The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything (44 page)

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:

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 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.

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.”