In early November, Santa Clara University held a three-day conference on the legacy of the six Jesuit martyrs nurdered in El Salvador in 1989. Papers from the conference have been published on the web.
In one of these papers, the theologian Jon Sobrino, SJ, reflects on Ignatius Loyola’s struggle with the challenge of living in poverty.
In the meditation on two standards, St. Ignatius is very clear that poverty and powerlessness are not only ways to perfection but also paths to life, to becoming more human. He insists that they exist in dialectical opposition to wealth and power. This was the St. Ignatius of Manresa. Later, when he was the General of the Society, he had to contextualize this—and it wasn’t easy. To carry out their apostolate, the Jesuits needed resources, so of necessity they began relationships with benefactors. This brought them in contact with the world of riches, honors and power: kings, noblewomen, cardinals. . . . This was a serious problem for St. Ignatius, and he sought solutions for it. A well known example is his recommendation to Laínez and Salmerón, theologians who went to the Council of Trent. Going there meant entering the world of church power and, indirectly, civil power. He ordered them to live and to spend their nights at hospitals for the poor. It was a way of living out the two standards in what was, objectively speaking, a situation of wealth and power.
Sobrino goes on:
Today, trying to live in poverty means living in austerity, rejecting luxuries in buildings and churches, and avoiding excessive solemnities, even when this is accepted and even expected socially.; and certainly avoiding—in comparison with poor and low middle classes—huge inequalities.
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