclaim the characteristic Resurrection message of peace.

‘Greater love than this you cannot have if you lay down your life for your friend'—provided that those of us for whom someone makes the sacrifice zealously guard and promote the values for which that person died: peace and an end to all violence—domestic, national and international.

‘It is good that one man should die for the people'—provided the people and the values for which that person died are really worth dying for.

It is our great consolation that Jesus did think we were all worth dying for.

(From a speech was given at an ANZAC Commemorative Mass at Xavier College, Melbourne.)