The "first" first companions: the continuing impact of the men who left Ignatius

the first word . . .Anyone who deals with young people knows how quickly the collective memory evaporates.Through the years I've learned to presume nothing about their knowledge of the historical contexts of the films in our syllabus.Casablanca, for example, may be confusing without some knowledge of Vichy France and its relationship to the Nazis in Occupied France, and I have to make time for a brief lesson on the history of World War II.In school Americans learn about D-Day and Iwo Jima, but not much about El Alamein or Tobruk.This lacuna should come as no surprise to anyone who does a bit of mental arithmetic on their ages and the dates of the war.The events took place too long ago for them to remember and are too insignificant for them to have covered in their high-school survey of world history.But this may come as a bit of a shock.If a morning class falls on September 11, I start with a moment of silence to commemorate those who lost their lives on that dreadful day.In the last couple of years, I've felt the need to provide some rationale for this unusual practice.Freshmen were eight or nine years old when it happened, and although constant reference to the date in connection with all manner of policy decisions has certainly made 9/11 a familiar phrase, much of the horror has simply faded from the public consciousness of the young.They may have some notion of the connection between the event and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but little appreciation of the visceral effect it had-and continues to have-on those of us who lived through it.Had I been in New York at the time, I could have seen the plumes of smoke over the World Trade Center from the baseball diamonds I used to play on.I still get a queasy feeling when I see images of the twin towers in older films or television programs.Keeping history alive is a constant challenge, and, paradoxically, the more recent the history the more challenging.As new generations arise, key events in the lives of the older ones slip into irrelevance all too easily.In the Church, the Vatican II age has morphed into to the age of John Paul II.In the Society, a few of us Janssensites still remain on the scene, while the Arrupe generation has become the elders of the tribe and the Kolvenbach people have assumed the leadership positions.Four Stories of the Kolvenbach Generation (StudieS 42/1, Spring 2010) came as a bit of a shock to me, and surely to The First First Companions The Continuing Impact of the Men Who Left IgnatiusSt. Ignatius made several attempts to gather companions before he identified those who would actually form the Society of Jesus.Some of the activities of these earliest followers, known as Iiguistas, imperiled the foundation of the new order.Although their names are all but unknown today, they seem to have left a mark on Ignatius as he formulated the foundational documents.