The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [167]
So you have to be careful that the riches (a high salary) that lead to honors (the esteem of colleagues) do not lead to pride (the belief that you are better than others simply because your paycheck is bigger).
Remembering the Poor
Step into any airport bookstore today, and you’ll see a section marked Business filled with books on how to get ahead. These books betoken a lively conversation among former CEOs, successful entrepreneurs, and business writers on how to be more successful, how to trounce your competitors, and how to stay on top, with the goal of more and more wealth.
But in those discussions one group is missing: the poor. For at least two reasons: First, their presence is a reminder of the inability of the capitalist system to provide for all, and so they represent a silent reproach to the capitalist “way of proceeding.” Second, the material needs of the poor remind us of our responsibility to care for them. For both reasons, the poor appear, in the words of Pope John Paul II, as “a burden, as irksome intruders trying to consume what others have produced.”
And increasingly they are obscured—by gated communities that shut out the nonwealthy, television shows that focus on celebrities, and slick ads for all manner of expensive consumer goods. Where are the poor? As Dick Meyer says in his book on American culture, Why We Hate Us, “We have used our affluence and abundance to build screens and false idols that obscure what matters most, what is authentic, what is unmediated.” That authenticity includes the poor.
Thus, the final challenge: how to remember the need to care for the poor.
One of my friends, a corporate lawyer, told me he found three things that help: first, being grateful for what you have; second, helping out in a church community; and third, really stretching yourself when you give charitably.
Another goal might be to spend time with the poor. To get to know the poor one-on-one, rather than as objects of charity. And it is not only the poor who benefit; it is the more affluent, too, who discover one of the secrets of the kingdom of God: the poor are able to invite the wealthy to think about God in new ways, as the refugees did for me in Africa. As Jon Sobrino, a Jesuit who teaches theology in El Salvador, wrote in The True Church and the Poor: “The poor are accepted as constituting the primary recipients of the Good News and, therefore, as having an inherent capacity of understanding it better than anyone else.”
THOSE ARE A FEW suggestions on living a spiritual life in the working world based on the way of Ignatius. Overall, it requires carving out time for both prayer and solitude, finding God around you, practicing a degree of detachment from some corporate values, and remembering the need for solidarity with God’s poor.
HOW TO BRING YOUR BEST SELF TO WORK
There’s an old Jesuit joke that says that the clearest sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit at work in the Society of Jesus is that, despite all the craziness and confusion, we’re still here. Only God could do that!
That’s a humble way of looking at our successes, and it reminds us that we are ultimately dependent on God for our future.
Willingness to trust in God’s providence is what Pedro Arrupe had in mind when a journalist innocently asked him the question, “Where will the Society of Jesus be in twenty years?” Arrupe laughed and said, “I have no idea!” Like the church, the Society may be managed by human beings, but we believe that God ultimately guides us. And who knows where God will lead us in the future?
Still, there may be a few concrete reasons that can be adduced for the success of many of our ventures: Jesuits have a common mission; we try to work hard; we are available for many kinds of work; and we are inspired by the example of Jesus, as all Christians are, to accept whatever sacrifices are needed in pursuit of the common good.
Today you could add to that list of reasons another important one: Jesuits work