情色空间

Professor Emeritus Harvey Egan, SJ, MA鈥�65, STL鈥�65, is Boston College鈥檚 longest currently serving Jesuit, having been a member of the faculty for forty-nine years. Egan, who joined 情色空间鈥檚 Theology Department in 1975, teaches systematic and mystical theology, a subject on which he has written more than a dozen books. Despite officially retiring from the classroom in 2010, Egan has hardly slowed down. At eighty-six, he鈥檚 still exercising, cooking, and shooting photographs, and last August he published Rethinking Catholic Theology: From the Mystery of Existence to the New Creation, a lengthy examination of how Catholicism has evolved since Vatican II in the 1960s.

You never know when life will change directions. The turning point in my life came in college, at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Three of us used to go to Sunday Mass and I鈥檇 do some prayer, but I wasn鈥檛 pious by any means. Then one day, the girl next door said to me, 鈥淎re you going to be a lukewarm Catholic all of your life?鈥� It took me aback. That summer I began going to Mass almost daily, and the feeling grew. Later, I read an article in the Saturday Evening Post that said wherever Jesuits are, they find God in all things. That really struck me. I was working as an electrical engineer when I decided, I鈥檓 gonna go with the Jesuits. And I never looked back.聽聽

A great teacher can have a lifelong impact. I completed my PhD dissertation in Germany, under the direction of Karl Rahner. A close friend of mine had Rahner as his dissertation director and told me to reach out. I said, 鈥渢his is one of the world鈥檚 great theologians, he wouldn鈥檛 be interested in me.鈥� But I wrote to him, and sure enough, I went to Germany. Listening to him, I felt like Moses at the base of the mountain. He would march up and down the room, and I can still see him digging his toe in as if he were going to pull the wood out of the floor. I still have forty volumes of his writing in my room today.聽

Prayer should be deep. A beautiful theologian writer once said, if a person prays with meditation, it engages the mind and the imagination. After a while, this tiny flame of love arises in a person鈥檚 heart, and they should put everything in a cloud of forgetting, even thoughts about God, and just pray with this naked love. Most parishes when I was growing up never talked about experiencing God, or deeper levels of prayer. It鈥檚 like a marriage. After you鈥檝e been married for a while, you don鈥檛 have to say a lot, but there鈥檚 that intimacy there.聽

Out of pain can come growth. Several years ago, I was crossing the street on Comm Ave and got hit by a car. I was pretty banged up鈥攊t took about a year and a half to get back on my feet. Then I went into the classroom one semester and said, no, I can鈥檛 do this, so I retired. But that was only sort of a retirement, because I wrote five books after that.聽

A Jesuit serves for a lifetime. One of the great things about being a Jesuit professor is you teach students, and often you perform their weddings. You baptize their children, and you bury their parents. It鈥檚 a very long relationship, and a very close one. So it鈥檚 nice to get a letter or an email from them. Any marriages I鈥檝e done, I send them a card on their anniversary.聽聽

That 鈥�99 percent perspiration鈥� saying is correct. During Covid, I finished a 630-page book. One Jesuit made a remark when the book came out, saying, 鈥淥h, Harvey鈥檚 brilliant.鈥� Then another Jesuit, correctly, said, 鈥淣o, he鈥檚 not brilliant, he鈥檚 focused.鈥� The paradox is when I was growing up, I hated writing and I hated languages. But I ended up in Germany to study under Rahner, so I learned French, German, and a bit of Italian, and of course did a lot of writing. That鈥檚 the discipline part.聽

A setback is just a beginning. I don鈥檛 let things happen. If I want something, I go after it. In academia, sometimes you鈥檙e bloodied up. As Henry Kissinger had it (sort of), there鈥檚 so much politics in academia because there鈥檚 so little at stake. I鈥檝e known people over the years that get one, or two, or three blows and they just quit, or stay at a certain level. But I haven鈥檛 quit yet.聽鈼�