The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything

by James Martin

  We have let our beards grow and our hair down to our ears, at the same time we have adopted the special dress that the literati wear . . . of violet silk, and the hem of the robe and collar and the edges are bordered with a band of blue silk a little less than a palm wide.

  Soon Ricci’s home became a gathering place for scholars and Chinese thinkers. “His high intellectual prestige,” writes William Bangert in A History of the Society of Jesus, “was magnified by his more than twenty works in Chinese on apologetics, mathematics and astronomy, some of which have honored places in the history of Chinese literature.”

  Ultimately, Ricci’s venture was scuttled after the Holy See disapproved of the Jesuits’ acceptance of the notion that “ancestor worship” and veneration paid to Confucius in Chinese culture were compatible with Christianity. (Ricci saw them simply as respect paid to families and to one of the most important men in Chinese history, and, in his words, “certainly not idolatrous, and perhaps not even superstitious.”) In time, Ricci would establish a Jesuit house in Peking, with the approval of the emperor, and by his death in 1610, twenty-five hundred Chinese had become Catholics.

  These innovations flowed from the Jesuit emphasis on learning, the importance of which Ignatius understood from his own life, and ingenuity. Added to this was the Jesuit “indifference” to incidentals and their desire to try something new.

  Ingenuity also means flexibility and adaptability: what works well in one place may not in another. Ignatius grew his hair long as a way of trying to be more ascetical. When he saw that this had little to do with his spiritual progress, he cut it. Ricci, on the other hand, realized that in order to be accepted at all, he would have to grow his hair. Ignatian flexibility can be a component for success in the modern workplace, too.

  But of all the stories of Jesuit ingenuity, the one that delights me most is the largely forgotten history of Jesuit theater.

  In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Jesuit priests and brothers were well known throughout all of Europe for their expertise in producing immensely popular plays, mainly through their schools, which in many towns were the leading civic and cultural institutions. The Catholic Encyclopedia, for example, estimates that between 1650 and 1700 roughly one hundred thousand productions of Jesuit plays took place, some often staged for royal visits. In 1574 one play performed in Munich transformed almost the entire town into an elaborate backdrop, with one thousand actors taking part. At a performance in seventeenth-century Vienna, the audience was so vast that police from neighboring towns had to be called to keep the surging crowds in check.

  What distinguished the Jesuit theatrical productions was their ingenuity: the creative use of scenery and staging, including intricately designed backdrops, realistic props, and complicated mechanical devices. René Fülöp-Miller in The Power and Secret of the Jesuits, writes:

  On every conceivable occasion, the Jesuit producers made divinities appear in the clouds, ghosts rise up and eagles fly over the heavens, and the effect of these stage tricks was further enhanced by machines producing thunder and the noise of winds. They even found ways and means of reproducing with a high degree of technical perfection the crossing of the Red Sea by the Israelites, storms at sea, and similar difficult scenes.

  For added measure, Jesuits either invented or perfected the screen known as the scrim, a modern-day theatrical mainstay, as well as the trap door. (The next time you see someone disappear through a trap door, remember Jesuit ingenuity!)

  Lowney’s third quality of heroic leadership is love. “Leaders face the world with a confident, healthy sense of themselves as endowed with talent, dignity, and the potential to lead. They find exactly these same attributes in others and passionately commit to honoring and unlocking the potential they find in themselves and in others. They create environments bound and energized by loyalty, affection, and mutual support.” Lowney contrasts the way of Ignatius with that of his near contemporary, Niccolò Machiavelli, who counseled that “to be feared is safer than to be loved.”

  The clearest indication of this comes from Ignatius’s instructions for the director of novices, often called the most important man in the province. The person must be not simply a man who can give young Jesuits “loving admonition,” but—most striking—someone whom all the novices “may love” and to whom they may “open themselves in confidence.” At the very beginning of Jesuit training, Ignatius wishes to instill a sense of love to engender the confidence needed to help young men progress.

  How different this was from my own experience in the working world. Occasionally it seemed that it was precisely the angry, mean-spirited, and foul-mouthed people who rose to the top. (My workplace was by no means normative: most people in the working world are caring, decent, and compassionate.) Still, imagine my surprise when I observed that Jesuits seemed to grow kinder as they assumed roles in governance. This not only fostered a sense that I wanted to be like them, but also that I would gladly follow them.

  In the Constitutions, Ignatius emphasizes the overarching value of love during each stage of Jesuit training, beginning with the novitiate. And he includes it in the qualities required for a good superior general, to which he devotes several pages. (Many Jesuits at the time believed that Ignatius was unconsciously describing himself.) The superior general needs to be closely united with God, says Ignatius, from whom “charity toward all his neighbors should particularly shine forth . . . and in a special way toward the members of the Society; likewise a genuine humility which will make him highly beloved of God our Lord and of human beings.”

  Look at the words from Ignatius that we’ve quoted just in the last few paragraphs: loving, love, charity, beloved. Ignatius intended the Society to be a loving and supportive place. Isn’t it obvious that a loving and supportive environment where everyone’s talents and skills are respected would be a good place to work? This goes for both religious orders and corporations.

  Chris Lowney’s final characteristic is heroism. “Leaders imagine an inspiring future and strive to shape it rather than passively watching the future happen around them. Heroes extract gold from the opportunities at hand rather than waiting for golden opportunities to be handed to them,” he writes.

  Lowney points to a letter to the Jesuit community in Ferrara, Italy, in which Ignatius counseled his superiors to “endeavor to conceive great resolves and elicit equally great desires.” Once again, Ignatius highlights the place of desire, this time as a way of encouraging people in their dreams.

  And big dreams, too. One of the few important characteristics of Jesuit spirituality that we haven’t yet discussed is the elusive idea of the magis, from the Latin word for the “more” or the “greater.” This complex notion is probably best addressed at this point in this book, after having discussed humility and spiritual poverty. The magis means doing the more, the greater, for God. When you work, give your all. When you make plans, plan boldly. And when you dream, dream big. But, as David Fleming recently wrote to me, the magis is comparative. The more, not the most. The greater, not the greatest. “Ignatius never works with superlatives,” said Fleming. “When we want to do the best, we may get frozen. If we want to do what might be better, we are able to choose.”

  The magis does not mean you act foolishly or unrealistically. Nor do you do these great things for yourself or even for the glory of the Society of Jesus. Rather, you strive to do great things for God. Thus the phrase used by Ignatius as a criterion for choosing, which has become an unofficial Jesuit motto: Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam. For the greater glory of God.

  Built into the Ignatian way, then, is the desire for the magis. Ultimately, “eliciting great desires” and inviting people to think big is the seed for accomplishing great things for God.

  One historical example of the magis in action served as the inspiration for the 1986 movie The Mission. Perhaps the most well-known film based on the Society of Jesus, The Mission starred Jeremy Irons, Robert De Niro, and Liam Neeson as priests and brothers working in
the Jesuit Reductions of seventeenth-century South America. During that time, Jesuit priests and brothers began to gather the native peoples, often the target of ruthless slave traders, into organized villages. The term “reductions,” reducciones, comes from the desire to “reduce” the sprawl of the local settlements into a smaller area as a way to protect them from slave traders and more easily introduce them to Christianity.

  “We have worked hard to arrange all this,” wrote the real-life Roque Gonzalez, S.J., in 1613, of his work with the Guaraní peoples, “but with even greater zest and energy—in fact with all our strength— we have worked to build temples to Our Lord, not only those made by hands but spiritual temples as well, namely the souls of these Indians.”

  In these villages, scattered throughout present-day Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay, the Jesuits taught a variety of crafts, leading to an unprecedented flowering of indigenous Christian art, inspired by the European Jesuits but creatively translated into the artistic idiom of the local peoples. In A History of the Society of Jesus, William Bangert describes a typical village in its heyday:

  From a central plaza, pointing north, south, east and west and built of the material of the area, even stone and adobe, spread the homes of the people, who sometimes numbered up to 10,000. Close by stood the assembly of workshops with tools for carpentry, masonry, metal work. Behind the homes stretched the fruit orchards, the pasture land for cattle, and the farms which provided wheat, rice, sugar cane, and cotton. In the church, the noblest edifice of all and the center of community life, the Indians, instructed in the dignity of the liturgy and inspired by the beauty of the altar, sang their hymns and played musical instruments. . . . To establish such vibrant centers of faith . . . the Jesuits brought, in addition to the sacraments and the word of God, their skills as metallurgists, cattle raisers, architects, farmers and masons.

  Some of these immense stone churches, or their ruins, located deep in the jungles of South America, are popular tourist attractions today; others still serve as working parishes for the local peoples, who follow the faith introduced to their ancestors three centuries ago. Here is a clear legacy of the magis: people who were, in difficult circumstances, trying to do the more, the greater, the better for God and for God’s people.

  The magis also lies behind more unsung achievements: the high-school teacher who spends hours painstakingly grading exams; the college campus minister driving a bus filled with boisterous students on a service trip to Appalachia; the priest who carefully guides a couple through the preparation for their wedding. This way of fulfilling the magis may be less dramatic than, say, the Jesuit Reductions, but no less important.

  But by no means is the magis confined to the accomplishments of Jesuits or members of religious orders or priests. Anyone who dreams of doing great things for God can live out the magis—whether you are a father caring for your young child, a middle-aged woman nursing your aging parent, or an inner-city teacher working overtime to tutor a needy student. Great works are often quiet works.

  In addition to Lowney’s four pillars for organizations, institutions, and businesses, I would add three more to this list of “best practices” for a more specific group: believers in the working world.

  The first is an appreciation of the dignity of work.

  One of the most overlooked aspects of Christian spirituality is the fact that Jesus worked. And I don’t mean simply preaching, healing the sick, and performing all those miracles, like stilling the storm, turning water into wine, and raising the dead. I mean something that took place earlier in his life.

  We know almost nothing about the time in Jesus’ life between the ages of twelve and thirty. All the Gospel of Luke has to say is, “Jesus increased in wisdom and in years” (2:52). What was Jesus doing? Working. According to Luke, Jesus followed his foster father in his trade as a tekton, usually translated as “carpenter” but also as “craftsman.” (Scholars say he may also have been what we would call today a “day laborer.”) In his time this could have meant not only working with wood, which was scarce in the area, but also doing day jobs—building walls, hoeing fields, and so on. As a boy, he was probably apprenticed to Joseph in the carpentry shop at Nazareth. Because little is known about this time, it is often called Jesus’ “hidden life.”

  Jesus was a craftsman and a businessman. Working as a carpenter would have meant selecting the right kind of wood, negotiating a fair price with his clients, traveling to different households and towns, and doing a solid day’s work. It’s not surprising that so many of his parables have to do with farmers, fishermen, farm managers, and day laborers. Jesus knew what it meant to work.

  All work has dignity. No job, when done freely, is ignoble. Part of our Jesuit novitiate training was doing “low and humble tasks” in the house, like cleaning toilets, mopping floors, and washing dishes. Two of the greatest Jesuit saints, close friends we have already met, did those kinds of work: Alphonsus Rodríguez tended the door at the College in Majorca, Spain. His friend, Peter Claver, the “slave of the slaves,” worked to exhaustion bringing food to the slave ships of Cartagena. No work done freely and with a good intention is undignified. And was Jesus any less the Son of God when he was doing manual labor?

  Understanding the dignity of work comes when we realize that we are, as theologians say, “cocreators” with God. In the Spiritual Exercises Ignatius asks us to imagine ourselves “laboring” with God and God “laboring” on our behalf. We work with God to build a better world. And God sees the fruit of our labor, even if others cannot. Think of Joseph, the carpenter who taught Jesus his craft, a man given no lines to say in the New Testament and whose life remains almost completely hidden. Through his silent work he was able to help fashion, as the Jesuit theologian John Haughey says, “the instrument most needed for the salvation of the world.”

  Joseph’s work was of supreme importance—even though others may not have seen this at the time. How similar this is to the many millions of people who do hidden work today: spending long hours working to put their kids through school; taking on an extra job to save money to care for an elderly parent or relative; working to exhaustion scrubbing floors, doing multiple loads of laundry, and spending hours over a stove for their families. Even if their efforts are hidden from others, they are seen by the One whose gaze matters most.

  Here’s a parable about this that I like: An elderly stone-carver was working in a medieval cathedral on a marble statue of a saint. He spent many days carefully carving the intricate folds of her dress, on the back of the statue. First he used a large chisel, then a smaller one, and then sanded it down with great care. Another stone-carver noticed what he was doing and realized that the statue would be placed in a dark niche, its back facing the wall, his friend’s handiwork hidden. “Why are you doing that hard work?” his friend asked. “No one will see it.”

  “God will,” he said.

  The Dignity of Work

  Karl Rahner, the German Jesuit, spoke of the value of hidden work—in a meditation called “Why Become or Remain a Jesuit?”

  I think of brothers I myself have known—of my friend Alfred Delp, who with hands chained [in a German prison for opposing Hitler] signed his declaration of final membership in the Society; of one who in a village in India that is unknown to Indian intellectuals helps poor people to dig their wells; of another who for long hours in the confessional listens to the pain and torment of ordinary people who are far more complex than they appear on the surface. I think of one who in Barcelona is beaten by police along with his students without the satisfaction of actually being a revolutionary and savoring its glory; of one who assists daily in the hospital at the bedside of death until that unique event becomes for him a dull routine; of the one who in prison must proclaim over and over again the message of the Gospel with never a token of gratitude, who is more appreciated for the handout of cigarettes than for the words of the Good News he brings; of the one who with difficulty and without any clear evidence of success plods a
way at the task of awakening in just a few men and women a small spark of faith, of hope and of charity.

  The second Ignatian insight into work is acceptance of failure. While we should use our self-awareness, ingenuity, love, and heroism, there is no guarantee that we will always succeed. Accepting this—on the job, in the home, or in life—is an important way to embrace what Walter Ciszek termed the “reality of the situation” and understand our own humility and poverty of spirit.

  One of the most powerful stories I’ve heard on this topic comes from Jim, a kind-hearted Jesuit brother from Kentucky, who taught social work at Loyola University in Chicago. Jim once told me the story of Carol, whom he met at a social-service center he founded at a parish in Los Angeles.

  Carol, a former model who had fallen on hard times, visited the center one morning and met Jim. When she asked for a pair of jeans, he brought her to another volunteer, who led Carol into the clothes distribution room. A few minutes later, Jim heard a commotion. Carol was drunkenly running through the building, half-naked, with her pants falling off, complaining about her jeans and screaming expletives at the staff.

  Jim took Carol outside and calmly explained that she was welcome but that she needed to remain sober. He offered her a cup of coffee and asked if she understood their “deal.” She stared at him and said, “The coffee is cold. And you’re mean!”

  During Jim’s three years at the center, Carol visited at least thirty times, sometimes drunk, sometimes angry, sometimes sober. When she was lucid, said Jim, her former beauty (both inner and outer) would shine forth, and she was full of humor and good insights. Over time he got to know Carol well: the two talked about her family, her background, her battle with alcoholism, and her soured career dreams.

  Once, Jim got a call from her sister, asking if Jim had seen Carol lately. He hadn’t. “You know, she considers your center her home, don’t you?” she said.