The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything

by James Martin

  For me, few things are more enjoyable than reading the lives of the saints, especially the Jesuit saints. When I read stories of how much they loved God, and how they experienced God’s love in their own lives, I learn more about the source of that love.

  For example, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the French Jesuit and paleontologist who lived from 1881 to 1955, found God not simply in the celebration of the Mass and in the other more obvious duties of a priest, but in his work as a scientist and naturalist, work that took him around the globe. During his lifetime Teilhard wrote extensively about the interplay between science and religion. (For a time, his works were considered too controversial by the Vatican, which was suspicious of some of his new ways of speaking about God.)

  Teilhard encountered God through many avenues, including the contemplation of nature. “There is a communion with God,” he wrote, “and a communion with earth, and a communion with God through earth.” When I first read that, it helped me better understand that experience I had on my bike on the way to elementary school. Teilhard understood that you can learn about God through the natural world, by seeing how God reveals beauty and order in the universe and is forever creating and renewing the physical world.

  We can learn about God through the experiences of such holy men and women, as well as through the men and women themselves. Through them we can glimpse the transcendent. Not that they are divine. Rather, they are like a clean window through which the light of God can shine.

  Closer to home than Teilhard de Chardin is a Jesuit named Joe. When I first met Joe, he was in his late sixties and was living with us in the novitiate as a “spiritual father,” a resource and example for the younger men.

  Joe was one of the freest people I’ve ever known. Once, on a trip to visit some Jesuits in Kingston, Jamaica, his plane was delayed for five hours in Boston. Ultimately, the flight was canceled and Joe returned home. That night I ran into Joe in the living room of the novitiate, calmly reading a book. “You’re back!” I said. “What happened?”

  “The funniest thing!” he said. “We were supposed to take off, and then we were delayed for an hour, and then waited another hour until they delayed us again.” Joe chuckled as he recounted the delays that led to his trip’s eventual cancellation. Afterward, he tracked down his luggage and took a long ride on the subway (the T in Boston) to get home. “So here I am!” he laughed.

  Had that happened to me, I would have been boiling over in frustration. “Weren’t you angry?” I said, amazed.

  “Angry? Why?” he said. “There was nothing I could do about it. Why get upset over something you can’t change?”

  Equanimity in the face of stress does not make you holy. Much less does it make you a saint. But it’s a start. Detachment, freedom, and a sense of humor are signposts on the road to holiness. Joe, a man well acquainted with the way of Ignatius, knew that a healthy spirituality requires freedom, detachment, and openness. Often when you would ask this elderly priest if he wanted to do something new—say, see a controversial new movie, go to a newly opened restaurant, check out a Mass at a faraway parish—he would answer, “Why not? ”

  Why not indeed? People like Joe show the fruits of friendship with God: spontaneity, openness, generosity, freedom, love. Time with Joe taught me not simply about this particular Jesuit priest but about the way God acts in the lives of men and women. Holy people teach you something about how God works, and in this way you learn about God.

  Overall, learning about God—through other people’s experiences of God, through Scripture, through holy men and women—is part of nourishing your spiritual life, because learning about God is part of being in relationship with God.

  BEING HONEST

  “O Lord, you have searched me and known me,” says Psalm 139. Letting God come to know you is also essential—as it is in any relationship. Letting yourself be known by God means more or less the same thing it means in a friendship: speaking about your life, sharing your feelings, and revealing yourself openly.

  Honesty is an important part of this process. Father Barry suggests thinking about what happens when you’re not honest in a relationship. Usually, the relationship begins to grow cold, distant, or formal. If you’re avoiding something unpleasant, the relationship devolves into one defined by nothing more than social niceties. Eventually the relationship stagnates or dies.

  It’s the same with prayer. If you are saying only what you think you should say to God, rather than what you want to say, then your relationship will grow cold, distant, and formal. Honesty in prayer, as in life, is important.

  Not long ago I became friendly with a Jesuit whom I greatly admired. He seemed to lead a charmed life: he was happy, optimistic, hardworking, friendly, and prayerful. For a long time I tried to figure out what his secret was. What enabled him to lead this almost perfect life?

  A few years later, this same friend went through a wrenching personal crisis and turned to me, among others, for help. In a series of conversations he poured out his pain and showed a part of himself that I had previously not seen.

  Happily, the crisis passed. But after he had opened up to me, I felt closer to him, and he told me that he felt closer to me. Both of us were grateful for our friendship. Though I knew he didn’t lead the perfect life, I liked him even more. His honesty changed the relationship.

  How can you be honest with God in prayer? One easy way is to imagine God right in front of you. You might imagine God, or Jesus, sitting across from you in a chair, or sitting beside you on a couch— use whatever image feels most comfortable. Then speak in a familiar way, in silence or out loud, about your life.

  Of course God already knows what’s going on in your life. Still, this kind of openness is an important part of the spiritual life. Once again, comparing it to a friendship is instructive. Let’s say a loved one has died. A good friend already knows how sad you are, and probably doesn’t need to be told. But you tell her anyway, right?

  Not too long ago I had lunch with a friend who lost his brother at a young age to cancer. My friend is a warm and generous person, and I knew that he was devastated by his brother’s loss. But it was still a privilege for me to hear him talk about what had happened, to see his tears, and to listen to him recount funny stories about his brother.

  Telling your friend anyway helps to make the loss more concrete for you, it gives you the opportunity to accept your friend’s consolation, and it reminds you that you are known by another in an intimate way.

  Being honest with God means sharing everything with God, not just the things that you think are appropriate for prayer, and not simply your gratitude and praise. Honesty means sharing things you might consider inappropriate for conversation with God.

  Anger is a perfect example. It’s natural to be angry with God over suffering in our lives. Disappointment springs from all of us. Anger is a sign that we’re alive.

  God can handle your anger no matter how hot it burns. God has been handling anger as long as humans have been praying. Just read the Book of Job in the Old Testament, where Job rails against God for causing his seemingly endless pain. Usually Job is seen as a patient man, and in the beginning of that book he is. But eventually Job loses his patience and begins to curse the day he was born. “I loathe my life,” he says. “I will give free utterances to my complaint; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul” (Job 10:1).

  Anger, sadness, frustration, disappointment, and bitterness in prayer have a long history. Why shouldn’t you allow yourself to express those same honest feelings too?

  A few years ago, I told my spiritual director I was so frustrated that God didn’t seem to be doing anything to help me and that I used an obscenity in my prayer. One night I was so angry that I clenched my fists and shouted aloud, “How about some @#$% help, God!”

  Some readers might be shocked that a priest would use language like that, especially in prayer. And I thought my spiritual director, a wise and gentle Jesuit priest named Damian, would reproach me. Instead
Damian said, “That’s a good prayer.”

  I thought he was kidding.

  “That’s a good prayer because it’s honest,” he said. “God wants your honesty, Jim.” Being honest also made me feel that God now knew exactly how I felt. Have you ever had the experience of confiding something to a friend and feeling relief? It felt like God could now better accompany me, as a good friend might. Or, more accurately, I would be able to allow God to accompany me.

  Saying it aloud also brought me face-to-face with my lamentable lack of gratitude. Sure, there was a big problem in my life, but there were some wonderful things going on at the same time. It was like an adolescent saying to his parent, “I hate you!” because he was asked to go to bed early or turn off his video games or take out the trash. Hearing myself talk like that—out loud—revealed how part of my relationship with God was childish and how much I wanted to change my approach to prayer.

  Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord

  This poem by the English Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889), based on a lament from the Book of Jeremiah, expresses the poet’s frustration with God. Like most of Hopkins’s complex poems, you have to read it carefully to puzzle out what he’s saying, but once you get it, it packs a real punch.

  Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend

  With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.

  Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must

  Disappointment all I endeavour end?

  Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,

  How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost

  Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust

  Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,

  Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes

  Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again

  With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes

  Them; birds build—but not I build; no, but strain,

  Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.

  Mine, O thou Lord of life, send my roots rain.

  So Damian was right: it was a good prayer!

  Sadness is something else that some people feel reluctant to share with God. Someone once told me of the experience of going to a movie with a close friend. Because the subject material intersected with his life, he began to sob at the end of the movie and was embarrassed. Later on, as the two sat together in a car in the parking lot, his friend sat silently and simply let him cry.

  His friend wasn’t the only one showing love. The person weeping allowed another to enter into his life, giving the gift of intimacy. Can you share with God the intimate gift of your true self, your true emotions, even when you are grieving?

  But when it comes to prayer, the most inappropriate emotion, at least in many minds, is sexual desire.

  One of the best books on prayer is God, I Have Issues, by Mark Thibodeaux, one of the most lighthearted Jesuits I know. Each chapter addresses prayer during different moods. The moods are organized alphabetically so that you can thumb through the book when you are: Addicted, Afraid, Angry, Angry at You, and so on.

  One chapter is titled “Sexually Aroused.” Mark begins his essay bluntly: “Good Christian people often worry about their sexual feelings. They are embarrassed and ashamed of them.”

  Mark reminds us that sexuality and sexual activity are wondrous gifts from God to be celebrated. On a natural level they draw people together for the sake of companionship and creating new life. On a spiritual level those feelings remind us of the love that God has for us. Many spiritual writers use erotic love as a metaphor for God’s love for humanity. (Check out the Bible’s Song of Songs if you have any doubts.)

  But like any gift, sexuality must be used wisely. If motivated by selfishness, it can turn into a desire for possessiveness. On a much more benign level, sexual thoughts during prayer can also be a distraction. So what do we do with those feelings in prayer?

  Again, the solution is being honest. “Instead of hiding these experiences, we should share them with God,” says Mark, “and use them to remind us how great it is to be alive, how great it is to be a creature of God and how wondrously we are created.” If that doesn’t work, or if those feelings are troublesome because they are directed to a person with whom you cannot have a relationship, just be honest with God about your struggles.

  Be honest with God about everything.

  LISTENING

  Friendship requires listening. You would scarcely consider yourself a good friend if all you did was talk and talk and talk. But that’s what happens in some relationships with God. People sometimes find their prayer is just a recitation of things they need (too much petitionary prayer) or an endless stream of letting God know how they are (too much talking). As in any friendship, we need to listen.

  But what does it mean to “listen” to God? This baffled me in the novitiate. Does it mean hearing voices?

  Few people say they have heard God’s voice in a physical way. (That is, few sane people.) But it does happen. Mysterious notations in Ignatius’s personal diaries, speaking about his prayer, refer to loquela, loosely translated as speech, discourse, or talking.

  The most recent example may be Mother Teresa, who wrote that in 1946 she “heard” God ask her to work with the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta. Earlier, Mother Teresa had made a promise to God to never refuse anything that God asked of her. Then, years later, as she told her spiritual director, when she heard God’s voice asking her to leave behind her work in a girls’ school, she, not surprisingly, was reluctant to leave behind her work for something new and, it seemed, dangerous.

  She reported that God, as if recalling her earlier promise, said to her, “Wilt thou refuse?” Mother Teresa accepted God’s invitation to work among the poor. (By the way, she could have said no. Our relationship with God does not obliterate free will.)

  But the kinds of experiences reported by Mother Teresa are exceedingly, exceedingly rare. So it’s probably best for the rest of us to set aside our pious hopes—or unwarranted fears—that we’re going to hear voices in a literal way.

  In twenty-one years as a Jesuit I’ve only met two people who have told me they have heard God speak to them. One is Maddy, a joyful and prayerful woman who is a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Springfield, Massachusetts. Maddy and I first got to know each other when we were both working in East Africa in the 1990s. Today she works at the Jesuit retreat house in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where we have often directed retreats together.

  Since we are longtime friends, I figured I knew her well. But this no-nonsense woman surprised me during one of these retreats when, during an afternoon talk to the retreatants, she said that when she was young and considering entering a religious order, she heard God’s voice saying, “I have chosen you to be with me. You will find your way.”

  Before entering the Jesuits, I would have thought Maddy was insane. But now I believe that those moments—while very rare indeed—can be privileged experiences of God’s presence. Still, we have to weigh them carefully, ruling out any psychological illness, comparing them to what we know about God, and submitting them to experienced spiritual guides.

  Most of us will never have that kind of experience. (I never have.) So if you’re worried about hearing voices, don’t be. Or if you’re frustrated that you’re not hearing God speak to you in that way, don’t be.

  On the other hand, many people say that during prayer, even though they don’t audibly hear God’s voice, they feel as if God were speaking with them. This can happen in ways both subtle and not so subtle. It can even happen outside of formal prayer. For example, a friend may say something so insightful that it is almost as if a window into your soul had just been opened: you may feel as if your friend’s words are a way that God is communicating with you.

  Another example: my mother once told me that she was looking out the window and said to God, “Do you love me?” And the words “More than you know!” instantly came to mind. “I
t wasn’t a voice; it just popped into my head.” My mother wasn’t seeking that answer; it came spontaneously. And of course God does love her more than she can know. But for many people these experiences are rare, too.

  So, are there other ways to listen to God? Absolutely.

  Sometimes, for example, when you try imagining yourself speaking with God, you might also try imagining what God would say in return. That’s a popular way of prayer for many Christians, and it is something that Ignatius suggests as one technique in the Spiritual Exercises.

  Praying in that particular way is difficult for me. But for some people it’s not difficult at all. When they picture themselves speaking with God, they can easily imagine God speaking to them, naturally and easily. Sometimes it helps to imagine listening to Jesus in a familiar place from Scripture—like by the Sea of Galilee or even in his house at Nazareth. However, what you imagine him saying must always be tested against what you know about God, what you know about yourself, and what your faith community believes about God. Does it lead you to be more loving and compassionate? Does it sound authentic? “God’s words,” as Vinita Hampton Wright says in Days of Deepening Friendship, “have the ring of truth.”

  If that kind of prayer is too difficult, you might try something that I stumbled upon recently: imagine what you think God would say based on what you know about God.

  Here’s where the friendship analogy is again helpful. Let’s say you have an elderly friend who is known for giving excellent advice. She’s experienced, wise, and compassionate. Over the years, you have come to appreciate, and know, her outlook on life. When you tell her a problem, sometimes you don’t even have to wait for her to respond: you know what she’s going to say.

  Since it’s hard for me to imagine God literally speaking to me, I sometimes ask myself, “Given what I know about God through Scripture, through experience, and through tradition, what would God probably say about this?” Usually it’s not hard to imagine at all. And, as the authors of The Spiritual Exercises Reclaimed note, “Often communication is ‘felt’ or intuited, rather than heard as ordinary conversation.”