The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [89]
The “corporal works of mercy” (including feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting the prisoner) have always been at the heart of Christian service. Many of the most well known saints are known specifically for their work with the poor, from St. Francis of Assisi to Mother Teresa. Ignatius was no different in his desire to heed the call to care for the “least.”
From the beginning, working with the poor was a focus of the Jesuits’ mission, rather than simply founding schools, which is often thought to be the case. And, by the way, the original purpose of the schools was not simply to educate youth and help them in their development of character, but also to serve the common good. The early Jesuits hoped that the graduates would “grow up to be pastors, civic officials, administrators of justice, and will fill other important posts to everyone’s profit and advantage,” as Juan de Polanco, Ignatius’s secretary, wrote.
After the Society was approved by Pope Paul III in 1540, Jesuits began visiting hospitals and prisons, ministering to the dying, and working with orphans, reformed prostitutes, and the children of prostitutes. And when famine, flood, or the plague broke out, the Jesuits quickly organized to provide direct physical or financial assistance to victims.
Of course, other religious orders engaged in charitable work, too; it is simply part of the Christian life. What was unusual about the Jesuits was what John O’Malley calls the “explicit articulation” of those charitable works as an essential element of the new order.
“In a few instances,” O’Malley writes in The First Jesuits, “this commitment attained heroic dimensions.” In 1553 the Jesuits remained almost alone in their willingness to minister to the sick during a plague in Perugia, Italy, with several Jesuits dying as a result. Aloysius Gonzaga, one of the earliest Jesuit saints, took ill and died after ministering to plague victims in 1591. He was twenty-one.
In all these works they were not only following the Judeo-Christian tradition of service, but also Ignatius’s dictum that “love ought to manifest itself more by deeds than by words.”
My own job in Kenya was to help the refugees who had settled in the sprawling slums of Nairobi start their own businesses so they could support themselves and their families. Much of the work consisted of visiting the refugees in their small shacks, which often contained nothing more than a mattress, a kerosene lantern, a cooking pot, some boxes, and a few plastic pails to hold water and food.
This kind of poverty—in which human beings are unable to satisfy their basic needs—is not something to which Jesuits, or anyone, aspires. Dehumanizing poverty is something that many Jesuits spend their entire lives combating, whether through direct work with the poor or advocacy on their behalf. The Jesuit goal of voluntary poverty in imitation of Christ is different from the involuntary poverty that is a scourge for billions across the globe.
But the two are inextricably connected: living simply means that one needs less and takes less from the world, and is therefore more able to give to those who live in poverty. Living simply can aid the poor.
Entering into the lives of the poor also encourages simple living. You see how the poor are able to manage with so little. How they sometimes live with greater freedom. How they are often more generous with what they have. And how they are often more grateful for life than the wealthy.
Learning About Poverty
Pedro Arrupe, the Jesuit superior general from 1965 to 1981, had a sense of humor even about serious topics. Two young American Jesuits once showed up at the Jesuit headquarters in Rome. Father Arrupe asked what assignment