Editorial
On December 21, the semester officially came to an end at Hekima University College. This marked the beginning of a time of prayer for Jesuits in the community. During the Christmas Triduum, we immerse ourselves in the reading, meditation, and spiritual sharing of De Statu Societatis Iesus, and this exercise enables me to share with my brothers in the community one of the events that marked the Universal Society this year 2023: the 71st Congregation of Procurators. Our sharing focused on our identity, the meaning of our collaboration, and our life-mission as an apostolic body in this constantly changing world so that, understanding ourselves better, we can “In All Love and Serve.”
With the recollection and celebrations of the Lord’s Nativity over, I took a few days of rest and personal reflection, before heading to the Tertianship of Zinkwazi in South Africa. There I found a group of 5 tertians from Sweden, Tanzania, New Zealand, the USA, and Zimbabwe, with their two instructors. With them, the history of the Society was examined and updated in the light of our experiences, taking into account the new themes set out in the De Status. It was a very enriching experience for all, a meditation on the history of the Society that enabled us to deepen our identity and to trace historically certain themes that dominate the life of the Society today, including that of collaboration.
At the end of these ten days with the Tertians, I returned to Hekima, where the semester had begun a week earlier, to get back to teaching, in front of an audience burning with questions of substance about current events in the universal Church.
But Christmas, as you will see as you read this, was also a time of rest for the staff, a time when God visited us with little surprises, like a call to Jeff from the Governor’s office in Kisumu, reminding us that what JHIA does is of interest beyond the circle of the Society and the Church. We also have a mission for our host society. Philip, discovering the damage to people’s lives caused by a lake that keeps disappearing, brings us back to the mission of the Church and the Society today, the urgency and devastating concreteness of our mistreatment of the Common Home. Denis, expressing his passion for regenerative agriculture focused on caring for the natural environment and the relationship between God, humans, and the Earth.
Christmas also came with an anonymous donation. In our fundraising effort, the traditional benefactors were present. But another was added, I’ll just call him Peter, and he donated 5,000 USD in support of our mission. He didn’t introduce himself. And we might never know how he came to know about the Historical Institute to be able to help us. Perhaps, like you, he simply read the newsletter and decided to answer our call to help us serve God’s people in Africa. The anonymous benefactor is God’s surprise, who sometimes speaks to us implicitly, in a veiled language, but a language that encourages and confirms. It’s a language that invites to more generosity on our part, and on your part, even anonymously, to accompany this beautiful work. It also reminds us that by reading this newsletter, you can become a Peter, or connect the Institute to another Peter, and so move forward together in building the Church of God that is in Africa!
In the meantime, the Jesuit community of Hekima has a new rector-designate, Fr. Emmanuel Foro, from the Province of West Africa, who appears in the founding photo of the Jesuit Historical Institute in Africa. We wish him every success in his ministry, knowing that he can always count on our humble prayers and affectionate collaboration.
In Christo Domino,
Jean Luc Enyegue, SJ
JHIA-Director
