by James Martin
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.
A Deep Sense of Humor
Let me have too deep a sense of humor ever to be proud.
Let me know my absurdity before I act absurdly.
Let me realize that when I am humble I am most human, most truthful, and most worthy of your serious consideration.
—Daniel Lord, S.J. (1888–1955)
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.
WHAT A CONTRAST
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:
When it was over, a big devil whose hang-dog look made me almost afraid said, “Come to my place. I have something to give you.” I was undecided; I didn’t know whether to accept or not, but the priest who was with me said, “Accept, Father, they are good people.” I went to his place; his house was a hovel nearly on the point of collapsing. He had me sit down on a rickety old chair. From there I could see the sunset. The big man said to me, “Look, sir, how beautiful it is!” We sat in silence for several minutes. The sun disappeared. The man then said, “I don’t know how to thank you for all you have done for us. I have nothing to give you, but I thought you would like to see this sunset. You liked it, didn’t you? Good evening.” And then he shook my hand.
As I walked away I thought, “I have seldom met such a kindhearted person.” I was strolling along that lane when a poorly dressed woman came up to me; she kissed my hand, looked at me, and with a voice filled with emotion said, “Father, pray for me and my children. I was at that beautiful Mass you celebrated. I must hurry home. But I have nothing to give my children. Pray to the Lord for me; he’s the one who must help us.” And she disappeared running in the direction of her home.
Many indeed are the things I learned thanks to that Mass among the poor. What a contrast with the great gatherings of the powerful of this world.
Chapter Nine
Like the Angels?
Chastity, Celibacy, and Love
HERE’S HOW ST. IGNATIUS Loyola famously begins—and famously ends—his discussion of chastity in the Constitutions.
What pertains to the vow of chastity requires no interpretation, since it is evident how perfectly it should be preserved, by endeavoring therein to imitate the purity of the angels in cleanness of body and mind. Therefore, with this presupposed, we shall now treat of holy obedience.
When I first read that passage in the novitiate, I said to David Donovan, “That’s it? Did I miss the rest of his discussion on chastity?”
“No,” he laughed. “That’s it!”
As John O’Malley notes in The First Jesuits, while Ignatius and the early Jesuits offered reflections about chastity elsewhere, for the most part it was understood that the vow was “clear-cut and needed no explanation.”
So, according to Ignatius, Jesuits should observe chastity like the angels. And angels were popularly believed to have no sexual organs!
Sixteenth-century Christians, including Ignatius and the early Jesuits, understood sexuality in a vastly different light than we do. First of all, there was a heightened emphasis on chastity as a way to spiritual “purity,” as Ignatius wrote. The ideal Christian should strive for the purity of Jesus, Mary, and the saints (and the angels). And purity included chastity. Peter Favre, one of the first Jesuits, made this connection early in his life: “When I was about twelve years of age,” he wrote, “I went into a field where from time to time I helped to guard [his family’s] flocks, and there, full of joy and with a great desire for purity I vowed perpetual chastity to our Lord.”
That’s a poignant image—Peter Favre surrounded by wildflowers, the sun overhead, ardently making a youthful vow to God. But few people would encourage that kind of promise today. For one thing, purity doesn’t mean refraining from sex. Purity flows from a pure heart, and there are plenty of married men and women who have pure hearts. For another, what twelve-year-old (then or now) has an adequate understanding of sexuality to make a lifelong vow of chastity? But Favre lived in a different time.
Members in religious orders were also willing to go to extremes to encourage chastity, or as they would say, to “safeguard” it. Late in life Favre made another promise: never “putting my face” close to anyone—male or female, young or old, as a way of further preserving his chastity. St. Aloysius Gonzaga, a young nobleman-turned-Jesuit, maintained “custody of the eyes,” which meant never looking a woman in the face—including his mother!
On the other hand, St. Ignatius Loyola, whom Peter Favre knew and Aloysius Gonzaga revered, enjoyed the warm friendship of a great many women, for whom he served, through letters or in person, as a valued spiritual director and counselor. As the authors of The Spiritual Exercises Reclaimed note, many of his women friends returned the favor by supporting Ignatius and his new religious order, particularly in terms of finances. Two women—Isabel Roser and Juana, the regent of Spain—even took vows as Jesuits. “A more accurate picture reveals Ignatius not as a solitary figure,” the authors write, “but as a relational one; these relationships included specific women.”
This complicated history leads to some provocative questions: Can religious chastity teach us anything? Can St. Ignatius’s ideas about chastity teach us anything? Can men who lived in a world where sexuality was considered dangerous—even evil—teach us anything about healthy, lov
ing relationships?
You won’t be surprised when I say that the answer to all these questions is: yes.
But you might be surprised when you find out that the answer has less to do with abstinence and purity and more to do with love and friendship. Because chastity is about love.
CHASTITY? CELIBACY?
Chastity is the most difficult thing to explain about life in a religious order. It inevitably conjures up the stereotype of the hateful, cold priest or the repressed, bitter nun—out of touch with their own sexuality, closed off to the world of love and human relationships, as well as rigid, cold, spiteful, and maybe a little cruel. And crazy, too.
In the wake of the sexual-abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, in which chastity was seen by the general public as a contributing cause, the vow of chastity engenders more suspicion than ever. Now it is seen as not only crazy, but unhealthy, sick, and—something that would have astonished sixteenth-century Christians—dangerous.
Popular thinking runs along three lines:
Chastity is unnatural; it tries to shut down a natural part of life and thus leads to unhealthy behaviors.
Chastity is unhealthy; therefore religious orders attract unhealthy people.
Chastity is impossible. No one can keep that vow with any integrity or honesty, so anyone who says he or she is celibate must be lying.
Before I continue, I should explain that despite their common usage there is a difference between chastity and celibacy. It’s a bit complex, so bear with me.
Strictly speaking, chastity refers to the proper and loving use of our sexuality, something that everyone is called to. In his book on human sexuality, In Pursuit of Love, Vincent J. Genovesi, a Jesuit professor of moral theology, quotes another author who says that living as a 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.
The Catholic Church believes that everyone—married, single, vowed, ordained, lay, or clergy—is called to this kind of chastity, where your physical relationships express the degree of personal commitment, where you make the proper use of your sexuality, and where your sexuality is guided by love and care for the other person. Most people would agree with those general ideas: love, commitment, honesty, and care in our sexual relationships.
Celibacy is different. Technically, it is the restriction against marriage for members of the Catholic clergy. For instance, Jesuits take a vow of chastity after their novitiate, but priests make a promise of celibacy at their ordination.
Celibacy is a canonical (church law) requirement that could, theoretically, be lifted by the Catholic Church. During the first half of church history, no restrictions existed against marriage, and many priests were married men. As the Rev. Donald Cozzens writes in Freeing Celibacy, not until the twelfth century did clerical celibacy become the norm for the entire Western, or Latin, church. We know, for example, that St. Peter was married, since the Gospel of Mark speaks of his mother-in-law (1:29–31). Today there are many married Catholic priests: priests of the Eastern rites, or branches, of the Catholic Church, and priests from other Christian denominations who convert to Catholicism but stay married. Even among Catholics, chastity and celibacy are confused, used improperly, and assumed to mean the same thing. Moreover, the spirituality surrounding both celibacy and chastity for priests and members of religious orders is similar. Sometimes people talk about “religious chastity,” to distinguish between the chastity that everyone is called to and the kind that religious orders live. Confusing, isn’t it?
So here’s what I’m going to do. Hereafter I’m going to talk about chastity in the way that most people understand it, that is, refraining from sex because of a religious commitment. More important, I’m going to describe what a life of religious chastity can teach you— even if you’re having sex every day.
LOVING CHASTITY
Back to the old stereotype of the cold, rigid, bitter, hateful priest or nun. The irony is that some of history’s most loving persons—those whom even nonbelievers admire—were chaste. Think of St. Francis of Assisi or Mother Teresa. Would anyone say they did not love? And by now you know that St. Ignatius Loyola was a compassionate, generous, and loving man.
Better yet, think of Jesus of Nazareth, who most serious Scripture scholars agree (for a variety of reasons) never married. Does anyone doubt that Jesus was a loving person?
Whenever I hear that stereotype of the cold priest, I always wish I could introduce people to all the loving priests, brothers, and sisters I’ve known, men and women who lead lives of loving chastity and who radiate love.
I wish you could meet my friend Bob, who, despite some chronic medical problems, worked for many years at a hardscrabble Native American reservation in South Dakota and now works as a spiritual director and art therapist in Boston. Few Jesuits are more loving or more beloved. Bob is small in stature with an outsized laugh: when you’re watching a funny movie in a theater with him, his booming laughter turns every head in the audience.
The Native Americans with whom he worked first named him “Little Man with Big Laugh.” “But that name didn’t take,” he explained once. “So they call me Holy Eagle with Gentle Voice instead.”
Bob is one of the best listeners I’ve ever met. People naturally feel comfortable talking with Bob, perhaps because they sense, through his physical limitations, that he understands what it means to suffer and still find joy in life. Several times when I’ve come up against a thorny personal problem, Bob has listened intently, completely focused on my words. This is a form of chaste love.
Or I wish I could introduce you to Tim. During our graduate theology studies, Bob, Tim, and I lived together in the same Jesuit house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Tim is a quiet, hardworking, studious fellow who was assigned to work as pastor of an inner-city parish in Chicago after he finished his studies. During the summer when I was recuperating from major surgery in Chicago (where I had that revelation on the operating table), Tim gave me a great gift.
Despite his busy schedule as a pastor, he drove to see me at a Jesuit community in Evanston, about an hour’s drive away, every day. For two weeks Tim dutifully visited me, got me to laugh, took me for a drive, fixed me a meal when I was unable to, and talked to me about what I was experiencing. We weren’t all that close during the time we lived together; we were after that summer. His generosity—quiet, unobtrusive, selfless—was a form of chaste love.
And I wish you could meet Sister Maddy, my friend at the retreat house in Gloucester, Massachusetts. As I mentioned before, we first met when we were both working in East Africa. Maddy, a practical and hardworking sister with a quick smile and short-cropped hair, worked with two other American sisters in a remote part of Tanzania and ran a girls’ school in a remote village called Kowak. For their vacations, the three sisters would come to our little Jesuit community in Nairobi. Maddy is a terrific cook who would relax by preparing colossal Italian meals for our community—so everyone involved looked forward to her vacation. After two years in Tanzania, she had a serious medical condition that forced her to leave the sisters and students at Kowak. A few years later she was able to return for a proper good-bye.
Fall in Love
This meditation from Pedro Arrupe, S.J., may be his most famous piece of writing. There’s just one problem: no one has been able to find it in any of his letters or speeches. One of his advisers, Vincent O’Keefe, S.J., told me it was most likely copied down by someone at a conference and circulated. And, said Father O’Keefe, it’s just the sort of thing Arrupe would say.
Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imaginatio
n, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you will do with your evenings, how you will spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in love, stay in love and it will decide everything.
Since then, Maddy and I have directed many retreats together. Because of some physical limitations, Maddy has a difficult time navigating the sprawling grounds of the retreat house, but, even with freezing temperatures and two-feet-high snowdrifts, her joyful spirits are undimmed and her laughter unabated. A few years ago I signed up for a retreat at Gloucester and discovered that she was to be my director. Having a close friend as a director, I thought, would be odd. “Well, I’m going to treat you like I would treat any other director,” I told her.
She laughed her hearty laugh. “And I’m going to treat you like any other retreatant!”
Maddy proved to be an astute director, who helped me through a difficult period in my life—negotiating artfully between the responsibilities of a spiritual director and those of a friend. Among other things, Maddy’s hard work for her students in Tanzania and her patient listening to those at the retreat house in Gloucester are a form of chaste love.
Each of these friends—Bob, Tim, and Maddy—who all vowed chastity, show love in a variety of ways. Each reminds me of one of St. Ignatius Loyola’s sayings, from the Exercises: “Love ought to manifest itself more by deeds than by words.”
CHASTITY IS ABOUT LOVE
One of the main goals of chastity is to love as many people as possible as deeply as possible. That may seem strange to those used to defining chastity negatively—that is, as not having sex. But this has long been the tradition of the church. Chastity is another way to love and, as such, has a great deal to teach everyone, not just members of religious orders.