The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [176]
COMPARE AND DESPAIR
The primary difficulty in accepting ourselves and valuing our individuality is the false belief that to become holy, or useful, or happy, we have to become someone else—or become perfect. The young mother who cares for her children may say to herself sadly, “I’ll never be like Mother Teresa,” when her vocation is to be a caring mother. The lawyer or doctor or schoolteacher who reads about St. Francis Xavier may say, “I’ll never be like him.” But they are not meant to be Mother Teresa or St. Francis Xavier, estimable as they were. They are meant to be themselves.
That means letting go of the wish to become someone else and remembering that your own vocation—not someone else’s—is the path to happiness. You don’t need to use anyone else’s map to heaven, because God has already placed within your soul all the directions you need.
It also means joyfully accepting your own personality and dreams. One of the greatest bits of advice I’ve ever received was from a Jesuit spiritual director. At the time (I’ll keep this vague) I was working with an unpleasant person on the job. As time passed, I found myself simply reacting to him: becoming more guarded, more defensive, more cautious, more suspicious, as a way of protecting myself from his bad temper. My reactions were beginning to make me callous and hard. One day I confessed to my spiritual director, “I feel like he is forming me into something I don’t want to be.”
What I Do Is Me
It took me many readings of this poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins before realizing how much it is about being who you are.
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Christ—for Chríst plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
How often we feel this! Other people, or groups, or situations, we feel, are shaping us into something we wouldn’t choose to be.
My director said, “Don’t let anyone take from you the freedom to become who God wants you to be.”
This means you, someone unique, someone loved by God.
The Almighty Artisan
A rough and unshapen log has no idea that it can be made into a statue that will be considered a masterpiece, but the carver sees what can be done with it. So many . . . do not understand that God can mold them into saints, until they put themselves into the hands of that almighty Artisan.
—St. Ignatius Loyola
It’s easy to see this marvelous individuality in the lives of the holy men and women around us. So far in this book I’ve introduced you to many of my friends. Each of them is very different. John, my Jesuit friend from Gloucester, Massachusetts, was different from my first spiritual director, David. John was more relaxed and laid back; David, more energetic. John was happy to stay home and watch television at night; David was more of a social animal.
During our novitiate we took several personality tests, designed to help us understand how differently people interacted with the world. One series of tests was structured to determine whether we were extroverts or introverts. The result: I was the only extrovert in the house. That explained a great deal—for example, why after a house party I was energized, but the others were drained and needed to retire to their rooms to recharge. Or why they needed to process information before they spoke, rather than discussing something in order to understand what they were thinking. The tests helped me see that the others who approached life differently weren’t wrong or misguided, but simply different. Or, more accurately,