n the summer of 1972 there were five of us on a ferryboat moving up the Strait of Bosphorus toward the Black Sea, four wide-eyed Jesuits traveling with Fr. Clement J. McNaspy, SJ. One of us had his shoes shined by a boy on the boat. "A bosphorescent shine," C.J. quipped. If Lewis Carroll had heard that, he would have jotted it down for use in Alice in Wonderland. We four were indeed like children wandering in wonderland, with one difference: we had the best of guides.

Earlier that summer three of us had started with C.J. in the Holy Land and were joined by a fourth in Istanbul. We were shortly going to Athens and then to Rome for the third annual session of the Jesuit Institute for the Arts, which C.J. had helped found. Our time together was very special, so knowledgeable was C.J. about art and history and religion and so predisposed to share all that he knew.

He brought us to see what he considered the best mosaics and frescoes in Istanbul. These are in the Church of Christ in Chora, meaning suburb or field, because it was formerly outside the city walls. A mosaic over the door depicts a splendid Christ and calls him "the field of grace." It really made a difference, both artistically and spiritually, to enter that field with C.J.

A number of Jesuits had the good fortune of experiencing C.J.'s guidance in the field of the humanities when he taught at St. Charles College in Grand Coteau, La., from 1948 to 1958. Under his guidance, art, music, and literature not only became objects of study, they were new worlds to be explored and cultivated. To that end he encouraged each of us to use his special skills and talents. I remember with delight directing (under his supervision, of course) Christopher Fry's The Firstborn, his play about the Exodus. Even though we staged it with the most rudimentary resources, as Fr. Donald Martin, SJ, recalls, "We did not settle for minimalistic theatrics. We designed and hand painted our own hieroglyphs; we set the voice of God to an authentic Hebraic psalmodic melody; we made the whole thing a palpable 'haggada' [a reenactment of a biblical event], and thus experienced the Paschal Mystery in a fresh and engaging way."

C.J.'s encouragement extended far beyond Grand Coteau. To Fr. Dennis McNally, SJ, of St. Joseph University in Philadelphia, C.J.'s "influence was of an international stature, partly because he was so well read, partly because of his heartfelt and insightful encouragement of the younger artists he met in both the world and the Society."

Fr. Eugene Geinzer, SJ, another artist, now at Loyola University Chicago, recalls that while he was studying at Spring Hill College in Mobile, C.J. came to visit and asked to see his work: "He examined every piece so appreciatively I was a little nonplussed by his undiluted praise. I knew some of my work was just ordinary, but C.J. never let me think it was ordinary! He stopped at every piece and uttered little approvals with some animated gesture of his hand. And with those same gestures he waved away that suspicion of art that permeated Jesuits. We artists were suspect for delving into a study slightly inimical to spirituality. People would ask me how I could possibly be an artist and a spiritual man at the same time. With C.J.'s approval to protect me, I never yielded to that suspicion. I could see in him that music and art were as normal as coffee and scotch and being a Jesuit."

Fr. Oscar Magnan, SJ, who teaches at St. Peter's College in Jersey City, characterizes him as "the discoverer of new talents." It was C.J. who wrote one of the first articles about Fr. Magnan's art when the latter was a student. "He was always willing to risk his opinion about a still-not-known artist."

Br. Jerome Pryor, SJ, of Xavier University in Cincinnati, remembers C.J.'s building up further support by actively putting Jesuit artists in contact with one another. This work became much more deliberate and expansive with the founding of the Jesuit Institute for the Arts. It made the artists aware of one another's work and enabled them to work in one another's company. Just as important, it allowed them to locate themselves in a long line of Jesuit artists and to explore for themselves and for others the spiritual dimensions of their art.

C.J. acknowledged that it was Fr. Thomas Culley, SJ, at the time working on a PhD in music at Harvard, who inspired him to help found the institute. Tom and C.J. had coauthored a careful study of Music and the Early Jesuits, 1540-1565 (Rome, 1971). Following the institute's summer in Rome in 1972, an issue of Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits appeared that was entitled "The Place of Art in Jesuit Life" (April 1973). It included an address Superior General Pedro Arrupe, SJ, had delivered to the institute, "Art and the Spirit of the Society of Jesus," and an essay by C.J., "Art in Jesuit Life."

In his essay C.J. quotes from several statements made by Jesuit artists, mainly painters and sculptors, who answered his inquiries as to what their artistic vocation was all about. Their responses had to do with the need for at least some Jesuits to be "present and active in artistic creation," to "reflect the reality of the life and love of God," and to offer "a very, very special instance of the fusion of the supernatural and the natural creative power."

One of the artists who responded to C.J.'s inquiry was Fr. André Bouler, SJ, of Paris. By this time, C.J. was an associate editor of America in New York, having completed his term at Grand Coteau and two years as dean of the college of music at Loyola University of New Orleans. America House, a former hotel on 56th Street renovated for the magazine's use, was still without a chapel. C.J. cajoled André to come and see what he could do. Five rooms were converted into a chapel "with enormous imagination," said C.J. Liturgical art was another of C.J.'s specialties; he spoke with authority when he said, "Everything miraculously works together--the tapestry, the stained-glass windows, the medieval statues, the metal tabernacle."

In 1970, C.J. returned to teaching at Loyola in New Orleans, and for a decade he inspired hundreds of students to an appreciation of everything true and beautiful. "One of the greatest gifts of his person," says Fr. Geinzer, "was that with the slightest of means and gestures he could convey someone into the exotic world of art."

At 65, C.J. returned to teaching Jesuits--this time in Asunción, Paraguay. Almost immediately his knowledge of the arts and of the history of the Jesuits in Paraguay brought him deeply into the cultural life of the country.

The year he arrived there, 1980, happened to be the year I taught for a semester at a university in Curitiba, Brazil. On my way back to the States I stopped for several days in Paraguay. One of my fondest memories is being the main celebrant at an open-air mass with C.J. and Fr. Charlie Thibodeaux, SJ, in the ruins of one of the Paraguay reductions. As we approached the consecration of the bread and wine, some wasps came flying around me. C.J. made them keep their distance by fanning the air with a sheet of paper. As always, he knew how to make room for the word made flesh.

Fr. Ernest Ferlita, SJ, teaches drama at Loyola University of New Orleans. His plays The Mask of Hiroshima and The Bells of Nagasaki will be produced in New York in 1996.