The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [84]
At the top of the ladder is the mythical figure—the celebrity, the rich man or woman, the model. At the bottom is the “loser”— the unemployed, the refugee, the homeless.
It becomes easier, therefore, to ignore the poor. They are an implicit threat to the system, since they remind us that the ladder does not work perfectly. We think, What if that were me? That thought gives more urgency to the climb away from the “losers.”
Under these conditions competition becomes the guiding force of social life. Your security is not enhanced, but threatened, by others’ success. As Gore Vidal once wrote, “It is not enough that I succeed. Others must fail.”
One’s security depends on climbing. As Brackley notes, not everyone intent on upward mobility is arrogant or power hungry. But even the compassionate are forced to confront the dangers and risks of the ladder. You are tempted to ask not “Is this right?” but “Is this best for me?”
The social model is therefore not simply a ladder but a pyramid, in which whole groups band together against threats from above or below. Divisions are formed not just between persons but between groups.
Not everyone can be on top. So those on top work to maintain their positions and keep those on the bottom in place. Power often is exercised to keep the lower groups dependent or disorganized or ignorant.
Social class, race, gender, sexual orientation, education, physical appearance, and other factors help to define the pyramid. This leads to further divisions.
Finally, competition between the groups breeds not trust and cooperation but fear, mistrust, and, I would add, loneliness.
You may not agree with all of those factors. But, overall, Brackley’s model well describes the consumerist world in which many of us live.
The constant drive for upward mobility, to maintain our positions, takes time and energy. So why not set at least some of this aside and be free of it? This is what Ignatius meant when he said that poverty, a kind of simple lifestyle, a “downward mobility,” a setting aside of some of those values described above, “is the cause of great delight” for those who embrace it. Simple living is not a punishment, but a move toward greater freedom. So let’s see what the way of Ignatius can teach us about simple living.
SENSIBLE SIMPLICITY
Here is how Ignatius begins his treatment of poverty in the Constitutions: “Poverty, as the strong wall of the religious institute, should be loved and preserved in its integrity, as far as this is possible with God’s grace.” It’s essential.
Ignatius’s outlook on simple living was formed by his own experience. After his conversion experience in the family castle, one of his first acts was to lay down his knightly armor before a statue of Mary and divest himself, as far as possible, of all his worldly goods at the Benedictine monastery of Montserrat.
On the Eve of the feast of Our Lady, in March, at night, in the year 1522, he went as secretly as he could to a beggar—and stripping off all his garments, he gave them to the beggar; he dressed himself in his chosen attire and went to kneel before the altar of Our Lady.
This is a wholehearted response to Jesus’ invitation to the rich young man in the Gospels. For Ignatius this was a clear way to follow Christ. His response also patterned itself on the practices of other religious orders, especially the one founded by his hero, St. Francis of Assisi. As John O’Malley notes in The First Jesuits, “The Franciscan influence upon him, direct or indirect, is nowhere more palpable than in this emphasis on the surrender of material goods.”
Later, in a touching scene, a man races up to report to Ignatius what later happened to the same beggar:
As he was gone about a league from Montserrat, a man who had been hurrying after him, caught up to him and asked if he had given some clothes to a beggar, as the beggar affirmed. Answering that he had, tears flowed from his eyes in compassion for the beggar to whom he had given the clothing