My dear friends,
We are happy to release this issue of INI, dated April-June 2024 on May Day, 1 May ’24. Come to think of it, May Day is not an ordinary day. In Europe it is an ancient festival that marks the beginning of summer. The traditional May Day celebrations include gathering wildflowers and green branches, weaving floral garlands, crowning a local girl as May Queen, and setting up a May pole, or May tree around which people dance.
For more than three centuries, we Catholics have observed May – and May Day – with various May devotions to the Blessed Virgin. I remember our Novice Master encouraging us to ready a crown of locally-available flowers and crown the statue of Mary in the grotto and sing Marian hymns with youthful gusto. They call it May crowning.
1 May is also one of two feast days of the Catholic patron saint of workers, the great St Joseph the Worker. It is easy to forget that he worked hard as a carpenter to provide for Mary and Jesus. In 1955 Pope Pius XII chose this day for this feast of St. Joseph as a counterpoint to the International Workers’ Day celebrations on May Day.
International Workers’ Day, also known as Labour Day in some countries, coincides with May Day. Once identified with Communists, it is a just welcome celebration of labourers and the working classes.
This issue of INI, made available on such a day, carries excellent articles. The ‘Faith-Women’ article by Astrid Lobo Gajiwala, shows what a perceptive woman thinker could feel and think while attending our liturgical functions, as some of these functions reflect the sad reality of the Catholic Church still failing to acknowledge women, their faith and their service.
Anything that arises out of concrete experience holds a lot of value. No teacher is as good as our experience. This issue of INI carries two articles written by two Jesuits based on their experience. Arockiasamy Xavier, SJ, who has been a professor and a principal in two well-known Jesuit colleges, talks of the challenges which Jesuit educators face today. They are not the challenges faced by our famed predecessors who founded our colleges. K. Amal, SJ, based on his experience of working for AICUF and so dealing with youth for many years, comes up with a useful list of do’s and don’ts for all those who opt for working with youth.
The article by Jerry Rosario, SJ, shines a light on an innovative apostolate he has been involved in for quite some time now. It can be called an ‘awareness apostolate’ – making the Indian voters aware of the options available to them whenever State Assembly elections or parliamentary elections are held.
The book Francis P. Xavier summarises for the INI readers is a worldwide bestseller that has sold more than 15 million copies. Atomic Habits by James Clear presents a proven system for building good habits and breaking bad ones. It shows how tiny changes that you can easily make every day can lead to impressive achievements. May the book help make reading INI your regular habit! So happy, enlightening reading!
– M.A. Joe Antony, SJ