The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything (31 page)

Competition is usually present among friends, siblings, neighbors, coworkers, or anywhere two or three are gathered, to borrow a line from the Gospels. During my philosophy and theology studies, some competitiveness was healthy. Whenever I saw my organized friend Dave, who always kept his notes neatly collated in pristine blue binders, start studying a few days before a test, I knew it was time for me to study. Dave’s industriousness prompted me to do a better job.

But too much competition is poisonous. The competitiveness that leads to wishing ill for the other is the beginning of the end of friendship.

Father Shelton lists one more aspect to a healthy friendship. You have to learn when to maintain a
discreet silence
. Sometimes our friends or family members don’t need our advice. Or at least not right at that moment.

My friend Steve,
another
president of a Jesuit high school, this one in New York City, agrees. Steve has many friends, thanks to his ebullient good humor and his preternatural ability to remember birthdays, names of spouses, and even names of pets. His friends know to expect comments like, “Isn’t today your mom’s birthday?”

Steve talked about discretion in friendships: “I’m very direct and like to get to the point,” he said, “and I like to have the kinds of conversations that get to the heart of things, especially in the middle of a busy life. But you also have to be discreet: learning when to bring something up, or file it away for a better time—a time when it would be good for
the other
to hear it, not necessarily for you to say it.”

To Shelton’s recommendations, I would add a few more. First, friends give one another freedom to
change
. The person that we knew a few years ago, in high school, college, at work, or in the novitiate, may have changed utterly. It’s important not to force the person to be who he or she was years ago—besides, it’s impossible. This is part of the freedom we can give to our friends. And to spouses, too. One married friend recently told me, “Probably the biggest killer of marriages is the lack of freedom to grow and change.”

Second, friendship is
welcoming
. It welcomes others and is not exclusive. That sounds reasonable enough, doesn’t it? But for Jesuits “exclusive” is a loaded word.

Throughout much of the twentieth century, some Jesuit superiors inveighed against “particular friendships.” Too much “exclusivity” or “particularity” among young Jesuits was thought to lead to, or foster, overly close bonds and perhaps encourage gay men to break their vows of chastity. Jesuit superiors discouraged exclusive relationships by requiring that during recreation periods, when novices strolled the novitiate grounds, there should always be at least three men in any group.
Numquam duo, semper tres,
went the oft-quoted Latin saying: Never two, always three.

This attitude reflected the general misunderstanding about homosexuality (that is, the wrongheaded notion that gay men couldn’t live celibately or enjoy close friendships with one another). More important, it reflected a general misunderstanding about friendship. Having a very close friend is a blessing, not a curse.

But there was a healthy insight here that we should not overlook: Jesuit superiors recognized that too much exclusivity in friendships could lead men to become isolated and separate from the larger community. When a friendship turns in on itself and excludes others, it becomes less healthy, sometimes prone to obsessive attention, building up unrealistic expectations, and causing frustration on both sides.

You might ask yourself a few questions to guard against an unhealthy “exclusivity.” Do you hesitate to welcome other people into your friendship? Are you jealous when your friend spends time with other friends? Do you feel that the person needs to always be available to you? If your answers are yes, then you may need to remind yourself that your friend does not exist simply to be your friend.

This is true for your friendship with God, too. As Maureen Conroy, R.S.M., says in
The Discerning Heart,
“As we grow in mutual relationship with God, we want to share with others our life-giving love.” Our friendship with God is not exclusive, but inclusive—welcoming.

Third, friendships need to be leavened with
humor
. One of the most important parts of friendship is simply having fun, enjoying oneself, and having a good laugh—all elements of a healthy psychology and spirituality. Friendships are fun—a word you don’t hear much in spiritual circles—and part of fun is humor and laughter.

So good friends remind you not to take yourself with such deadly seriousness. My friend Chris was once listening to me bemoan some insignificant problem. After a few minutes of complaining, I said, with mock seriousness, “My life is such a cross!”

Without missing a beat, he said, “Yes, but for you or for others?” It was a great one-liner that helped to put things in perspective. When I get too focused on my own problems, I like to remember Chris’s light—but meaningful—joke. Humor helps us to deflate our overblown egos.

Fourth, friends need to
help
one another. It’s not all about conversation, sharing, and listening! Sometimes your friend needs you to
do
something: visit him in the hospital, help him move a sofa, babysit his children, lend him some jumper cables, give him a ride to the airport. This is part of the fundamental work of
helping souls
and is part of everyone’s call. As David Fleming writes in
What Is Ignatian Spirituality?,
“Helping does not require extensive training and a fistful of academic degrees.”

G
ROWING IN
G
RATITUDE

So far the type of friendship that I’ve described sounds almost utilitarian: friends should do
these
things and avoid
those
things in order to produce
this
kind of friendship. But a friendship, indeed any loving relationship, is not a machine designed to produce happiness. Perhaps a better metaphor is flowers in a beautiful garden. Unless you’re a bee, the flowers are not there to
do
something for you, as much as to be enjoyed.

That brings me to the final part of our discussion: gratitude.

The way of Ignatius celebrates gratitude.
The Spiritual Exercises
is crammed with references to expressing gratitude for God’s gifts. “I will consider how all good things and gifts descend from above,” he writes in the Fourth Week, “from the Supreme and Infinite Power above . . . just as the rays come down from the sun.” The examen, as we’ve mentioned, begins with gratitude. For Ignatius,
ingratitude
was the “most abominable of sins,” indeed “the cause, the beginning and origin of all sins and misfortunes.”

When I asked Steve about friendship, the first thing he mentioned was finding gratitude during the examination of conscience. “When I think about friendship, the first thing that comes to mind is finding God in all things,” he said. “That surfaces during my examen, when frequently God directs me to things that
God
thinks are important—rather than what I might be focusing on. Often that turns out to be friends and interactions with other Jesuits—in even the simplest of ways: a random comment in a corridor or a homily from another Jesuit. The examen helps me to be more mindful of, and more grateful for, my friends.”

Paula noted wryly that while everyone will
say
they are grateful for their friends, the examen makes it easier to focus on that gratitude. “The examen
always
helps in friendships and in family relationships,“ she said, ”because it helps with gratitude.“ For Sister Maddy, even days when friends aren’t present are occasions for being grateful for them. ”Every night during my examen, I remember my gratitude for friends—even if I’ve not been in contact with them on that particular day. I’m grateful for them wherever they are.”

Paul, the rector of a large Jesuit community in Boston, said that gratitude was the most neglected part of friendship. For many years, Paul was in charge of training young Jesuits in Boston and Chicago. He has a lifetime of experience in counseling others in their spiritual lives. “One of the most important parts of friendship is living in gratitude for the gift, and growing into that kind of gratitude,” he said.

Paul noted that one common problem in Jesuit friendships stemmed from a lack of gratitude. Without gratitude, you take friendship for granted. “You forget that it takes a little effort. And the small things matter: making time to call, staying in touch. If people can name a friendship and can appreciate it, they are more inclined to work at it.”

True friendships are hard to come by, Paul said, and they take work. And patience. “There are a small number of people who, for whatever reason, easily make and keep friends. But the vast majority of the human race has to ask for friendship and be patient in waiting for it to come. When we imagine friendships, we tend to imagine things happening instantly. But like anything that’s rich and wonderful, you grow into it.”

This chapter may have helped you to find ways to strengthen or deepen your appreciation of relationships with family and friends. But what about those readers for whom talk of friendship just reminds them of their loneliness? If this is where you are, you can still enjoy God’s friendship in prayer, seeing how God is active in your work, your reading, your hobbies.

Still, what can we say to those who long for a good friend?

It would be wrong to downplay the pain of loneliness: I have known many lonely people whose lives are often filled with sadness. Perhaps one thing I could suggest is to remain open to the possibility of meeting new friends and not move to despair, trusting, as much as you can, that God wants you someday to find a friend. The very desire for friendship is an invitation from God to reach out to others. Trust that God desires community for you, though that goal may seem far away.

“For those who wonder why it’s not happening faster in their lives,” Paul said, “I think that it’s more important to love and take the first step. And it also may seem that most people have to spend their lives giving more than receiving.”

“But at the end,” Paul said, “even with all the work that is involved, even if you only find one friend in your whole life, it’s worth it.”

S
T
. I
GNATIUS WAS CRYSTAL
clear about the place of obedience in the life of a Jesuit. Here’s how he began his discussion of the vow in the
Constitutions,
in a section called “What Pertains to Obedience.”

In other words, we Jesuits should be distinguished by our obedience so that even the
indication
of a superior’s intention should be enough reason to act. What’s more, we should receive the command from the superior “as if it were coming from Christ,” since we are practicing obedience out of love of God. We should be ready to set aside anything we are doing—even being “ready to leave unfinished any letter”—once we know what the superior wants.

Most people find that impossible to fathom. To quote the writer Kathleen Norris again, most people see obedience as “desirable in dogs but suspect in people.” Many even find the term
superior,
the term for the head of a religious community, freakish. Rick Curry, a Jesuit friend, once ran into a psychiatrist who lived in the same building where Rick kept an office. At the time, Rick was in an elevator with another Jesuit. Rick introduced him. “This is my superior,” said Rick.

After his superior left the elevator, Rick’s friend said, “I wish you wouldn’t
say
things like that!”

Rick said, “What things?”

She said, “He’s not your superior! You’re every
bit
as good as he is!”

Rick laughed and explained to her what the term meant.

Let me do some explaining, too, about the vow of obedience, before we move on to how the Jesuit experience with obedience might help you in your everyday life.

O
BEDIENCE AS
L
ISTENING

Obedience was a normal part of religious life in the days of Ignatius. Once his tight-knit band of friends decided to become a religious order, it would have been unthinkable to arrange things in any other way. It has always been, and remains, part of almost every Catholic religious order.

The word comes from the Latin
oboedire,
which includes the root for “to hear.” Obedience means hearing or listening. As with the vows of poverty and chastity, obedience is designed to help us follow the example of Jesus, who listened to, and was obedient to, God the Father.

Men and women in religious orders believe that God is at work not only through their own daily lives and prayer, but also through the decisions of their superiors, who are also trying to decide the right course of action. We believe that God’s Spirit is at work through the decisions of the superior who is, like the Jesuit under his care, trying to “listen” to God.

That doesn’t mean that the superior arrives at his decisions alone. Superior and Jesuit together try to discern God’s desires. When a Jesuit is about to be “missioned” to a particular work, the superior is attentive to the Jesuit’s own desires, since he knows—and the reader knows by now—that this is one way that God’s desires are made known. This is what the founder of the Jesuits intended.

The Jesuits William Barry and Robert Doherty note in
Contemplatives in Action: The Jesuit Way
that Ignatius’s insistence on individual discernment is surprising when you consider how hierarchical and authoritarian were the circles in which Ignatius moved—courts of kings and nobles, the military, the academy, the church. Nonetheless, they write, “Ignatius also expected that God’s will could be made manifest through the experience of the men themselves.”

How does a superior know a man’s desires? Through a practice called the “account of conscience.” Once a year the provincial meets with each Jesuit under his care to discuss his work, his community life, his vows, his friendships, and his prayer. Afterward the superior has a clearer idea of the Jesuit’s interior life and so is better able to mission him.

After a decision is made, if a Jesuit feels that he has not been adequately listened to, he can return to the superior and appeal. This is known as “representing.” If that fails to satisfy, the Jesuit can appeal to a higher authority—all the way up to the superior general. But in the end—unless it is a matter of conscience—the Jesuit is bound by his vows to obey. After prayer, conversation, and discernment, even if you think it’s a poor decision, you must accept it.

Or, as the apocryphal Jesuit superior is supposed to have said, “I discern, you discern, we discern, but I decide!”

Since around the 1960s, Jesuit superiors have recaptured Ignatius’s original notion that not only is God at work through a man’s desires, hopes, and talents, but also that a person will flourish more in a job he enjoys. Most Jesuits teaching in a university, for example, have spent years preparing for their work and are happy to use their academic training—and their superiors are happy to send them there. But attentiveness to a man’s desires and talents has long been part of Jesuit discernment. “If people among us [show] a zeal and aptitude for a particular work, say foreign missions,” wrote the English Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins in 1874, “they can commonly get employed on them.”

Following the will of one’s superiors is usually a joyful experience, as one feels that one’s desires and the needs of the larger community are aligned. But there are times when you are asked to go somewhere that you would not choose on your own. Or do something that you would rather not do.

Many readers who have a problem accepting this aspect of obedience may have an easier time accepting a more practical reason: someone needs to be in charge. Managing a worldwide religious order, as Ignatius did, required one person, one ultimate authority, to guide the work. So the vow of obedience is always, as are the other vows, “apostolic,” that is, it helps us to carry out our assignments more effectively.

Actually, I’m always surprised by the number of people who scoff at obedience in religious orders yet live it religiously in their own lives. Many people who work in professional settings report to a manager who gives directives that they would often not choose on their own. When I worked for General Electric, I saw many longtime employees transferred to faraway locations, yet they would never think of complaining because they were so devoted to the company. These decisions are seen as necessary to achieve the organization’s goals—as are decisions in a religious order.

And having spent six years working in corporate America, I can say that in the Jesuits you have
more
say in these matters than in the corporate world. Your religious superior believes that your own desires, insights, and conclusions are valuable, whereas with management in the business world this is sometimes not the case.

In addition to the standard vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience taken by members of religious orders, Ignatius asked many Jesuits to profess what is called the “fourth vow.” That special vow relates to the pope. At the close of his training, a Jesuit promises “special obedience to the sovereign pontiff regarding the missions.”

What was the thinking behind this vow? Worldwide mobility. Ignatius saw the fourth vow not so much focused on the person of the pope (though he expected his men to have profound respect for the pope), but flowing from an understanding that the pope knew where the needs were the greatest, by virtue of his overall knowledge of the universal church. “The vow assumed,” writes John O’Malley in
The First Jesuits,
“that the pope had the broad vision required for the most effective deployment in the ‘vineyard of the Lord.’ ”

“It’s a vow to be a missionary, to be ‘on mission,’ to ‘travel to any part of the world,’ ” said Father O’Malley in a recent letter.

The will of Ignatius was clear: a Jesuit’s obedience was a hallmark of religious life. But besides the efficient running of a religious order, what are some other benefits of obedience?

Poverty frees you to live simply and frees you from worry about material possessions. Chastity frees you to love people freely and move around more easily. Obedience is about freedom, too. It frees you from excessive self-interest, careerism, and pride and allows you to respond more readily to the larger needs of the community. Rather than wondering,
What’s the best way for me to get ahead?,
obedience asks you to trust that your superiors, who presumably have a better idea of larger needs, will be able to answer another question: What’s the best use of this man’s talents, given the needs of the community?

Obedience frees you for that kind of service.

How does this work in practice? If you asked most Jesuits about obedience, they would talk to you about experiences in being missioned, or sent to a new work. The reason that St. Francis Xavier went to “the Indies” and St. Isaac Jogues to “New France” was not simply because they wanted to go, but because they were
missioned
there. Their vow of obedience gave their work the added dimension of being under the care of God. Like all Jesuits, they trusted that their work was as close as they could possibly come to following God’s desires—since it flowed from their desire to serve God and was confirmed by their superior. In short, they believed that God took their vows as seriously as they did, because the actual vow is made to God, to whom all Jesuits are obedient.

W
ITH AS
M
UCH
L
OVE AND
C
HARITY AS
P
OSSIBLE

How does obedience play out in the everyday life of a Jesuit? Do superiors simply order you around the house, or arbitrarily send you on far-flung assignments?

The answer is different than it would have been a few decades ago. In the past, American Jesuits sometimes found out their assignments not during a conversation with their superiors but when the yearly list of assignments (called the
status,
pronounced in the Latin way) was posted everyJuly 31, the Feast of St. Ignatius Loyola.

One elderly Jesuit told me a story about a province
status
that was posted in the late 1950s. He scanned the list and saw, to his puzzlement, that he had been assigned to teach chemistry. Well, he thought, there is clearly a mistake. Not only had he never taught chemistry—he had never even studied chemistry. He realized what must have happened: there was another Jesuit with the same last name who had majored in chemistry in college. That Jesuit had been assigned to teach English—what my friend had studied. So my friend made an appointment with the provincial to “represent.”

“Father Provincial,” said the young Jesuit. “I think you’ve made a mistake.”

When my friend told me this story, he interrupted himself, roared with laughter, and said, “Well, that was the
last
thing
he
wanted to hear!” Annoyed by the young Jesuit’s presumption, the provincial said that there had been no mistake: he was assigned to teach chemistry in one of the province’s high schools.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I taught chemistry for a year,” he laughed. “And you know what? I got pretty good at it, too!” It was a misuse of power that my friend handled with grace.

Some Jesuits have nursed longstanding grudges about the bad decisions of superiors. The first editor of
America
magazine, on the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination, stood up before a group of Jesuits, friends, and family and boldly announced, “All I have ever accomplished in the Society of Jesus has been despite my superiors!”

During much of the twentieth century, the emphasis was placed more on the superior’s than the individual’s discernment. But since the Second Vatican Council, when religious orders were asked to revisit the original spirit of their orders, Jesuits have reappropriated this essential piece of Ignatian wisdom: the Spirit works through everybody. Today decisions come after a long process of conversation and prayer.

But what would happen if you
still
don’t agree? Well, you can “represent” and explain your reasons one last time. In the rare instance when a serious dispute arises, a superior might order you to accept his decision “under obedience.” In that case, the challenge is to find a sense of peace and to trust that God is at work even in decisions with which you don’t agree.

Underneath these decisions is the superior’s responsibility to pray to discover God’s desires and to carry out his decisions with love for the Jesuit. As Barry and Doherty write, “The practice of obedience in Jesuit governance, obviously, is not supposed to be authoritarian and arbitrary. . . . Ignatius wants superiors to act with love, even when they must do something painful for another.” For example, asking a man to do something he would rather not do.

That includes the most painful choice of all—the decision to dismiss someone from the Jesuits. Indeed, Ignatius carefully outlined the steps to be taken after the decision is made to ask someone to leave. This particular example of a compassionate superior could be profitably used by the corporate world.

First, said Ignatius, the superior should ensure that the man is able to leave the house with the respect of his peers, without any “shame or dishonor.” Second, the superior should send him away “with as much love and charity for [the community] and as much consoled in our Lord as is possible.” Third, he should “guide him in taking up some other good means of serving God, in religious life or outside . . . assisting him with advice and prayers and whatever . . . may seem best.”

Ironically, this no-nonsense to-do list is among the most touching of all of Ignatius’s writings. The gentle heart of Ignatius is revealed more openly than anywhere else in the
Constitutions
. Ignatius sees even this wrenching decision under the governance of love. (Compare that with the way firings and layoffs are sometimes handled in the business world.)