The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [120]
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 spiritual 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