by James Martin
Paradoxically, admitting your own powerlessness can free you from the need to fix everything and allow us to be truly present to the other person, and to listen. A cartoon in the New Yorker had one woman saying testily to her friend, “There’s no point in our being friends if you won’t let me fix you.”
Humility doesn’t apply just to the way you relate to your friends, but to you. Besides not being able to solve all of your friends’ problems (and recognizing that your friends won’t be able to solve yours), admitting your own shortcomings is critical if you want to nurture healthy relationships. In other words, you need to both apologize and forgive.
Over the years I’ve done many thoughtless things to people. I’ve gossiped about them, suspected the worst about them, and tried to manipulate them into doing what I wanted them to do. On these occasions I’ve found it necessary to seek forgiveness, something that is at the heart of the Christian message. Just as often, they have come to me to ask for forgiveness.
Sinfulness exists within any human setting, Jesuit communities included. So in any human setting, apology and forgiveness are always needed. Seeking forgiveness is difficult and, since it goes against our ego-driven desires to be right all the time, is always an exercise in humility.
Almost always people have forgiven me and the friendship has grown stronger. But on one or two occasions, the person has not. Here I find it helpful to pray for the person and always be open to reconciliation, but also remember, once again, that just as I cannot force another person to love or even like me, I cannot force another person’s forgiveness.
HEALTHY FRIENDSHIPS
Let’s return to some of Father Shelton’s tips for healthy friendships and see if you can find insights for your own relationships with friends and family.
Without honesty, he says, a friendship will wither and die. William Barry provided a concise description of how this happens. “It’s difficult to be honest,” he told me recently, “but when something painful happens—for example, the other person is sick or dying, of if you’re angry for some reason—if you can’t talk about it you become more and more distant. And if there’s something that you’re holding onto, then eventually you can’t talk about anything. And pretty soon, you haven’t got a friend.”
Being open to challenge, Shelton notes, is not just something that we expect to do for our friends; it is something to expect from our friends. Can you accept the occasional challenge from your friends— that you have acted selfishly and may need to apologize from time to time?
“There are two difficulties in being honest,” my friend Chris said. “One is when you know your friend doesn’t want to hear something. The other is when you don’t want to say it—especially when you know you’re at fault. But it’s important to be humble about admitting our own wrongdoing or faults.”
Friends also wish the good of the other. That goes for members of the same family who want to love one another. Ignatius gave Francis Xavier the freedom to be the person he was called to be, even if it was half a world away from Ignatius. It also means celebrating the times when the other person does well or succeeds.
Jesuits can sometimes be competitive. In many instances this is a good thing: natural competitiveness spurs us to greater achievement. St. Ignatius Loyola, in effect, was being “competitive” with St. Francis and St. Dominic when he lay on his sick bed and thought, “What if I should do this which Saint Francis did and this which Saint Dominic did?” Without a healthy sense of competition in Ignatius, there would be no Society of Jesus. But as Ignatius grew older, he gave up the darker side of ambition and even wrote rules into the Jesuit Constitutions designed to limit and moderate unhealthy ambitions and competition among Jesuits.
Competition is usually present among friends, siblings, neighbors, coworkers, or anywhere two or three are gathered, to borrow a line from the Gospels. During my philosophy and theology studies, some competitiveness was healthy. Whenever I saw my organized friend Dave, who always kept his notes neatly collated in pristine blue binders, start studying a few days before a test, I knew it was time for me to study. Dave’s industriousness prompted me to do a better job.
But too much competition is poisonous. The competitiveness that leads to wishing ill for the other is the beginning of the end of friendship.
Father Shelton lists one more aspect to a healthy friendship. You have to learn when to maintain a discreet silence. Sometimes our friends or family members don’t need our advice. Or at least not right at that moment.
My friend Steve, another president of a Jesuit high school, this one in New York City, agrees. Steve has many friends, thanks to his ebullient good humor and his preternatural ability to remember birthdays, names of spouses, and even names of pets. His friends know to expect comments like, “Isn’t today your mom’s birthday?”
Steve talked about discretion in friendships: “I’m very direct and like to get to the point,” he said, “and I like to have the kinds of conversations that get to the heart of things, especially in the middle of a busy life. But you also have to be discreet: learning when to bring something up, or file it away for a better time—a time when it would be good for the other to hear it, not necessarily for you to say it.”
To Shelton’s recommendations, I would add a few more. First, friends give one another freedom to change. The person that we knew a few years ago, in high school, college, at work, or in the novitiate, may have changed utterly. It’s important not to force the person to be who he or she was years ago—besides, it’s impossible. This is part of the freedom we can give to our friends. And to spouses, too. One married friend recently told me, “Probably the biggest killer of marriages is the lack of freedom to grow and change.”
Second, friendship is welcoming. It welcomes others and is not exclusive. That sounds reasonable enough, doesn’t it? But for Jesuits “exclusive” is a loaded word.
Throughout much of the twentieth century, some Jesuit superiors inveighed against “particular friendships.” Too much “exclusivity” or “particularity” among young Jesuits was thought to lead to, or foster, overly close bonds and perhaps encourage gay men to break their vows of chastity. Jesuit superiors discouraged exclusive relationships by requiring that during recreation periods, when novices strolled the novitiate grounds, there should always be at least three men in any group. Numquam duo, semper tres, went the oft-quoted Latin saying: Never two, always three.
This attitude reflected the general misunderstanding about homosexuality (that is, the wrongheaded notion that gay men couldn’t live celibately or enjoy close friendships with one another). More important, it reflected a general misunderstanding about friendship. Having a very close friend is a blessing, not a curse.
But there was a healthy insight here that we should not overlook: Jesuit superiors recognized that too much exclusivity in friendships could lead men to become isolated and separate from the larger community. When a friendship turns in on itself and excludes others, it becomes less healthy, sometimes prone to obsessive attention, building up unrealistic expectations, and causing frustration on both sides.
You might ask yourself a few questions to guard against an unhealthy “exclusivity.” Do you hesitate to welcome other people into your friendship? Are you jealous when your friend spends time with other friends? Do you feel that the person needs to always be available to you? If your answers are yes, then you may need to remind yourself that your friend does not exist simply to be your friend.
This is true for your friendship with God, too. As Maureen Conroy, R.S.M., says in The Discerning Heart, “As we grow in mutual relationship with God, we want to share with others our life-giving love.” Our friendship with God is not exclusive, but inclusive—welcoming.
Third, friendships need to be leavened with humor. One of the most important parts of friendship is simply having fun, enjoying oneself, and having a good laugh—all elements of a healthy psychology and spirituality. Friendships are fun—a word you don’t hear much in spiritua
l circles—and part of fun is humor and laughter.
So good friends remind you not to take yourself with such deadly seriousness. My friend Chris was once listening to me bemoan some insignificant problem. After a few minutes of complaining, I said, with mock seriousness, “My life is such a cross!”
Without missing a beat, he said, “Yes, but for you or for others?” It was a great one-liner that helped to put things in perspective. When I get too focused on my own problems, I like to remember Chris’s light—but meaningful—joke. Humor helps us to deflate our overblown egos.
Fourth, friends need to help one another. It’s not all about conversation, sharing, and listening! Sometimes your friend needs you to do something: visit him in the hospital, help him move a sofa, babysit his children, lend him some jumper cables, give him a ride to the airport. This is part of the fundamental work of helping souls and is part of everyone’s call. As David Fleming writes in What Is Ignatian Spirituality?, “Helping does not require extensive training and a fistful of academic degrees.”
GROWING IN GRATITUDE
So far the type of friendship that I’ve described sounds almost utilitarian: friends should do these things and avoid those things in order to produce this kind of friendship. But a friendship, indeed any loving relationship, is not a machine designed to produce happiness. Perhaps a better metaphor is flowers in a beautiful garden. Unless you’re a bee, the flowers are not there to do something for you, as much as to be enjoyed.
That brings me to the final part of our discussion: gratitude.
The way of Ignatius celebrates gratitude. The Spiritual Exercises is crammed with references to expressing gratitude for God’s gifts. “I will consider how all good things and gifts descend from above,” he writes in the Fourth Week, “from the Supreme and Infinite Power above . . . just as the rays come down from the sun.” The examen, as we’ve mentioned, begins with gratitude. For Ignatius, ingratitude was the “most abominable of sins,” indeed “the cause, the beginning and origin of all sins and misfortunes.”
When I asked Steve about friendship, the first thing he mentioned was finding gratitude during the examination of conscience. “When I think about friendship, the first thing that comes to mind is finding God in all things,” he said. “That surfaces during my examen, when frequently God directs me to things that God thinks are important—rather than what I might be focusing on. Often that turns out to be friends and interactions with other Jesuits—in even the simplest of ways: a random comment in a corridor or a homily from another Jesuit. The examen helps me to be more mindful of, and more grateful for, my friends.”
Paula noted wryly that while everyone will say they are grateful for their friends, the examen makes it easier to focus on that gratitude. “The examen always helps in friendships and in family relationships,“ she said, ”because it helps with gratitude.“ For Sister Maddy, even days when friends aren’t present are occasions for being grateful for them. ”Every night during my examen, I remember my gratitude for friends—even if I’ve not been in contact with them on that particular day. I’m grateful for them wherever they are.”
Paul, the rector of a large Jesuit community in Boston, said that gratitude was the most neglected part of friendship. For many years, Paul was in charge of training young Jesuits in Boston and Chicago. He has a lifetime of experience in counseling others in their spiritual lives. “One of the most important parts of friendship is living in gratitude for the gift, and growing into that kind of gratitude,” he said.
Paul noted that one common problem in Jesuit friendships stemmed from a lack of gratitude. Without gratitude, you take friendship for granted. “You forget that it takes a little effort. And the small things matter: making time to call, staying in touch. If people can name a friendship and can appreciate it, they are more inclined to work at it.”
True friendships are hard to come by, Paul said, and they take work. And patience. “There are a small number of people who, for whatever reason, easily make and keep friends. But the vast majority of the human race has to ask for friendship and be patient in waiting for it to come. When we imagine friendships, we tend to imagine things happening instantly. But like anything that’s rich and wonderful, you grow into it.”
This chapter may have helped you to find ways to strengthen or deepen your appreciation of relationships with family and friends. But what about those readers for whom talk of friendship just reminds them of their loneliness? If this is where you are, you can still enjoy God’s friendship in prayer, seeing how God is active in your work, your reading, your hobbies.
Still, what can we say to those who long for a good friend?
It would be wrong to downplay the pain of loneliness: I have known many lonely people whose lives are often filled with sadness. Perhaps one thing I could suggest is to remain open to the possibility of meeting new friends and not move to despair, trusting, as much as you can, that God wants you someday to find a friend. The very desire for friendship is an invitation from God to reach out to others. Trust that God desires community for you, though that goal may seem far away.
“For those who wonder why it’s not happening faster in their lives,” Paul said, “I think that it’s more important to love and take the first step. And it also may seem that most people have to spend their lives giving more than receiving.”
“But at the end,” Paul said, “even with all the work that is involved, even if you only find one friend in your whole life, it’s worth it.”
Chapter Eleven
Surrendering to the Future
Obedience, Acceptance, and Suffering
ST. IGNATIUS WAS CRYSTAL clear about the place of obedience in the life of a Jesuit. Here’s how he began his discussion of the vow in the Constitutions, in a section called “What Pertains to Obedience.”
All should strongly dispose themselves to observe obedience and to distinguish themselves in it, not only in the matters of obligation but also in the others, even though nothing else be perceived except an indication of the superior’s will without an expressed command.
In other words, we Jesuits should be distinguished by our obedience so that even the indication of a superior’s intention should be enough reason to act. What’s more, we should receive the command from the superior “as if it were coming from Christ,” since we are practicing obedience out of love of God. We should be ready to set aside anything we are doing—even being “ready to leave unfinished any letter”—once we know what the superior wants.
Most people find that impossible to fathom. To quote the writer Kathleen Norris again, most people see obedience as “desirable in dogs but suspect in people.” Many even find the term superior, the term for the head of a religious community, freakish. Rick Curry, a Jesuit friend, once ran into a psychiatrist who lived in the same building where Rick kept an office. At the time, Rick was in an elevator with another Jesuit. Rick introduced him. “This is my superior,” said Rick.
After his superior left the elevator, Rick’s friend said, “I wish you wouldn’t say things like that!”
Rick said, “What things?”
She said, “He’s not your superior! You’re every bit as good as he is!”
Rick laughed and explained to her what the term meant.
Let me do some explaining, too, about the vow of obedience, before we move on to how the Jesuit experience with obedience might help you in your everyday life.
OBEDIENCE AS LISTENING
Obedience was a normal part of religious life in the days of Ignatius. Once his tight-knit band of friends decided to become a religious order, it would have been unthinkable to arrange things in any other way. It has always been, and remains, part of almost every Catholic religious order.
The word comes from the Latin oboedire, which includes the root for “to hear.” Obedience means hearing or listening. As with the vows of poverty and chastity, obedience is designed to help us follow the example of Jesus, who listened to, and was obedient to, God the Father
.
Men and women in religious orders believe that God is at work not only through their own daily lives and prayer, but also through the decisions of their superiors, who are also trying to decide the right course of action. We believe that God’s Spirit is at work through the decisions of the superior who is, like the Jesuit under his care, trying to “listen” to God.
That doesn’t mean that the superior arrives at his decisions alone. Superior and Jesuit together try to discern God’s desires. When a Jesuit is about to be “missioned” to a particular work, the superior is attentive to the Jesuit’s own desires, since he knows—and the reader knows by now—that this is one way that God’s desires are made known. This is what the founder of the Jesuits intended.
The Jesuits William Barry and Robert Doherty note in Contemplatives in Action: The Jesuit Way that Ignatius’s insistence on individual discernment is surprising when you consider how hierarchical and authoritarian were the circles in which Ignatius moved—courts of kings and nobles, the military, the academy, the church. Nonetheless, they write, “Ignatius also expected that God’s will could be made manifest through the experience of the men themselves.”
How does a superior know a man’s desires? Through a practice called the “account of conscience.” Once a year the provincial meets with each Jesuit under his care to discuss his work, his community life, his vows, his friendships, and his prayer. Afterward the superior has a clearer idea of the Jesuit’s interior life and so is better able to mission him.
After a decision is made, if a Jesuit feels that he has not been adequately listened to, he can return to the superior and appeal. This is known as “representing.” If that fails to satisfy, the Jesuit can appeal to a higher authority—all the way up to the superior general. But in the end—unless it is a matter of conscience—the Jesuit is bound by his vows to obey. After prayer, conversation, and discernment, even if you think it’s a poor decision, you must accept it.