The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything

by James Martin

  After three years, Jim’s work at the center came to a close. By way of wrapping things up, he tried to say good-bye to as many of the guests of the center as possible. On his last day, he walked to the post office to mail a package.

  On his way, he saw Carol. She was with her “friend,” a man who had physically abused her in the past.Jim said he “froze in his tracks.” He thought about crossing the street to say good-bye but just stood there. Carol finally motioned to Jim with a slight wave and kept walking with her companion.

  Jim recounted the end of the story for me recently in a letter. “I wanted to leave the parish on a ‘high,’ knowing that I had done good things and tried to help people in need. As Carol turned the corner and walked out of sight, my concern for her turned into tears streaming down my face. I was sad because I had hoped she would be on the path to a healthier and more whole life, and I was disappointed and frustrated because she was in the company of a man with whom she swore she wouldn’t meet again, and I was angry at him for luring her back.”

  All Jim could do when he returned to the rectory was silently whisper good-bye to Carol. “As I sat on the rectory steps, I felt the only thing I could offer her were prayers for her happiness and well-being.”

  No matter how hard we work, there are some things we are powerless to change, and failure does not lie in laziness or foolishness or poor planning. Work can sometimes be a well of great suffering.

  Men and women who are laid off suddenly, whose businesses collapse, who face failures in the workplace know this. The mystery of suffering invades the working world, and this insight must be an essential part of a spirituality of work: in some aspects we are powerless, and our efforts seem fruitless. Here the mystery of suffering comes to the fore.

  But even work that seems fruitless on the surface can still be directed to God. In his novel Exiles, about the Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins, Ron Hansen includes a lovely passage from one of Hopkins’s actual retreat journals. It is a prayer offering his work to God, though the writing itself might seem fruitless: “Also in some meditations today I earnestly asked our Lord to watch over my compositions that they might do me no harm through the enmity or imprudence of any man or my own; that He would have them as His own and employ or not employ them as He should see fit. And this I believe is heard.”

  Christian Failure

  St. Francis Xavier died on a small island six miles off the coast of China, his ultimate destination in sight. Not having reached his goal, Xavier felt himself something of a failure. Here is Walter Burghardt, in his book Saints and Sanctity, reflecting on times of failure even after we have worked hard.

  This is dreadfully difficult for a human being to accept— even for a Xavier. Just because I am trying to do God’s work with every ounce of my being is no guarantee that my plans will prosper. There is no guarantee that an effective Christian apostle will not be cut down in his prime. . . . There is no guarantee that because you have given yourself to a Christian marriage, your oneness will be lasting . . . that because you love God deeply, you will not lose your job, your home, your family, your health. . . . There is no guarantee that because you believe, you will not doubt; because you hope, you will not despond; because you love, your love will not grow cold. There is no guarantee that a Xavier will reach China. In this sense there is a Christian frustration, a Christian failure. . . .

  You do your Christian task as God gives you to see it; the rest, the increase, is in His hands. God still uses what the world calls foolish to shame the wise, still uses what the world calls weak to shame its strength, still uses what the world calls low and insignificant and unreal to nullify its realities. . . . In this sense, there is no Christian frustration and no Christian failure.

  The third aspect is reliance on God.

  St. Ignatius was a hard worker who nonetheless knew that everything he had accomplished was thanks to God. This attitude is freeing, since we recognize that we’re not working on our own, we have a partner in our labors, and, moreover, we cannot do everything on our own. Jim’s experience with Carol is a reminder of this: he couldn’t “save” her. Relying on God brings both humility and freedom. As my spiritual director said, “There is a Messiah, and it’s not you.”

  God could do precious little if He could not sustain me one more day.

  —St. Claude La Colombière, S.J. (1641–1682)

  Those are a few ways that the way of Ignatius can help you in your work, as you live out your vocation in the world.

  But vocation is not just about working. It’s also about being. It’s not just about what you do, but, more important, who you are. So let’s look at the question “Who should I be?”

  BE WHO YOU IS!

  Each of us is called to a unique vocation in life, based on the desires that God plants within us, as well as our talents, skills, and personalities. This is one reason why Ignatius speaks of a God who wants to enter into a deep relationship with us and of the Creator’s dealing “immediately with the creature.” God knows that our deepest desires are those that will bring joy to us and to the world.

  But this is about more than just work, a job, or even a career. Vocation may have little to do with one’s actual work. For the deepest vocation is to become who you are, to become your “true self,” the person whom God created and calls you to be.

  Part of this path is accepting that God loves us already. That God loves us as we are. Man or woman, young or old, wealthy or poor, we are all loved by God. No matter how you see yourself, God sees you as his beloved. Hard to believe? Then let me tell you a story about acceptance.

  WONDERFULLY MADE

  Rick Curry is a gregarious and quick-witted Jesuit who founded the National Theatre Workshop of the Handicapped. He also received his doctorate in theater studies (and is the one who introduced me to the history of “Jesuit theater”). Rick, who was born without a right arm, entered the Jesuits after high school. For a time he was an actor. The genesis of the National Theater Workshop came when Rick went to audition for a commercial.

  When he met the casting agent in her office, she noticed his one arm and said, “Is this a joke? Who sent you?” And he said, “What do you mean? I’m here for the audition.” And she said, “Oh please. Tell me who put you up to this. This is hysterical.” She didn’t see him as an actor, or barely a human being, but, quite literally, a joke. This convinced him of the need for a school for handicapped actors.

  For many years his theater provided disabled actors for various auditions. Once, a casting director called and said, “We want a double amputee for a role in a television show.” Rick asked, “Do you want someone without his arms or legs?” The casting director said, “I’m not sure. Does it matter?” And Rick said, “Well, it does to him!”

  But I want to tell you another story about Rick. When he was a little boy, in the 1950s, the preserved right forearm of St. Francis Xavier came to Philadelphia. Strange as this may seem to non-Catholics, this relic is particularly well known: it’s the arm that the Jesuit used to baptize thousands of people during his missionary days in Africa, India, and Japan.

  Rick’s first-grade teacher, a Catholic sister, thought it would be a good idea for Rick to see the arm—though she didn’t expect there would be any sort of miraculous outcome. Neither did his mother, though she wrote a letter to permit Rick to be excused from class to see the relic.

  But his Catholic-school classmates were praying hard for a miracle. Maybe Rick would be healed—and become like all the other children in his class. So when Rick’s mother picked him up to drive him to the cathedral downtown, his class was thrilled.

  A huge line wound up and down the aisles of the cathedral. Because of the crowd, officials announced that visitors would be able only to touch the reliquary, the glass box that held Francis’s arm. You wouldn’t be able to kiss the reliquary, as some pious Catholics had hoped. But when several priests saw the boy without a right arm, they said to his mother, “Oh, no, he can kiss it!” Rick, however, desired no
such “healing.”

  So he kissed the glass case, but pressed the stump of his right arm against himself—hoping that it would not grow.

  On his way back home, on the trolley car, he kept checking his arm. There wasn’t any change. No miracle. When he returned to class, his classmates told him how disappointed they were. Perhaps, they said, he wasn’t worthy of a miracle.

  But someone else had a very different reaction. When he returned home that night, his sister Denise, who would later become a nun, was hiding behind the drapes of the living-room windows. She peeked out. When she saw Rick, she was delighted. “Oh great!” she said. “I’m so happy that nothing happened. Because I like you the way you are!”

  This is the way that God loves us: as we are.

  Rick never forgot that affirmation. It helped him to see his disability as a gift, as an entry into the humanity of others, and as a reminder of the call to be grateful for all of life. He told me recently that a disability was a negative “only to the extent that you absorb the negative impressions of others.”

  So maybe a miracle did happen that day.

  Self-acceptance is the first step to holiness. But for many the path to self-acceptance can be arduous. Men, women, and children in ethnic or social minorities, with physical disabilities, with dysfunctional family backgrounds, with addictions, or those who feel unattractive, uneducated or undesirable may struggle for many years before accepting themselves as beloved children of God.

  But the journey is essential. Many gay men and lesbians, for example, have told me that the real beginning of their spiritual path was accepting themselves as gay men and women—that is, the way that God has made them. Coming to see themselves in this way, and, more important, allowing God to love them as they are, not as society might want them to be, or think they should be, is an important step in their relationship with God.

  “For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb,” says Psalm 139. “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” God loves us as we are because that’s how God made us. This is something of what the psalmist may have meant, and what Rick’s sister meant, too.

  COMPARE AND DESPAIR

  The primary difficulty in accepting ourselves and valuing our individuality is the false belief that to become holy, or useful, or happy, we have to become someone else—or become perfect. The young mother who cares for her children may say to herself sadly, “I’ll never be like Mother Teresa,” when her vocation is to be a caring mother. The lawyer or doctor or schoolteacher who reads about St. Francis Xavier may say, “I’ll never be like him.” But they are not meant to be Mother Teresa or St. Francis Xavier, estimable as they were. They are meant to be themselves.

  That means letting go of the wish to become someone else and remembering that your own vocation—not someone else’s—is the path to happiness. You don’t need to use anyone else’s map to heaven, because God has already placed within your soul all the directions you need.

  It also means joyfully accepting your own personality and dreams. One of the greatest bits of advice I’ve ever received was from a Jesuit spiritual director. At the time (I’ll keep this vague) I was working with an unpleasant person on the job. As time passed, I found myself simply reacting to him: becoming more guarded, more defensive, more cautious, more suspicious, as a way of protecting myself from his bad temper. My reactions were beginning to make me callous and hard. One day I confessed to my spiritual director, “I feel like he is forming me into something I don’t want to be.”

  What I Do Is Me

  It took me many readings of this poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins before realizing how much it is about being who you are.

  As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

  As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

  Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s

  Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

  Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

  Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

  Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,

  Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

  I say móre: the just man justices;

  Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;

  Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—

  Christ—for Chríst plays in ten thousand places,

  Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

  To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

  How often we feel this! Other people, or groups, or situations, we feel, are shaping us into something we wouldn’t choose to be.

  My director said, “Don’t let anyone take from you the freedom to become who God wants you to be.”

  This means you, someone unique, someone loved by God.

  The Almighty Artisan

  A rough and unshapen log has no idea that it can be made into a statue that will be considered a masterpiece, but the carver sees what can be done with it. So many . . . do not understand that God can mold them into saints, until they put themselves into the hands of that almighty Artisan.

  —St. Ignatius Loyola

  It’s easy to see this marvelous individuality in the lives of the holy men and women around us. So far in this book I’ve introduced you to many of my friends. Each of them is very different. John, my Jesuit friend from Gloucester, Massachusetts, was different from my first spiritual director, David. John was more relaxed and laid back; David, more energetic. John was happy to stay home and watch television at night; David was more of a social animal.

  During our novitiate we took several personality tests, designed to help us understand how differently people interacted with the world. One series of tests was structured to determine whether we were extroverts or introverts. The result: I was the only extrovert in the house. That explained a great deal—for example, why after a house party I was energized, but the others were drained and needed to retire to their rooms to recharge. Or why they needed to process information before they spoke, rather than discussing something in order to understand what they were thinking. The tests helped me see that the others who approached life differently weren’t wrong or misguided, but simply different. Or, more accurately, that I was different!

  After we got the results, I grew discouraged. Was I going to be an inadequate Jesuit because I wasn’t an introvert? Not at all, said David. The Society of Jesus needs extroverts also.

  It’s always difficult to avoid comparison with others and to think not only that they have it easier, but that they are somehow holier than you are. So you need to maintain a healthy tension between acceptance and desire. On the one hand, you honor the person God made—with your background, personality, talents, skills, and strengths. On the other, you allow God to move you in new directions, to change, to grow, and to discover who you are meant to be. God has created something wonderful in you, but God is still creating.

  Much of my own journey to self-acceptance involved letting go of the need to be somebody else. Nobody in particular, just a feeling that I needed to be different. Early in the novitiate, I thought that being holy meant a suppressing of my personality, rather than building on it. Eradicating my natural desires and inclinations, rather than asking God to sanctify them. I knew that I wasn’t a holy person, so therefore being holy must mean being a different person. Strange as it sounds, I thought that being myself meant being someone else.

  It is dangerous to make everyone go forward by the same road, and worse to measure others by yourself.

  —St. Ignatius Loyola

  David kept reminding me that I didn’t need to be like anyone else except me. “You do not have to change for God to love you,” as Anthony de Mello said. It took a while for that to sink in. Besides a lingering sense that I wasn’t worthy of being a Jesuit, there was envy involved. At various times in my life, especially when things were not going so well, I have been envious of other people. At heart,
the envy boiled down to this: everyone else has it easier than I do. And so they are obviously happier than I am.

  This is false. And dangerous, too. One tends to compare one’s own life, which is always an obvious mixture of good and bad, with what one falsely perceives as the perfect life of the other. In this way, we minimize our own gifts and graces and maximize the other person’s.

  Ironically, we sometimes do the opposite with problems, shortcomings, and struggles: we maximize our own and minimize the other person’s. Others seem more clever, more attractive, more popular, more relaxed, more athletic, more whatever, than we are, and so therefore (it seems) they lead charmed lives. Likewise, other people, we surmise, face no real problems in their lives. Or if they do face problems, we think, their problems are not as bad as ours.

  But no one leads a charmed life. Everyone’s life is a full measure of graces and blessings—as well as struggles and challenges. “Every house has its problems,” as my mother would say when we would drive through wealthy neighborhoods and envy the lives of the rich. And if we consistently compare our own complicated reality with the supposed perfection of another’s life, is it any wonder that we wish we were other than who we are?

  Compare and despair, as a Jesuit friend likes to say.

  How do you move toward becoming who you are? Here are a few important steps, with some Ignatian highlights, for this lifelong journey of discovery.

  BECOMING YOURSELF

  First, remember that God loves you. As David liked to say, paraphrasing the psalms, “God takes delight in you!” Or as the theologian James Alison suggests, God likes you. If you doubt this, a quick examen of the things for which you’re grateful may help you see the way that God has blessed you, and loves you. Reading the first few verses of Psalm 139—“You knit me together in my mother’s womb”—often helps as well.

  Second, realize that God loves you as an individual, not simply in the abstract. God cares about you personally, much as a close friend would. Remember how God speaks to you in personal, intimate ways, in your daily life and in prayer, which only you can appreciate. This is a sign of God’s personal love for you.