The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything

by James Martin

  Take time to ponder one or more of these questions. The responses you make to yourself—provided they are honest answers and not just the answers you feel you ought to give—will be pointers to where your deepest desires are rooted.

  Look closely, taking time to reflect on what you find. There may be patterns in your desiring that help you more fully understand who you are.

  Like any desires, these must be tested.Just because I desire to be an opera star doesn’t mean that I can be one, especially if I cannot sing! This is where the Ignatian goal of confirmation enters, as we discussed in the last chapter. You need to look not only at your desires, your prayer, and the fruits of your discernment, but also at the “reality of the situation.”

  So you reflect on your desires in terms of your everyday life. As Chris Lowney told me, “Sometimes people are given guidance that is too romantic when it comes to career or vocation. These ideas of ‘follow your bliss’ or that your calling is ‘where the world’s deep need and your deep hunger come together’ can be misleading. These notions are valuable, but that’s not the only ingredient in figuring out what to do. Every decision has to do with interests and needs but also circumstances and talents.”

  Vocation is not simply about one’s desire or one’s idea of the world’s needs, but also a reality that sometimes does not exactly conform to our desires. Trust your heart, but use your head.

  “I might feel drawn to be a baseball player, but there’s no way!” said Lowney. “That’s operative in all kinds of areas. Maybe you can’t throw the equivalent of a fastball in teaching. Decisions like that factor in our talents, needs, interests, and circumstances, and in all those things, not just in our desires, are God’s fingerprints. Feeling good about those things is one important piece of data, but so is the fact that I can or cannot do it. Those should be equally seen as God’s fingerprints.”

  A SPIRITUALITY OF WORK

  Even if you have a good idea of your vocation, you may still have a hard time finding God at work—whatever it is. What does the way of Ignatius have to say about finding God on the job?

  Before entering the Jesuits, I spent six years in a large corporation, so I know something about the “real world.” But when I entered the Jesuits, I didn’t stop working! During my formation I worked in a large hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts; taught in an inner-city school in New York; managed a shop and microfinance operation in Nairobi for two years; and worked as a chaplain in a prison in Boston.

  And for the last ten years I’ve worked at a weekly magazine, a professional workplace that includes meetings, deadlines, budgets, job evaluations, and an eclectic mix of colleagues with a wide variety of personalities and temperaments that sometimes gives rise to differences and disputes. And even though Jesuits don’t have to worry much about salary increases, downsizing, or climbing the corporate ladder, Jesuits are expected to work hard.

  Like the vast majority of those in the workforce, I try to be a good employee, a good colleague, and a good manager. So, in many respects, my situation may not be so different from your own. And through the lives of my non-Jesuit friends, who work in a variety of professions, I try to keep up with the challenges of other sectors of the working world. In short, I think I have a good idea of the challenges of living a spiritual life on the job.

  And there are many. Living a spiritual life in the working world has grown increasingly challenging as more and more demands are placed on employees. So here are what I observe to be the main challenges of maintaining a spiritual life from nine to five—and some perspectives, using some of the Ignatian practices we’ve been discussing.

  Finding Time for God and You

  Nine to five? More like 24/7! Time is at a premium for most people in the workforce. Despite vaunted increases in productivity and technology (anyone remember how the personal computer was going to lead to four-day workweeks?), the amount of time demanded by companies from their workers has only increased. Round-the-clock markets; round-the-clock financial news; and round-the-clock access with e-mail, cell phones, BlackBerrys, and laptops often translate into round-the-clock work. Moreover, decreasing job security and increasing numbers of dual-career households mean more stress and less time for married couples and parents.

  So the first challenge: how can you make space for a life of prayer and worship?

  When I recently asked some friends about this, a few suggested that the only way to do this is to sacrifice time at work. “It’s a conscious choice,” said one friend who works in a large corporation. While he found it difficult, he said he could avoid what he called the “trap of constant work” only by sacrificing some upward mobility and choosing to spend time with his family and on his spiritual life. Otherwise, he said, one’s life becomes informed solely by work, and without the nourishment of either individual or communal prayer, one’s spiritual life slowly atrophies.

  But while my friend is a busy man with a growing family, he is also successful financially and can afford to sacrifice a bit of upward mobility. It’s more difficult for those struggling to make ends meet: the single mother working two jobs or the underpaid employee desperate to earn a better living for his family and hang on to his health insurance, both stretched to the limit.

  A few years ago I co-edited a book with Jeremy Langford called Professions of Faith, in which we asked various Catholics to reflect on their work. Amelia Uelmen, a former corporate lawyer who now teaches at Fordham University in New York, wrote, “By far the biggest challenge in legal practice at a large firm is not the lack of openness to conversations about social responsibility. It is insisting on the necessity of maintaining the balanced life that enables one to hang on to this kind of perspective.”

  Time is a problem for those in the working world—or for any busy person. Here the examination of conscience can be extremely helpful. For those overwhelmed by time demands, the examen, requiring only ten to fifteen minutes a day, can be a spiritual lifesaver. One friend, a busy investment adviser with three children, does the examen at his desk in the morning, thinking back over the events of the previous day. If he’s too busy in the morning, he does lectio divina at lunch, closing his door for a few minutes to immerse himself in the readings for the day.

  Balancing work and prayer, the active and contemplative, was essential to the early Jesuits. And still is. One of our recent General Congregations wrote that Jesuits need to be “undividedly apostolic and religious.” The connection between work and worship “needs to animate our whole way of living, praying and working.” Work without prayer becomes detached from God. Prayer without work becomes detached from human beings.

  Overwork is a danger for Jesuits for the same reasons that it is for everyone. First, we grow distant from God, the foundation of our lives; second, we grow frustrated when things do not go as planned, since we can overlook our reliance on God; third, we spend less time with friends or families and begin feeling isolated; and fourth, we begin to believe that we are what we do, and so at the end of our lives when we have little “to do,” we feel worthless.

  For those who find it absolutely impossible to carve out time— like parents of young children or those juggling two or three jobs—the goal of being a “contemplative in action” is especially relevant. Can you maintain an awareness of the presence of God around you?

  Ignatius not only made time for prayer; he maintained a contemplative attitude throughout the day. One of his earliest companions, Jerónimo Nadal, wrote this about his friend: “In all things, actions and conversations he contemplated the presence of God and experienced the reality of spiritual things so that he was likewise in action contemplative (a thing which he used to express by saying: God must be found in everything).” Ignatius’s way is an invitation for those who feel that they are disappointing God if they cannot find time to pray during extremely stressful times in their lives.

  As David Lonsdale notes, “Time set aside for contemplation is one way of being contemplative; but a full involvement in a bus
y life can also be another way, and people who are ‘contemplative in action’ learn to find God in both these different ways according to what they decide is needful and possible.”

  Finding God Around You

  In the first chapter I mentioned one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received. “You can’t put part of your life in a box,” said David Donovan, my spiritual director. In Ignatian spirituality nothing is hidden away; everything can be opened up as a way of finding God. “God must be found in everything,” as Nadal noted, summarizing Ignatius.

  When you’re in a job you enjoy, that’s easy. The work itself becomes a way to find God: the emotional, mental, and sometimes physical satisfaction that comes with the labor is a way of experiencing God’s joy and God’s desire to create alongside you. One of the main characters in the 1981 movie Chariots of Fire, about competitors in the 1924 Olympics, is a Scots minister who is also a runner. When asked why he runs, he says, “When I run, I feel [God’s] pleasure.” That’s as good a description as any about living out a vocation. The work itself is pleasurable.

  Clearly some people are able to find God in their work. But what if you’re stuck in a career that feels stale, a job that doesn’t seem like a vocation, or work you don’t enjoy? Let’s be realistic: some people cannot follow what they believe are their vocational paths for a variety of reasons—financial constraints, family demands, educational restrictions, physical limitations, or a tight job market. How might they be able to find God, using the Ignatian tradition?

  Let me suggest this: by trying to find God in all things, not just the work itself. First of all, through the people around them. This is perhaps the easiest of routes.

  When I was in high school and college, to earn money for tuition I worked in a variety of summer jobs, where I met many people who detested their work. For a few summers, I took on the typical summer jobs for an adolescent boy in the 197os—delivering newspapers, mowing lawns, washing dishes and busing tables in a series of restaurants, caddying, and working as a movie theater usher. But one job taught me more about miserable work than all the rest combined.

  The summer after my freshman year at college I worked three jobs. In the evenings I worked as an usher at a local movie theater; on Saturdays and Sundays I worked as a waiter in a small restaurant; weekdays I worked on an assembly line in a local packaging plant. That last one was easily the worst job I’ve ever had. But I counted myself fortunate to get it—since it paid more than either of the other two jobs.

  Here was my schedule: Up at 6:00 a.m. for a shower. Wolf down some cereal. Stand at the front door waiting for a friend to pick me up, since I had no car. By 7:00 I was expected to be “on the line,” standing in front of a deafening, room-sized machine that shoved pills into boxes and disgorged the filled boxes onto a rapidly moving conveyor belt.

  My job was to take the smaller boxes that came shooting off the line and put them into bigger boxes, and then cover them with plastic shrink wrap. Farther down the line, another person packed them into bigger boxes. Finally someone loaded them onto a wooden pallet. At the head of the line, workers tore huge sheets of “blister packs” of pills and loaded them into the hopper, which poured them into the belt.

  I hated it. Everyone hated it. Every ten minutes I checked the clock on the wall to see how much closer lunchtime was. After lunch, I watched the clock and prayed for (or at least anticipated) the end of the shift at 4:00. At lunchtime some of the college-age workers smoked pot in the trash-filled parking lot to relieve the boredom. And at least once a week someone threw a wooden ruler into the machine to shut it down temporarily; then we all took a break while someone called the repairman. That was the high point of the week. But for the rest of the time everyone was miserable.

  But surprisingly, three women on the line laughed almost the entire day. Having worked in the plant for several years, they knew one another and spent the day chatting about their children, their husbands, their homes, and their plans for the weekend. Gradually they drew me into their circle, where conversation focused mainly on how much we hated the job. By summer’s end they were ribbing me about all sorts of things: how slow I was, how young I was, how skinny I was, how much dust got in my hair, and, especially, how afraid I was of sticking my hand in the machine to fix it when it jammed. (The metal gears could easily rip a finger off.) “Is you a man or is you a mouse?” one would tease.

  They hated their jobs but loved one another.

  Since that time, I have worked in several places where people may not have enjoyed their work but enjoyed one another. Celebrating birthdays, sharing interests in television shows, socializing outside of work, consoling one another on losses, trading photos of children and grandchildren—these are ways of connecting on an often intimate level. This important facet in the workplace often goes overlooked in discussions of the spirituality of work: finding God in others even in the midst of a crummy job.

  The second way that one might find God in the midst of a difficult job is by understanding that your job is directed toward a larger goal. Something similar often happens with those caring for small children or elderly parents: you may not like the physical labor required, you might recoil from cleaning up vomit or changing soiled diapers, but you know it is for an important purpose. In a way you see this part of the job as a means to an end.

  When I was starting out in the corporate world, I worked with one man who was notable for his loathing of his job. After decades in the accounting department, he was laid off. During his last week he lamented his layoff but admitted that he never once enjoyed his work. As a recent college graduate with starry-eyed ideals about the company, I was horrified. Though I knew assembly-line workers who hated their jobs, this was corporate America—where I expected people would be happier, more fulfilled. “So how did you make it?” I asked him.

  He pulled out his wallet and flipped it open. “With this,” he said quietly, and showed me a picture of his family, a wife and children. With that gesture, he showed me the reason for his labors.

  This doesn’t make a job itself any more pleasant. There is a New Yorker cartoon that shows Egyptian slaves hauling massive stone blocks to build a pyramid. One says to the man beside him, “Oh, stop complaining! It’s an honor to be associated with an enterprise of this magnitude.” Some jobs are just awful. And sometimes it’s necessary to leave the job. But sometimes it’s impossible to do so.

  Even in the midst of unpleasant jobs, however, it may help to focus on larger goals. This is not to minimize how rotten some jobs are, but, for some people, the uniting of one’s work to a larger goal can invest their labor with meaning. The believer can also unite his work with a larger good that God has in mind, for example, caring for his children or providing for his family.

  Even for Walter Ciszek, the Jesuit sentenced to work in a Soviet concentration camp, being forced to build worker housing was more tolerable when he imagined the end results. Though he wasn’t helping his family, he told his friends in the labor camp that he was doing something important:

  I tried to explain that the pride I took in my work differed from the pride a communist might take in building up the new society. The difference lay in the motivation. As a Christian, I could share in their concern for building a better world. I could work as hard as they for the common good. The people who would benefit from my labors would be just that: people. Human beings. Families in need of shelter against the arctic weather.

  The third way to find God may be to act as a leaven in unhealthy work situations. In the Gospel of Matthew (13:33), Jesus reminds his disciples that they are to be like “leaven” in the world, the tiny bit of yeast that helps the bread to rise. A small agent of change can alter situations dramatically. Though trapped in a job that paid terrible wages, the women on that factory line nonetheless helped one another meet the day with some happiness.

  If you find yourself in a dehumanizing situation, you may find some sense of purpose knowing that you are acting against these tend
encies and helping to better the environment, even if in a small way.

  During the time of the Protestant Reformation, Peter Favre regularly found himself confronted with Catholics who said virulent things about the Reformers (and vice versa). “If we want to be of help to them,” he wrote of the Reformers, “we must be careful to regard them with love, to love them in deed and in truth, and to banish from our soul any thought that might lessen our love or esteem for them.” His journals show that every day Peter prayed for a long list of those on the opposite side of his theological divide. Peter was able to act as a leaven in the midst of a difficult “job.”

  Finding Time for Solitude

  Whether commuting during rush hour, relaxing at home in the evenings or weekends, or even traveling on vacations, growing numbers of working men and women are never far from e-mail or without their cell phones. The sight of someone nervously pressing a phone against her ear as she races to catch a cab is a common one in many cities, as is the sight of a traveler desperately punching out another e-mail on his laptop as he waits for the next flight home in a crowded airport.

  While these gadgets are terrific for keeping us in touch with our work and our families and friends, they pare away the few remaining moments of solitary time we have left—for reflection, silence, and inner quiet. Where is the time for “recollection,” as spiritual writers say?

  So the second challenge: How can the working person balance the need to be “connected” with the need for solitude, a requirement of a healthy spiritual life?