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

Martin starts this chapter with the paragraph-long statement on chastity included by St. Ignatius in the Constitutions. It notes that Jesuits should treat chastity as angels do, with little further explanation.

The understanding of chastity from Ignatius’s time is very different from the 21st century understanding, as it emphasizes a spiritual purity not unlike that of Jesus’s. Many during the 16th century were willing to go extreme lengths to preserve their chastity. He uses St. Aloysius Gonzaga, who vowed to never look at a woman in the eyes, as an example.

Chastity as a vow has received a lot of criticism, especially in relation to the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. It is often viewed as unnatural, unhealthy, and/or impossible.

He then pauses to explain the difference between chastity and celibacy. Within the view of the Catholic Church, chastity can be specifically interpreted as “the proper and loving use of our sexuality” (216), and all within the church are called to this notion. Celibacy is a restriction against marriage. It is a restriction that could be lifted by the church, since it is not a vow like chastity is. Many priests in the early church were married, as it wasn’t until the 12th century that clerical celibacy was made the norm.

Martin then gives examples of the lively and generous priests and nuns he knows to combat the stereotype of a cold priest or repressed nun, for chastity is inherently connected to love. It also “frees you to serve people more readily” (220). He recognizes that it is not for everyone.

He takes a paragraph to discuss the sex abuse crisis and the fear that chastity played a role in the abuse, noting that it more about some men who needed psychological help and should never have been admitted as well as about bishops who should not have kept them in ministry but moved them around.

When lust comes up, priests and other chaste religious remind themselves that it’s natural, even if their lives don’t allow them to engage in it. Then, they encourage themselves to think about another form of fulfilling intimacy. As a value, it also teaches people that they can love without clinging on; it is not something that can be owned.

Martin then discusses his own experience with his vow. He recalls how he was told that he would inevitably fall in love with someone, or they would fall in love with him, and it happened. He was torn between leaving the Jesuits to be with the person or staying, and he used Ignatian spirituality “to discern which is the greater desire, or the ‘governing desire’” (225). He ultimately decided to stay. He also acknowledges that the vow allows one to love many people, but it also means being alone.

He finishes the chapter by offering advice on how anyone can live chastely. They can first listen compassionately to show a person that they are valued. The second is to be present and the third is to do something practical like cooking a meal or identifying something else that someone may need or want. The fourth is to love freely, offering them the ability to be whoever they are. One can also forgive those that hurt them and pray to God for help in loving.

Especially because of the vow of chastity, friendships are huge parts of Jesuits’ lives. Jesuits also move often, encountering new people often. Plus, Jesuits live together, and they are all humans with different interests and opinions. This can lead to challenges within community life.

Ignatius begins the Spiritual Exercises by suggesting that it’s important to give someone the benefit of the doubt. It encourages people to think about the other person’s intentions and to trust that they were good. It also removes an adversarial quality from a relationship.

Friendship was critical for Ignatius, as he met two other soon-to-be Jesuits when he was in college at the University of Paris, St. Peter Favre and St. Francis Xavier. When Ignatius formed the Jesuits, the two were the first to follow him. Martin sees the lesson in this history in emphasizing that one must listen to what a friend wishes to do.

One of the barriers to friendship is possessiveness, and so friends must give one another the freedom to grow and change. Overactivity can also get in the way if one is not able to make time for friends. Competition and envy too can prevent substantive friendships from growing.

On the other hand, friends should be aware of what is happening in each other’s lives, even if they live far apart. It is also important to initiate conversation sometimes and to be the one to put energy into the friendship to help maintain it.

Martin also tells a story about faith sharing in his community during novitiate. In this meeting, Jesuit novices would share about their spiritual lives, and there were two rules: all that was said was confidential and no comments were allowed after a person shared. This second rule surprised Martin until he realized it was there to facilitate listening.

Sometimes friendship will involve not be able to solve everything, but Martin draws on a theologian who “wrote that compassion is the willingness to enter into the ‘chaos’ of another person’s life” (258). It is important to have humility and recognize that one is not all powerful and all-knowing.

Other characteristics of healthy friendship include honestly and to be open to challenges from friends. Friends also hope for positive things for one another. They give each other freedom to change, accepting that the person one might have first become friends will grow over time. Friendship is also hospitable, making others feel comfortable and welcomed.

Some Jesuits during the 20th century warned against “particular friendships” in which one Jesuit had a particular favorite fellow Jesuit. Some of this was rooted in anti-gay sentiment in fears that gay men would break their vow of celibacy. However, it also illustrates how too much one-on-one could cause exclusivity.

Martin also notes that humor is important in any friendship, and friends should assist one another.

He finishes the chapter by talking about gratitude and showing that gratitude toward friends. For those who might be feeling lonely, Martin also encourages them to be open to meeting new people.

Ignatius envisioned the Jesuits as being especially committed to the vow of obedience, and it was standard, especially in Ignatius’s time, to include obedience as a vow. Now, Martin frames it as a way of listening to others and to God. Superiors—a Jesuit’s supervisor, essentially—are supposed to listen to those under him and what their desires and wants are when deciding where to mission that Jesuit. A Jesuit, however, must go wherever he is sent, although he can appeal.

The benefits of obedience include freedom from pride, self-interest, and careerism. It also helps Jesuits to listen to the needs of the community. The nature of the vow has changed somewhat since its inception, and 21st-century decisions about where to send—to mission—Jesuits come through conversations and prayer.

One story that Martin gives about obedience includes that of Robert Drinan, S. J. Fr. Drinan served as a member of the House of Representatives in the 1970s and early 1980s. During his tenure, the Vatican decided that priests should not be politicians, and so then-Superior General Pedro Arrupe asked Drinan not to run for reelection, and he obeyed.

He also gives the story of John Courtney Murray, who was ordered to stop writing about religious freedom and the Catholic Church. He later contributed to the Second Vatican Council’s “Declaration Religious Freedom.” Martin notes that there are plenty of priests who, unlike Murray and Drinan, did not obey their orders. However, he notes that these two priests trusted that God was working in these decisions.

Obedience extends beyond the Jesuits too; everyone must contend with obedience in their spiritual life through surrendering and trusting in God’s will. Martin gives the example of Walter Ciszek, a Jesuit who spent years in a Russian labor camp and who was, at one time, presumed dead. In his memoir, He Leadeth Me, Ciszek wrote that God’s “will for us was the twenty-four hours of each day: the people, the places, the circumstances he set before us in that time. Those were the things God knew were important to him and to us at that moment…” (281). He survived by obeying God’s will and accepting what he could not control.

Martin relates the story of how one of his friends, a religious sister named Sr. Janice, asked him if he could “surrender to the future that God has in store for you?” (284) when he expressed that he wasn’t sure he could handle his daily life and helping care for his father, who was dying of cancer. That question helped him to understand obedience because he realized he just had to trust in God.

In meditating on why suffering occurs, Martin notes that it can open people up to new ways of encountering God. He also reminds readers of God as one who has suffered and shares grief. Ignatian spirituality specifically addresses suffering. First, it does so through the meditation on the Call of the King. In it, Ignatius asks readers to imagine a human king that asks that person to work beside them. Then, Ignatius says to imagine Jesus calling for that person to work. In the end, “[t]he Call of the King reminds you, as the Gospels do, that the Christian life will always involve some suffering” (294).

Martin also brings back the Two Standards, reminding readers that choosing Christ’s side will also include some suffering. Ignatius also calls retreatants in the Third Week of the Spiritual Exercises to follow Jesus through the Last Supper to his death, requiring that they “be present with Jesus as he suffers” (296). Jesus is the perfect example, to Martin, of obedience and acceptance, and this part of the retreat is supposed to show retreatants how to suffer and to be present to those suffering. He uses his own experiences of that meditation to say that “God sometimes asks each of us to accept certain things that seem at the time unacceptable” (304). The struggles can lead one close to God, and obedience can be just another word for acceptance, abandonment, and others.