The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [106]
Which means, “Are they angels?”
The architects had left out the bathrooms.
No, we are not angels. And that extends beyond our use of bathrooms. We can be short-tempered, shortsighted, and just plain short with one another. (As an aside, the architect quickly tacked on two tall towers for the bathrooms. Years later, a visiting nun wrote a poem that praised the Jesuits’ doing their thinking “in the white towers,” which was probably true.)
Jesuit community is a great blessing. The men with whom I’ve lived for the past twenty-one years are joyful, prayerful, and hard-working—and so different from one another. As the saying goes, “If you’ve met one Jesuit, you’ve met one Jesuit!” One friend is a gerontologist who enjoys fly-fishing. Another is a prison chaplain who keeps pet ferrets. Another is a former political consultant who sings in piano bars. All enrich my life with their insights, inspire me with their faith, and challenge me to become a better person. After twenty-one years as a Jesuit, I couldn’t imagine my life without my Jesuit friends. Whenever I think of Jesus’ promise to his disciples that anyone who follows him will receive a “hundredfold” of whatever he has given up, I think of my Jesuit friends.
But community life can be a challenge. One Jesuit thinks we aren’t living simply enough. Another thinks we’re living too simply. One thinks that if you find someone’s wet clothes in the community washing machine, you should put them in the dryer. That’s common courtesy, he says. Another is angry when you do just that with his clothes: “You’ve shrunk my cotton shirts!”
More seriously, as in any human environment, resentments creep into communities, grudges intensify, and relationships become cold. One friend joked that his friends used to speak of the “Ice House,” the fictional Jesuit residence for the coldest men of the province. “But we always debated,” he said. “Who would be the superior? Who was the coldest?”
The seventeenth-century Jesuit saint John Berchmans, who died at age twenty-two, before finishing his Jesuit training, said, Vita communis est mea maximapenitentia. Some Jesuits translate that as “The common life is my greatest penance.” That is, the common life of all men and women is difficult enough. But most Jesuits believe it’s more accurately translated as, “Life in community is my greatest penance.” (On the other hand, as Avery Cardinal Dulles once remarked about Berchmans, “I wonder what the community thought of him!”)
Like any group—a family, a business, a parish—a Jesuit community can be the source of both joy and grief. Living peacefully with others and maintaining healthy friendships requires a great deal of love, patience, and wisdom.
But that’s a challenge for everyone—not just Jesuits. All of us are called to live compassionately with one another and maintain healthy friendships with love, patience, and wisdom. None of us are angels.
So given our common desires for love and friendship, and our common human shortcomings, what does the way of Ignatius and the traditions of the Jesuits say about love, friendship, and human relationships?
THE PRESUPPOSITION
The Spiritual Exercises begins with good advice. In what he calls his Presupposition, Ignatius says that we “ought to be more eager to put a good interpretation on a neighbor’s statement than to condemn it.”
Always give people the benefit of the doubt. What’s more, says Ignatius, if you’re not sure what a person means, you should, says Ignatius, “ask how the other means it.” Ignatius placed that crucial advice at the beginning of the Exercises to ensure that both the spiritual director and the retreatant don’t misunderstand each other. Each presupposes that the other is trying to do his or her best.
This wisdom is applicable not simply for spiritual direction. It’s a key insight for healthy relationships within families, in the workplace, and among friends. And while most people would agree with it, in principle, we often do just the opposite. We expect others to judge us according to