Ignatian detachment is about possibility

A Reflection for the Memorial of Saint Pius of Pietrelcina, Priest

Find today’s readings here.

As far as I know there is no direct connection, but today’s first reading from Proverbs sounds like it could have inspired the “Principle and Foundation” that St. Ignatius offers at the beginning of the Spiritual Exercises.

In Proverbs, we hear a plea to God to “give me neither poverty nor riches” to avoid the paired dangers of being “full” and forgetting God in one’s pride or being in want and being tempted to dishonor God by stealing. The Principle and Foundation tells us that “human beings are created to praise, reverence and serve God our Lord.” And since we are made for that purpose, we must strive to be indifferent to all other created things, not preferring “health more than sickness, wealth more than poverty, fame more than disgrace, a long life more than a short one.”

The point in both cases is to be able to put God first by putting neither the possession of money nor its absence ahead of fidelity to the one whom we are to love and serve.

Jesus, in today’s Gospel, tells the Twelve to “take nothing for the journey, neither walking stick, nor sack, nor food, nor money, and let no one take a second tunic.”

It seems that both the author of Proverbs and St. Ignatius were more moderate and practical than Jesus.

There is, however, another wrinkle in St. Ignatius’s approach to poverty in the Spiritual Exercises. In the meditation on the two standards, he counsels the retreatant to ask, in colloquy first with Mary, then with Jesus, and finally with God the Father, for both perfect spiritual poverty and, if God “should wish to choose me for it,…actual poverty.”

Ignatius recognizes that “actual poverty” can bring us closer to God—but rather than applying this principle automatically, he encourages that we pray for openness to it, so that we may embrace it if it is what better serves God and God wills for us. This is perhaps closer to the experience of the Twelve in today’s Gospel: Jesus, knowing them well, gives them a mission in which their actual poverty, lacking money and stick and sack, will be part of their proclamation of the Kingdom.

I remember praying once with this passage during formation and thinking—and then saying to Jesus—that the plan of going out with “nothing for the journey” seemed like a pretty terrible strategy. At the time, I was feeling frustrated and concerned about a variety of challenges in my apostolate and community. From that insecurity, all I could hear was Jesus seeming to dismiss my challenges and concerns.

But real Ignatian detachment is not about security; it’s about possibility. And asking for that possibility to include even actual poverty opens up—maybe even hollows out—space for God to respond that asking only for indifference cannot.

What Ignatius tells us to seek is the freedom to respond to what God asks and offers: wealth or poverty, fame or disgrace, even health or sickness. Because when God asks and offers, when we cooperate with grace and unite our lives to Jesus who became poor for us, each of us can proclaim the Kingdom of God.

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