The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything (24 page)

Think of it like a diet. Hard as it is, you feel better if you avoid unnecessary calories. You’ll also feel better if you avoid unnecessary purchases—lighter, healthier, freer. Go on a buying diet.

Third, get rid of things you think you need, but can actually live without
. This goes beyond things you
know
you don’t need into things you believe you need but can, in a pinch, forego. This is something I still find difficult, even after twenty years living under a vow of poverty. But I’m always happier after I’ve walked this path. After a friend cared for my father during his final illness, I gave her a treasured possession: a multicolored quilt given to me by some of the refugees in East Africa, which I had used on my bed. It was hard to give it away, but every time I see my friend, and remember her great kindness, I’m glad I did so.

Finally, here’s a challenge:
get to know the poor
. That’s difficult for some of us, since we are sometimes trained to ignore them, view them as lazy, or fear them. But finding opportunities to volunteer in a soup kitchen or homeless shelter (and finding appropriate and safe ways for your children to do so as well) will introduce you to people like Gauddy, Agustino, and Loyce in your own community. You will soon come to know them not as “the poor,” but as individuals with their own stories.

They will have often suffered much, and it may, initially, be hard to be around them, but they can also teach you a great deal about gratitude, about perseverance, and about being close to God.

P
OVERTY OF
S
PIRIT

Many poor men and women instinctively turn to God: like Gauddy during times of joy or like Agustino during times of hope. One reason is that they live another kind of poverty that often accompanies material poverty: the radical understanding of dependence on God, called “poverty of spirit.”

Poverty of spirit is an overlooked concept within many spiritual and religious circles. “Blessed are the poor in spirit” is the first saying in St. Matthew’s account of the Sermon on the Mount (5:3–12). But for many believers, those words are just as mysterious as they were when Jesus first uttered them. If you ask a practicing Christian if he should be charitable, he will say yes. If you ask if he should be poor in spirit, he might say, “Huh?”

Perhaps not surprisingly, I first came into contact with real poverty of spirit in East Africa, but in a roundabout way.

Though I had looked forward to going to Nairobi, once I arrived I felt a crushing loneliness, since I was cut off from friends in the States, worried that I couldn’t endure two years in East Africa, and concerned about picking up some rare tropical illness. (Before I left, my doctor gave me a pamphlet that helpfully pointed out all the exotic diseases I could contract while there.)

On top of that, I was first assigned to a job that consisted largely of paperwork. Had I come to Kenya to push papers? In a few months, I would begin my work with the small businesses, the best job I’ve ever had, but at the time, life was both boring and lonely.

During this low ebb, my Jesuit formation director sent me a book to encourage me:
Poverty of Spirit,
by Johannes Baptist Metz, a German Catholic theologian.

Metz speaks of poverty of spirit as the inherent limitations that every human being faces in daily life. It is the spiritual awakening that comes with knowing not only the talents and gifts given us by God, which fill us with a grateful confidence, but also our limitations. Poverty of spirit means accepting that we are powerless to change certain aspects of our lives. “We are all members of a species that is not sufficient unto itself,” he writes. “We are all creatures plagued by unending doubts and restless, unsatisfied hearts.”

Poverty of spirit also means accepting that everyone will face disappointments, pain, suffering, and, eventually, death. Though this should be obvious to anyone who has thought seriously about life, Western culture often encourages us to avoid, ignore, or deny this essential truth—we are limited, finite, physical: human. And part of being human is that we sometimes suffer and are often powerless over what happens to us, to others, and to the world around us. Accepting this means moving closer to poverty of spirit.

Unlike the material poverty that brings misery to hundreds of millions of our fellow human beings and which I saw daily in Nairobi, spiritual poverty is something to be
sought
. And I don’t romanticize material poverty: I have stepped over filthy streams of sewage and noisome piles of rotting garbage, eaten with poor refugees in drafty hovels, and seen all manner of physical deprivations and illness. Such poverty cannot be romanticized.

Poverty of spirit is different: it is a life-giving goal.

Poverty of spirit is another way of speaking of humility. Without it, we resist admitting our reliance on God, are tempted to try to make it on our own, and are more likely to despair when we fail. And since spiritual poverty recognizes our fundamental reliance on God, it lies at the heart of the spiritual life.

“Thus poverty of spirit is not just one virtue among many,” writes Metz toward the end of his book. “It is the hidden component of every transcending act, the ground of every ‘theological virtue.’ ”

T
HE
T
HREE
D
EGREES OF
H
UMILITY

Ignatius put a premium on poverty of spirit. In the Spiritual Exercises, following the meditation on the Two Standards, he offers the framework of the Three Ways of Being Humble, also known as the Three Degrees of Humility.

In his book
Draw Me into Your Friendship,
David Fleming, S.J., describes Ignatius as laying out a spectrum of humility, in which we are encouraged to choose the greater degree, and so more closely follow Jesus. George Aschenbrenner, S.J., describes the three degrees in
Stretched for Greater Glory,
as “three ways of loving.”

The First Degree
is one in which you would always be obedient to “the law of God” by leading a moral life. Here you would do nothing to cut yourself off from God. You want to do the right thing. Aschenbrenner says, “This amounts to loving someone so much that you would go to whatever trouble may be involved to respond to that person’s [in this case, God’s] explicitly stated desire.”

The Second Degree
is one in which, when presented with an option for a choice in life, you strive to be free of wanting the choice that would bring wealth, honor, or a long life. It’s the classic example of Ignatian “indifference” or “detachment.” Not only will you do the right thing, you will be free to
accept
whatever life presents. In this stage, says Fleming, “the only real principle of choice is to do the will of God.” You are detached and strive never to turn away from God. “This degree of love,” writes Aschenbrenner, “goes beyond the first and presumes the freedom of indifference.”

The Third Degree,
the “most perfect” way, is one in which you actually
choose
the more humble way, in order to be like Christ. You desire so much to follow him that, as Fleming writes, “his experiences are reflected in my own.” In other words, you choose to be poor and even rejected as Jesus was. Aschenbrenner notes, “Here the desire to imitate has become an eagerness to share . . . the whole being and condition of the Beloved.”

Is this masochistic? Another confirmation of those stereotypes about how “sick” Christianity is? Only if it’s misunderstood. The Third Degree of Humility does not seek poverty or rejection for its own sake, but as a way of identifying with Christ and as a way of freeing oneself from an exaggerated self-interest. The friendship analogy is useful: when your friend is suffering, are you willing to suffer with him?

The Third Degree is an often unattainable goal for me: most days I feel I can barely make it to the Second Degree! But it’s an important one, because it helps to move us toward freedom from disordered attachments that keep us from following God. As Brian Daley, S.J., noted in an article called “To Be More Like Christ,” this kind of humility makes us ready to be “as free as possible from our ingrained self-centeredness, as full a realization as possible of Jesus’ concrete call to each individual to be a disciple in his image.”

B
LESSED
A
RE THE
P
OOR IN
S
PIRIT

Poverty of spirit does not take away joy in life. Quite the contrary. It is the gateway to joy, because it enables us to surrender to ultimate reliance on God, which leads to freedom. “Paradoxically, then, we are truly rich,” writes Fleming, “with an identity that only God can give and no one can take from us.”

Reliance on God may sound like a recipe for laziness, as if you needed to do nothing on your own. But the reality is the opposite. It is a practical stance that reminds you that you can’t do everything. Many things are not within your power to change. Some things, outside of your control, need to be left to God. Spiritual poverty frees you from the despair that comes when you believe that you can rely only on your own efforts.

This insight can free you from a popular temptation these days: workaholism and messiahism. It’s easy to imagine that you are indispensable, that everything depends on you, that you must do everything. Diligence can degenerate into a subtle form of pride. “Look how busy I am—I’m so important!” Or “Everything depends on me!” Poverty of spirit reminds you that there is only so much that you can do.

Or as my spiritual director said when I complained about having too many tasks to do, “There is a Messiah, and it’s not you!”

Over and over in Kenya, I was invited to relinquish my desire to fix everything and to solve everyone’s problems, not only because it was impossible, but also because that impossible task would have paralyzed me with despair. Moreover, it flew in the face of reality. Refugees given grants for sewing machines would return home and find that their homes had been torched by jealous neighbors. One man, a Ugandan cattle farmer named John, did everything necessary for success: located a plot of land, found the right type of cattle, and bought the correct kind of feed. John had done everything right. But he was forced to cease his business when a drought struck, which parched the land, killing the grass that fed his cows. I remember standing with him outside his farm when he asked, “What will I do now?”

I had no answer. I could not make it rain. I could not find him water in a parched land. All I could do was give him an additional grant to tide him over and pray with him for a change in weather. Poverty of spirit is a reflection of reality: we are often powerless to change things.

Spiritual poverty also means freedom from the need for constant motion, constant work, and constant activity. It encourages you to say
no
from time to time, since you know that you can’t do everything, please everyone, show up at every gathering, telephone every friend, and counsel every person in need. It means accepting that you cannot do everything at home, in your workplace, or in your church. It saves you from being a “human doing” instead of a “human being.”

Ironically, our generous desire to do everything, care for everyone, and make everyone happy can lead to our becoming less attentive and more distracted, which does no one any good. Saying
no
to one thing means saying
yes
to another thing. Saying
no
to one more responsibility you cannot possibly assume means saying
yes
to greater attentiveness to what is already before you.

Poverty of spirit, then, is not a road to sadness; it is a path to freedom. It is not some mystical dogma that only the saints can follow; it is the simple acceptance of reality. Reminding you of your fundamental reliance on God, it is a stance that enables you to be more grateful for the blessings that come from God, because you know how precious they are. This is whyJesus calls the poor in spirit “blessed.” Or in the original Greek, “happy.”

Let me end with a story from Pedro Arrupe, the former superior general who did so much to invite the Jesuits to work with the poor. It beautifully encapsulates the Ignatian insights into simple living, poverty, and poverty of spirit.

W
HAT A
C
ONTRAST

Father Arrupe was known for his love of the poor. He once told the story of visiting some Jesuits working in a desperately poor slum in Latin America. During his visit, he celebrated Mass for the local people in a decrepit building; during the liturgy cats and dogs wandered in and out freely. Here’s what happened after the Mass, in Arrupe’s own words, taken from a book of interviews called
One Jesuit’s Spiritual Journey: