The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life

by James Martin

asked to define Ignatian spirituality, the first thing out of their mouths would most likely be finding God in all things.

“It’s all part of your spiritual life. You can’t put part of your life in a box, stick it on a shelf, and pretend it’s not there. You have to open that box up and trust that God will help you look at what’s inside.”

After “finding God in all things,” the second answer you would probably get from those five hypothetical Jesuits is that Ignatian spirituality is about being a contemplative in action.

insight of Ignatian spirituality is that while peace and quiet are essential to nourish our spiritual lives, most of us aren’t going to quit our jobs and join a monastery to spend our days in constant prayer.

Instead of seeing the spiritual life as one that can exist only if it is enclosed by the walls of a monastery, Ignatius asks you to see the world as your monastery. The third way of understanding the way of Ignatius is as an incarnational spirituality.

More broadly, an incarnational spirituality means believing that God can be found in the everyday events of our lives. God is not just out there. God is right here, too. If you’re looking for God, look around.

“long, loving look at the real.” Incarnational spirituality is about the real.

Finally, Ignatian spirituality is about freedom and detachment.

“disordered affections” is his way of describing whatever keeps us from being free. When Ignatius says that we should be “detached,” he’s talking about not being tied down by unimportant things.

avoid disordered affections. They block the path to detachment, to growing more in freedom, growing as a person, and growing closer to God. If that sounds surprisingly Buddhist, it is: that particular goal has long been a part of many spiritual traditions.

1. Finding God in all things 2. Becoming a contemplative in action 3. Looking at the world in an incarnational way 4. Seeking freedom and detachment

God used even Ignatius’s overweening pride for the good. For no part of a life cannot be transformed by God’s love. Even the aspects of ourselves that we consider worthless, or sinful, can be made worthwhile and holy. As the proverb has it, God writes straight with crooked lines.

When I was a novice, one of my spiritual directors quoted the Scottish philosopher John Macmurray, who contrasted “real religion” and “illusory religion.” The maxim of “illusory religion” is as follows: “Fear not; trust in God and He will see that none of the things you fear will happen to you.” “Real religion,” said Macmurray, has a different maxim: “Fear not; the things you are afraid of are quite likely to happen to you, but they are nothing to be afraid of.”

The way of Ignatius is an invitation to those who have always believed in God, who believe in God but not in religion, who have rejected God, who are coming back to God, who are exploring, and who are confused. Ignatius’s approach meets you on your path and leads you closer to God.

Ignatius began to understand that these feelings and desires might be ways that God was communicating with him. This is not to say that Ignatius found God and women in opposition. Rather, he began to see that his desires of winning fame by impressing others drew him away from God. His desires to surrender to a more generous and selfless way of life drew him toward God. What religious writers call a “grace” was not simply that he had these insights, but that he understood them as coming from God.

Gratitude, peace, and joy are ways that God communicates with us. During these times, we are feeling a real connection with God, though we might not initially identify it as such. The key insight is accepting that these are ways that God is communicating with us. That is, the first step involves a bit of trust.

We tend to think that if we desire something, it is probably something we ought not to want or to have. But think about it: without desire we would never get up in the morning. We would never have ventured beyond the front door. We would never have read a book or learned something new. No desire means no life, no growth, no change. Desire is what makes two people create a third person. Desire is what makes crocuses push up through the late-winter soil. Desire is energy, the energy of creativity, the energy of life itself. So let’s not be too hard on desire. —Margaret Silf, Wise Choices

Desire is a primary way that God leads people to discover who they are and what they are meant to do. On the most obvious level,

In reply, Ignatius would ask, “Do you have the desire for this desire?” Even if you don’t want it, do you want to want it? Do you wish that you were the kind of person that wanted this? Even this can be seen as an invitation from God. It is a way of glimpsing God’s invitation even in the faintest traces of desire.

Nor does holiness mean perfection: the saints were always flawed, limited, human. Holiness always makes its home in humanity.

Holiness in others calls out to the holy parts of ourselves. “Deep calls to deep,” as Psalm 42:7 says.

Gilead, had in mind when she wrote in an article, “What I might call personal holiness is in fact openness to the perception of the holy, in existence itself and above all in one another.”

my favorite image is one from the Islamic tradition, which depicts God as seeking us more than we seek God. It is a hadith qudsi, which Muslim scholars translate as a divine saying revealed by God to the Prophet Muhammad. “And if [my servant] draws nearer to me by a handsbreadth, I draw nearer to him by an arms-length; and if he draws nearer to me by an armslength, I draw nearer to him by a fathom; and if he comes to me walking, I come to him running.”

Here’s the examen in the words of St. Ignatius Loyola, straight from The Spiritual Exercises: The First Point is to give thanks to God our Lord for the benefits I have received. The Second is to ask grace to know my sins and rid myself of them. The Third is to ask an account of my soul from the hour of rising to the present examen, hour by hour or period by period; first as to thoughts, then words, then deeds, in the same order as was given for the particular examination. The Fourth is to ask pardon of God our Lord for my faults. The Fifth is to resolve, with his grace, to amend them. Close with an Our Father.

Peter Fink, S.J., told our class that the emphasis in confession needs to be not on how bad I am, but on how good God is.

gratitude, awareness of sins, review, forgiveness, grace.

The examen was meant for everyone, not just Jesuits. Dorothy Day, the American-born founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, talks about the examen in her journals, published as The Duty of Delight. “St Ignatius says never omit 2 examens, 15 minutes each,” she writes on April 11, 1950. Then she gives her own way of doing it. 1. Thank God for favors. 2. Beg for light [that is, the grace to see clearly] 3. Survey 4. Repent 5. Resolve

Before you begin, as in all prayer, remind yourself that you’re in God’s presence, and ask God to help you with your prayer. 1. Gratitude: Recall anything from the day for which you are especially grateful, and give thanks. 2. Review: Recall the events of the day, from start to finish, noticing where you felt God’s presence, and where you accepted or turned away from any invitations to grow in love. 3. Sorrow: Recall any actions for which you are sorry. 4. Forgiveness: Ask for God’s forgiveness. Decide whether you want to reconcile with anyone you have hurt. 5. Grace: Ask God for the grace you need for the next day and an ability to see God’s presence more clearly.

“In this sense, it is less a matter of searching for God than of allowing oneself to be found by Him in all of life’s situations, where He does not cease to pass and where He allows Himself to be recognized once He has really passed.”

Detachment, freedom, and a sense of humor are signposts on the road to holiness.

Jesuits pray in many ways. Sometimes they compose their own prayers. Here is one from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), the French paleontologist and theologian, asking for the grace to age well. When the signs of age begin to mark my body (and still more when they touch my mind); when the ill that is to diminish me or carry me off strikes from without or is born within me; when the painful moment comes in which I suddenly awaken to the fact that I am ill or growing old; and above all at that last moment when I feel I am losing hold of myself and am absolutely passive within the hands of the great unknown forces that have formed me; in all those dark moments, O God, grant that I may understand that it is you (provided only my faith is strong enough) who are painfully parting the fibers of my being in order to penetrate to the very marrow of my substance and bear me away within yourself.

The poor place themselves close to God, the poor have less between them and God, the poor rely on God, the poor make God their friend, and the poor are often more grateful to God. And so God is close to them. This is one reason why Ignatius asked the Jesuits to love poverty “as a mother.”

chaste person means that our “external expressions” of sexuality will be “under the control of love, with tenderness and full awareness of the other.” Summing up the work of another theologian, Genovesi calls chastity “honesty in sex,” where our physical relationships “truthfully express” the level of personal commitment we have with the other. In other words, the goal of chastity is receiving and giving love.

“Remember,” he wrote to a Jesuit asking for advice, “if we want to be of help to them, we must be careful to regard them with love, to love them in deed and in truth, and to banish from our souls anything that might lessen our love and esteem for them.” That is an astonishing comment in an era of bad feelings.

“Take care, take care never to shut your heart against anyone.”

friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails.”

God may be to act as a leaven in unhealthy work

But in those discussions one group is missing: the poor. For at least two reasons: First, their presence is a reminder of the inability of the capitalist system to provide for all, and so they represent a silent reproach to the capitalist “way of proceeding.” Second, the material needs of the poor remind us of our responsibility to care for them. For both reasons, the poor appear, in the words of Pope John Paul II, as “a burden, as irksome intruders trying to consume what others have produced.”

Dick Meyer says in his book on American culture, Why We Hate Us, “We have used our affluence and abundance to build screens and false idols that obscure what matters most, what is authentic, what is unmediated.” That authenticity includes the poor.

corporate lawyer, told me he found three things that help: first, being grateful for what you have; second, helping out in a church community; and third, really stretching yourself when you give charitably.

The second Ignatian insight into work is acceptance

“reality of the situation”

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. 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 ...

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 powerl...

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....

The third aspect is reliance on God.