The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life

This chapter begins with the question “How do I find God?” (29). Martin describes six different ways.

The first is “The Path of Belief,” typically for those who were born into religious families or who encountered religion in their youth. Faith is already a central part of their lives, and “faith enables them to put their sufferings into a framework of meaning” (30). Martin discusses the life of Walter Ciszek, an American Jesuit, and the ways that Ciszek used his faith as “an anchor” (31). However, Martin also notes that it’s normal to doubt or feel confused before coming to find God. It is also important for those on this path to not let their faith life be stagnate, as “[a]n adult life requires an adult faith” (32).

Next is the path of independence, which refers to the journey for those who do not follow an organized religion, for whatever reason, usually disappointment. Many are faith-filled, however, with “a healthy independence that enables them to see things in a fresh way” (33).

The struggle for those on this path is that their expectations may be too high for organized religion to meet. Martin tells of a friend who was raised Episcopalian, then tried and rejected Catholicism before doing the same with Buddhism. Eventually, he joined a Unitarian Church, but then ultimately gave up on organized religion. For Martin, his “friend’s experience reminded me that the search for a perfect religious community is a futile one” (34).

Third, those on the path of disbelief likewise don’t find organized religion to be fulfilling but also don’t think that God exists. They also have a “religious-baloney detector” in which they have a unique ability to discover hypocrisy (35). Martin also details that the primary struggle for this group is that they would need God’s existence to be proven using logic.

Next is the path of return on which those who have come back to organized religion after a particularly spiritual moment in their lives. They may return to a new or their original tradition. Martin then discusses how he initially stopped believing in God after his close friend was killed in a car accident. He then became an atheist. A conversation with a mutual friend reminded him that “there were other ways to relate to God, ways other than as the Great Problem Solver” (38). He eventually returned to religion and became a Jesuit where he found “a different kind of God—a God was with you in your suffering, a God who took a personal interest in your life, even if you didn’t feel that all your problems were solved—did life start to make more sense” (39).

In talking about the fifth path—the path of exploration—Martin describes how he served as the theological consultant for an Off-Broadway acting company putting on The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. He ultimately ended up talking about the actors about their spiritual lives.

The final path is the path of confusion in which people “run hot and cold with their childhood faith—finding it relatively easy to believe in God at times, almost impossible at others” (42). Being on this journey can help people “to fine-tune” their understanding of their faith (42). It can also cause people to fall away because it becomes overwhelming to engage in a religious community.

Martin discusses how his family went to church but didn’t institute practices like praying before meals at home. When he was an adult, he was working at General Electric and one night, tired and dissatisfied with his job, he turned on the TV and watched a documentary about Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk in the mid-twentieth century. He was so interested that he purchased Merton’s autobiography, moving from the path of confusion to the path of belief.

After describing these six paths, Martin turns to the idea of being “spiritual but not religious” (44). Those who identify this way might view religion as antiquated and narrow-minded. Others contend that it has led to many social evils, including war. Martin notes that he understands why such opinions may exist, but he argues that the positives of religion outweigh the negatives. Being spiritual is good, but Martin argues that the larger communal elements of religion are necessary, too.

Martin lays out how the tension between religion and spirituality is healthy, noting that organized religion “provides us with a corrective for our propensity to think that we have all the answers.” Meanwhile, individuals engaged deeply in personal spiritual life can serve a kind of prophetic function, helping institutionalized religion come back to its core values (48).

Ignatius of Loyola advocated for finding God in all things, meaning that God could be found in everything. For those on any of the six paths, a better starting point in their journey is looking to see how they can find God.

Ignatius was not religious until he was struck by a cannonball in Pamplona in 1521 while serving in the army. There were only two books available to him during his recovery; one was about the life of Jesus and the other the lives of the saints. This led him to find joy in thinking about being in contact with God through feelings of gratitude, peace, and joy. According to Martin, God is also present in the need for support or consolation. 

Martin opens this chapter by retelling the story of Jesus meeting Bartimaeus, a blind beggar. Jesus asks Bartimaeus what he wants, and he wishes to see. Martin draws attention to the fact that Jesus asked a blind man what he hopes for, saying that he does this “not so much for himself as for the blind man. Jesus was helping the man identify his desire, and to be clear about it” (58).

He explains that desire is often thought of as either sexual or material. However, desire can also refer to the “desires that help us know who we are to become and what we are to do,” which help people to know what God hopes for us (59). These are “holy desires” (59). Martin uses an example from his life that reminded him how much he wanted to become a priest after having to have surgery to prevent cancel shortly before his ordination.

Naming desires helps people to learn who they are. He refers to Margaret Silf’s Inner Compass: An Invitation to Ignatian Spirituality, which discusses the Outside-In approach, which helps people to understand the desires they already have and how those may be indicative of deeper ones. Martin uses the desire for a new job as an example, saying that thinking more about this desire might reveal that a person really craves greater freedom.

Incompletion is one way that holy desires may reveal themselves, as they reflect a longing and/or dissatisfaction with one’s life. He points to this as a place “from which we call to God. Our longing to fill that space comes from God. And it is the space that only God can fill” (64-65).

Another means through which holy desires can become apparent is through what Martin calls “common longings and connections” (66). These when people have feelings that they wish to understand, such as an unexpected joy. Society often paints such moments as ones in which people are just emotional. Such moments may also incite fear, a fear of accepting them as signs of God’s presence and closeness.

Uncommon longings can also show one’s desires through mystical experiences, in which one feels like they’re seeing the world through a different lens that “seems to transcend your own understanding” (69).

Martin also points to exaltation as a time in which people can come to know their desires through worship, prayer, or music. He uses Gerald Manley Hopkins’s poem “Pied Beaty” as an example. Clarity is another such occasion, one that is similar to and may overlap with feelings of exaltation. It is when people have a sense of understanding the world.

Some may have desires to follow in which they come to a sense of wanting to follow Jesus. Others have a desire for holiness that comes through meeting or learning about holy people.

Martin also discusses how people may be drawn to God in times of vulnerability in which people may realize their connection to God.

He also emphasizes “that God seeks us in the same way we seek God,” referencing the hadith qudsi, an image from Islam in which as humans move toward God, God moves twice as much toward them (80).

Martin closes this chapter by discussing how God meets people where they are, whether that is in joy or in sorrow.

Martin asserts that noticing God’s presence helps those looking for him in two ways. First, it makes the journey clearer by moving away from looking for an abstract idea of God rather than seeing God in the everyday. The second reason is that it makes people realize that their life is full of God’s presence.

Martin turns to the examen, a prayer popularized by Ignatius to help believers see God in their lives. It has five steps, the first of which is expressing gratitude for the good things of the day. The second is to recognize where you erred. The third step is reviewing your day, recognizing where joy was present, where stress appeared, etc. The fourth step is to ask God for forgiveness, and the fifth is to ask for God’s grace and assistance the next day before finishing with a prayer.

Martin stresses that this project isn’t just for Jesuits; rather, it can be used by anyone. He notes that Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, discusses the examen in her journals. He also reminders readers to not think about it just as a list of steps but rather as an activity done with God, including a version of how he completes it.

The examen, Martin notes, “builds on the insight that it’s easier to see God in retrospect rather than in the moment” (97). It also helps people to see that God may work slowly. It also encourages people to look for God in their everyday lives.

Martin finishes the chapter by offering a version of the examen for agnostics and atheists called a “prayer of awareness” in which the first step is to be conscious of oneself and one’s surrounding. The second is to think of what you’re grateful for, and the third is to review the day. The fourth considers whether or not forgiveness needs to be sought from someone you’ve hurt, and the fifth is to prepare for the next day.