Last Sunday we ended our reflection by seeing how the greatest service with the greatest love is rendered by finding God in all things.
This is the greatest service with the greatest love, as Ignatius puts it in the “climax” to his Spiritual Exercises, “to find God in all things” in our day-to-day life or, as my late beloved spiritual director put it, “to find God’s extraordinary love and grace in the ordinary things of our life.”
The last part of the Preface of Lent II says: “You teach us how to live in this world with our heart set on the world that will never end.”
How do we live life in this world and yet have as our horizon “the world that will never end?” This is a question all of us struggle with or, at the very least, ask.
Let me try to answer this with a couple of stories.
Enrique was being interviewed by the president of the company where he is employed for a key position in the reorganization. He related an experience when he was just starting in the company.
He was in sales so he had to make client calls. During one call, the client asked why he chose that work and, at one point, the client became rude and started to insult him. It was really bad.
The company president, the same one interviewing Enrique, found out about it. He called the head of sales and told the head to talk to the client. The president asked that the client apologize to the sales employee, or the company would no longer accept his account.
The client was adamant and did not apologize. He brought his business elsewhere and the company lost a client and the potential income.
Enrique said that he had received offers from rival companies with much higher compensation and bigger benefits. It was this experience, however, that made him stay in the company. He said that while the compensation mattered, since he was just starting out, the values the company practiced and stood for were what mattered more to him. If his company would stand by him and stick out its neck for him, he would also stand by it.
In a Jesuit high school in the US, you will be impressed with its athletic program. As you walk into their gym and see all the banners of the state championships they’ve won for over two decades now, you would be in awe of the athletic program. The rise to the top is a story in itself.
Years before the golden age, so to speak, the school was the cellar-dweller in almost all athletic events. It just could not get its program up and going. Then in the early ’80s the administration and the alumni decided they needed to do something. They reorganized and hired new and better coaches.
Turning point
The real turning point, however, happened to one of the school’s major teams. It had hired a coach who was one of the most respected in the state. In his contract, he had committed to a plan which, on his first two years, would bring the team to the quarterfinals, from being cellar-dwellers, then on the third year he would bring them to the finals.
He said, however, that he couldn’t commit to the championship because that was not for him to commit, because in the end it should be the team that should commit to that.
His first year went well. From the bottom, the team did make it to the quarterfinals. Suddenly the team became a crowd-drawer. While in the past only a handful of spectators from the school came to watch, the crowds started to grow and, by the end of the first season, they filled the stands.
Then on the second year, the team made it not only to the quarterfinals, but the finals. Unfortunately, it lost.
Talking about the frustration and rising expectations that they say cause revolutions, when the second season ended with the loss in the finals, the alumni of the Jesuit high school were up in arms and asked for the coach’s head.
The administration was caught in a bind and wavered. It was giving in to the pressure. Then in one of the meetings of the administration and faculty about the issue—that was how big a crisis it became—an elderly Jesuit turned deal-breaker.
This Jesuit had been a teacher in the school for many years, and had been in retirement already for three years, working part-time in the campus ministry, celebrating Masses and hearing confessions.
As the “mob” was ready to lynch, he stood up and quietly said his piece. He put it simply. He asked what the deliverables were. And they stated it: year 1 semis, year 2 semis and year 3 finals. Then he asked, “He met all deliverables, right?” There was silence in the hall.
Values
The elderly Jesuit continued, “We can let go of him now because he lost in the championship, but what message are we communicating to our students and to all of us? Winning is more important than honoring our word?”
You could hear a pin drop in the hall as the old man spoke very gently and calmly. He continued, “We signed him (the coach) up for three years. Asked him for this and that, which he has delivered so far, and now we change the rules because we could smell victory? We have to look at our values again. We are a school that is supposed to teach values and most certainly honor is one of them.”
The coach was retained, brought the team to another finals, and, because of what he started, he not only made the school team one of the most successful in the state, but also boosted the other athletic teams of the school.
The championship banners that fill the walls of the gym are a testament to this, but perhaps more than the wins, it is a testament to the elderly Jesuit’s statement made 30 years earlier—“We are a school that is supposed to teach values and most certainly honor is one of them.”
“You teach us how to live in this passing world with our hearts set on the world that will never end.”
How do we live this out? We ask ourselves. Often the question leads to more questions. What is it we believe in? What are the values we embrace? How have we defined our self? What is our life mission, our dream larger than life that we will live by and even die for?
They seem like lofty questions and ideals, but they are questions we respond to in the day to day.
These are the questions that set our hearts on the world that will never end. Yet the answers are not out there, but in us, in our world. The answers are in us in the day-to-day choices we make, big and small. The answers are in our world, through the deeds, big or small, that make it a better world.
The answers are found in the Enriques who choose a value-driven company over bigger pay-checks; perhaps choosing what is enough and just right, which are values in themselves. The answers are in company presidents who place decency and care for people over profits at all costs. The answers are in the wise men and women of our communities who remind us of who we are and what we ought to stand for.
Our hearts are set on the world that will never end and, as St. Paul writes, “our citizenship is in heaven.”
This doesn’t mean we shun this world and be otherworldly. On the contrary, this is to inspire us to live our life in this world that will bring a bit of heaven on earth.
Now we are ready to enter the spirit of the great Easter triduum, to renew once more the grace of the Paschal Mystery in our life so that we may live out the love of the Cross and the Resurrection from day to day.
