by James Martin
Ignatius then invites us to imagine Satan advising his “uncountable devils” on how to ensnare men and women through attachments. This same clever literary technique—advice from an experienced devil to his younger counterpart—was used, centuries later, by the British writer C. S. Lewis in his book The Screwtape Letters.
The enemy works like this, says Ignatius: first by tempting people to desire riches, which leads to honors, which often leads to an overweening pride, the gateway to a gamut of sinful behavior. As any Jesuit will tell you, the shorthand phrase is “riches to honors to pride.”
The process is insidious because riches and honors are seductive. I know this from personal experience.
From the Spiritual Exercises
Here is Ignatius speaking about the progressive dangers of not living simply, in the Spiritual Exercises. In the section known as the Two Standards he asks us to imagine Satan giving advice to his minions about how to tempt human beings to pride:
First they should tempt people to covet riches (as he usually does, at least in most cases), so that they may more easily come to vain honor from the world, and finally to surging pride. In this way, the first step is riches, the second is honor, and the third is pride; and from these three steps the enemy entices them to all the other vices.
Over the past few years, I’ve published several books and have written articles for newspapers, magazines, and Web sites. Consequently, I’ve been invited to speak in a variety of places as well as on radio and television. Overall, I’m happy that others find my writing helpful, especially since the work of a Jesuit is supposed to “help souls.” The more people who read books about the spiritual life the more chance that at least a few more souls will be helped.
Speaking on television and radio is also valuable not only because it helps sell books, and therefore helps more souls, but because you can talk about God with millions of people—more than I could in a Sunday homily. (It’s also fun.) John Courtney Murray, an American Jesuit theologian who worked as adviser to the Second Vatican Council, once said that the Jesuit should explain the world to the church, and the church to the world. Working with the media is one way of doing this.
But there is a danger. Even though I try not to let this go to my head, all those things—books, articles, media appearances—are what the larger culture considers as “success.” They are one example of what Ignatius meant by “riches.”
In the wake of these occasional successes comes praise from family, friends, acquaintances, and even strangers. Those are the “honors” that Ignatius talks about. And while I have been grateful for the compliments, something else was at work. Something insidious.
After experiencing some success, I began to notice within myself a creeping sense of entitlement. Why do I need to sign up to celebrate Mass in our community? I’m busy! Why should I have to empty the house dishwasher? I have important things to do!
Though I never acted on these feelings, I was saddened to discover them within me, especially after knowing the Exercises. My spiritual director smiled and said, “Riches to honors to pride!” Even though I’ve been a Jesuit for over twenty years, I’m still subject to the same temptations that everyone else is.
It was a potent reminder not only of my own humanity, and the need to be vigilant, but also of Ignatius’s keen insights into the love of “riches” of all kinds, as well as into the “good spirit,” the “enemy,” and plain old human nature.
A Major Concern
Ignatius knew that ecclesial honors could lead Jesuits to become proud. An appointment as bishop or cardinal brought great riches and honors to the person and to his family, and so one was eagerly sought, particularly in Ignatius’s day. This is one reason that there are so many restrictions in the Constitutions on Jesuits’ becoming bishops and cardinals. Here is an amusing anecdote about an early Jesuit, Francis Borgia (yes, of that Borgia family) and the efforts, in 1552, to make him a cardinal. It is from the journals of Juan de Polanco, an early Jesuit, and uses the term “Ours” to refer to Jesuits. The last line is my favorite.
Ours were freed from a major concern . . . for a rumor had made its way throughout the city [Valencia, Spain] regarding Father Francis Borgia and the cardinalatial dignity; the word was that he had been forced to accept it under pain of mortal sin. But when they received letters from Rome informing them that Father Ignatius had forestalled this business, their concern was changed to consolation. This was the reaction of Ours everywhere, though some of the blood relatives of Father Francis received the news with different emotions.
BRING ON POVERTY?
The most popular joke about Jesuit poverty is this: A first-year novice is visiting a large Jesuit community during a big celebration of the feast day of St. Ignatius Loyola, on July 31, usually an occasion for grand dinners. The novice spies the immense dining room, the tastefully appointed tables, the flower vases, and the filet mignon ready on the table and announces, “If this is poverty, bring on chastity!”
No one laughs harder at that joke than Jesuits. Jesuit poverty is meant to be a true poverty that helps us to identify with the “poor Christ.” It’s also meant to be “apostolic,” something that frees us for work. The early Jesuits were diligent in their following of poverty, preferring the worst lodgings, the worst food, and the worst dress in order to more closely followJesus.
But contemporary Jesuit living arrangements can sometimes be quite comfortable, at least in the United States. In Jesuit communities in some colleges and high schools, for example, as many as fifty Jesuits might live under the same roof. This means certain practical arrangements are unavoidable: large living rooms and dining rooms (to accommodate so many men), a cook and a kitchen staff (especially in houses with elderly Jesuits), several washing machines (try juggling one washing machine among fifty men), and sufficient amounts of food.
To the outside eye this institutional life can look lavish. Some Jesuits ruefully call these “full-service” communities. To the inside eye as well. Every Jesuit community tries to live simply, but in the midst of plenty, sometimes it’s hard to feel that you’re doing so. In other words, Jesuits are often in the same boat as everyone else when it comes to a simple lifestyle: they must strive to live simply—some-times in a culture of plenty.
“You take a vow of poverty,” said an unemployed friend. “But I live it!” It’s a fair critique. With everything owned in common, our most basic needs—food, clothing, shelter—are provided for.
It’s also an inaccurate critique. A vow of poverty means living very simply on a limited budget. Our monthly stipend for personal needs and expenses, which we call our personalia, is modest (in my novitiate it was $35). No Jesuit owns a car or house. All income—salaries, donations, gifts, royalties on books—is given to the community.
We must request permission for long trips, as well as money needed for expensive items like eyeglasses, a new suit, or a new coat, which are not covered by our personalia. That permission is sometimes not given. After working in Nairobi for a year, some lay friends asked if I could join them on a week’s vacation on the coast of the Indian Ocean, in a student hostel, which would cost $100. The Jesuit superior told me it was out of the question. When I tried to convince him otherwise, he chuckled. “It’s not a question of whether or not I think it’s a good idea, Jim,” he said. “We simply can’t afford it.”
Compared to some—affluent Americans—we live extremely simply. Compared to many—the destitute around the world—we do not live so simply. Still, every Jesuit priest and brother desires to be as free of possessions, to love poverty, and to live as simply as he can, as Ignatius intended. As one of my spiritual directors told me, “The vows allow you to live simply. How simply is up to you.”
Fortunately, besides Ignatius, I have had many role models in this regard—“living rules,” as I mentioned in the first chapter, men whose lives serve as models for their brother Jesuits. Many of them are revered specifically for their simplicity.
For severa
l years I lived with an older Jesuit named John. Wise, clever, and compassionate, he was a living rule if there ever was one. In the style of his own training, which had taken place in the 1940s and 1950s, he used to call me “Mister.” “Good morning, Mister!” he would say over breakfast. The week after my ordination he greeted me with, “Good morning, Father!”
One day, while still a “Mister,” I knocked on John’s door to ask him to hear my confession. His room was simplicity itself: a threadbare carpet, nothing on his walls but a few framed photos, a crucifix nailed above a rickety wooden kneeler, ancient plastic-covered chairs, and low-wattage lightbulbs.
Then I spied his bed, a single. Without any headboard, it was nothing but a box spring and a mattress perched atop a rickety metal frame. But what caught my eye was the yellow bedspread. An inexpensive polyester spread barely covering the mattress, it looked ancient, thin nearly to the point of transparency, faded in color; it was the most meager bedspread I could imagine.
“Father,” I said, “I think it’s time for a new bedspread.”
“Mister,” he said with a laugh, “that is the new bedspread!”
Guiltily, I remembered that just the week before I had asked for money for a new bedspread (which I really didn’t need). My visit reminded me that for Jesuits, there is little that we really need in terms of material goods.
Voluntary poverty can also be a goad to help the truly poor. As the early Christians used to say, the extra coat hanging in your closet does not belong to you; it belongs to a poor person.
Jesuits who work directly with the poor—here and abroad— often seem more able to embrace a poverty that is closer to what Ignatius probably intended for his men. Part of this is because of the limited resources in those countries. But part of it has to do with the experience of living with the materially poor themselves, from whom Jesuits learn more about real poverty than they can even from the Spiritual Exercises. Closeness to the poor offers insights into why Ignatius called poverty something “which should be loved as a mother.” This is something I learned when I worked in East Africa.
GAUDDY, AGUSTINO, AND LOYCE
Midway through my Jesuit training, my provincial superior sent me to Nairobi, Kenya, to work with the Jesuit Refugee Service, an organization founded in 1980 by Pedro Arrupe, then the Order’s superior general.
The Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) is part of the Society of Jesus’ efforts to work with the poor, a central part of Christian discipleship since the time of Jesus. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus reminds his disciples that the test of a good disciple is not how often he prays, or what church he goes to, but how he treats “the least of these who are members of my family,” that is, the poor (Matt. 25:40).
The “corporal works of mercy” (including feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting the prisoner) have always been at the heart of Christian service. Many of the most well known saints are known specifically for their work with the poor, from St. Francis of Assisi to Mother Teresa. Ignatius was no different in his desire to heed the call to care for the “least.”
From the beginning, working with the poor was a focus of the Jesuits’ mission, rather than simply founding schools, which is often thought to be the case. And, by the way, the original purpose of the schools was not simply to educate youth and help them in their development of character, but also to serve the common good. The early Jesuits hoped that the graduates would “grow up to be pastors, civic officials, administrators of justice, and will fill other important posts to everyone’s profit and advantage,” as Juan de Polanco, Ignatius’s secretary, wrote.
After the Society was approved by Pope Paul III in 1540, Jesuits began visiting hospitals and prisons, ministering to the dying, and working with orphans, reformed prostitutes, and the children of prostitutes. And when famine, flood, or the plague broke out, the Jesuits quickly organized to provide direct physical or financial assistance to victims.
Of course, other religious orders engaged in charitable work, too; it is simply part of the Christian life. What was unusual about the Jesuits was what John O’Malley calls the “explicit articulation” of those charitable works as an essential element of the new order.
“In a few instances,” O’Malley writes in The First Jesuits, “this commitment attained heroic dimensions.” In 1553 the Jesuits remained almost alone in their willingness to minister to the sick during a plague in Perugia, Italy, with several Jesuits dying as a result. Aloysius Gonzaga, one of the earliest Jesuit saints, took ill and died after ministering to plague victims in 1591. He was twenty-one.
In all these works they were not only following the Judeo-Christian tradition of service, but also Ignatius’s dictum that “love ought to manifest itself more by deeds than by words.”
My own job in Kenya was to help the refugees who had settled in the sprawling slums of Nairobi start their own businesses so they could support themselves and their families. Much of the work consisted of visiting the refugees in their small shacks, which often contained nothing more than a mattress, a kerosene lantern, a cooking pot, some boxes, and a few plastic pails to hold water and food.
This kind of poverty—in which human beings are unable to satisfy their basic needs—is not something to which Jesuits, or anyone, aspires. Dehumanizing poverty is something that many Jesuits spend their entire lives combating, whether through direct work with the poor or advocacy on their behalf. The Jesuit goal of voluntary poverty in imitation of Christ is different from the involuntary poverty that is a scourge for billions across the globe.
But the two are inextricably connected: living simply means that one needs less and takes less from the world, and is therefore more able to give to those who live in poverty. Living simply can aid the poor.
Entering into the lives of the poor also encourages simple living. You see how the poor are able to manage with so little. How they sometimes live with greater freedom. How they are often more generous with what they have. And how they are often more grateful for life than the wealthy.
Learning About Poverty
Pedro Arrupe, the Jesuit superior general from 1965 to 1981, had a sense of humor even about serious topics. Two young American Jesuits once showed up at the Jesuit headquarters in Rome. Father Arrupe asked what assignment had brought them there. They explained that they were on their way to India to work with the poor, as part of their training. Afterward Arrupe said to an assistant, “It certainly costs us a lot of money to teach our men about poverty!”
When I think about the ways in which the poor teach us, I remember some of the refugees I knew in Kenya. One had the wonderful name of Gaudiosa, which means “joyful” in Latin. Gauddy, as everyone called her, was a Rwandese refugee. She had settled in Nairobi in the 1960s with her family, a victim of the Hutu-Tutsi conflict that had long plagued her homeland.
She was also a talented seamstress who, the year before I arrived, had received a grant from JRS to purchase a single sewing machine. From that modest beginning, she and several other Rwandese women built a flourishing tailoring business called the Splendid Tailoring Shop.
One day Gauddy dropped by our office. At the time, we had just decided to open a shop—called the Mikono Centre—for refugees to market their wares. And I was trying to interest priests and members of religious orders in purchasing the handicrafts made by the refugees.
Gauddy and I discussed making liturgical stoles for priests with kitenge, a colorful cotton fabric used in Rwandese dresses and shirts. For a talented seamstress, a stole is an easy venture: just two long pieces of cloth sewn together in a V shape. Stoles, I suggested, might be big sellers to visiting Western priests as well as to missionary priests working in local parishes. And Gauddy always had plenty of leftover kitenge in her shop.
Gauddy’s kitenge stoles flew off our shelves; we could barely keep them in stock. When I ordered twenty more in the first week, Gauddy folded her hands in her lap, bowed her head, and said, “God is good.”
“Yes,” I said, but why
did she think so?
“Why?” Gauddy laughed and clapped her hands, evidently surprised that I would ask such a ridiculous question. “Brother Jim!” she exclaimed. “God is helping me get rid of this leftover kitenge. God is giving me money for making these stoles, which are so easy to make. God is giving me this business for my shop, and for my ladies. Surely you can see that God is very, very good!”
As with many refugees, Gauddy’s thoughts, in good times and bad, turned to God. Perhaps I would have eventually discerned God’s hand, but Gauddy saw God immediately. She typified the relationship that many refugees had with God. To use the analogy of friendship, Gauddy had placed herself closer to God, and so was a better friend to God than I was.
Another friend was a Mozambican wood-carver named Agustino. We first met on a busy street corner in Nairobi, where Agustino was sitting on a piece of cardboard, carefully carving his beautiful ebony and rosewood statues and trying to sell them to passersby. When I asked if he wouldn’t rather sit under a tree outside the Mikono Centre and sell to more customers, he readily agreed and showed up at our shop the very next day. He has worked there ever since.
One morning Agustino showed me with great enthusiasm an enormous three-foot-tall sculpture carved from a single piece of ebony. It was called the “tree of life” and depicted men working in the fields, women nursing children, and children playing. Though beautifully made, the price was very high. I doubted we could sell it in our shop, and told him so.
After Agustino tried unsuccessfully to convince me to buy it, I agreed to take the piece on consignment. “Will you pray that it sells?” Agustino said. Yes, I said, I would. But I had doubts: it was too big and too expensive. We lugged the heavy piece of wood inside and set it atop one of our display tables.
