The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [99]
Despite his busy schedule as a pastor, he drove to see me at a Jesuit community in Evanston, about an hour’s drive away, every day. For two weeks Tim dutifully visited me, got me to laugh, took me for a drive, fixed me a meal when I was unable to, and talked to me about what I was experiencing. We weren’t all that close during the time we lived together; we were after that summer. His generosity—quiet, unobtrusive, selfless—was a form of chaste love.
And I wish you could meet Sister Maddy, my friend at the retreat house in Gloucester, Massachusetts. As I mentioned before, we first met when we were both working in East Africa. Maddy, a practical and hardworking sister with a quick smile and short-cropped hair, worked with two other American sisters in a remote part of Tanzania and ran a girls’ school in a remote village called Kowak. For their vacations, the three sisters would come to our little Jesuit community in Nairobi. Maddy is a terrific cook who would relax by preparing colossal Italian meals for our community—so everyone involved looked forward to her vacation. After two years in Tanzania, she had a serious medical condition that forced her to leave the sisters and students at Kowak. A few years later she was able to return for a proper good-bye.
Fall in Love
This meditation from Pedro Arrupe, S.J., may be his most famous piece of writing. There’s just one problem: no one has been able to find it in any of his letters or speeches. One of his advisers, Vincent O’Keefe, S.J., told me it was most likely copied down by someone at a conference and circulated. And, said Father O’Keefe, it’s just the sort of thing Arrupe would say.
Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you will do with your evenings, how you will spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in love, stay in love and it will decide everything.
Since then, Maddy and I have directed many retreats together. Because of some physical limitations, Maddy has a difficult time navigating the sprawling grounds of the retreat house, but, even with freezing temperatures and two-feet-high snowdrifts, her joyful spirits are undimmed and her laughter unabated. A few years ago I signed up for a retreat at Gloucester and discovered that she was to be my director. Having a close friend as a director, I thought, would be odd. “Well, I’m going to treat you like I would treat any other director,” I told her.
She laughed her hearty laugh. “And I’m going to treat you like any other retreatant!”
Maddy proved to be an astute director, who helped me through a difficult period in my life—negotiating artfully between the responsibilities of a spiritual director and those of a friend. Among other things, Maddy’s hard work for her students in Tanzania and her patient listening to those at the retreat house in Gloucester are a form of chaste love.
Each of these friends—Bob, Tim, and Maddy—who all vowed chastity, show love in a variety of ways. Each reminds me of one of St. Ignatius Loyola’s sayings, from the Exercises: “Love ought to manifest itself more by deeds than by words.”
CHASTITY IS ABOUT LOVE
One of the main goals of chastity is to love as many people as possible as deeply as possible. That may seem strange to those used to defining chastity negatively—that is, as not having sex. But this has long been the tradition of the church. Chastity is another way to love and, as such, has a great deal to teach everyone, not just members of religious orders.
Chastity also frees you to serve people more