What Ithaca Means

As you set out for Ithaca,
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery... 

I began my life as a Jesuit at the age of twenty. While most of my peers began their careers at around the same age, I took the road that led to the novitiate.

I initially pursued that path with idealism and excitement. Along with my fellow novices, we were welcomed by the daily schedule that drilled us in the pillars of Jesuit formation: prayer, community, studies, apostolate. Concretely, that meant observing de more — waking up, praying, going to Mass, eating, cleaning the house, studying, resting, playing, gardening, taking a shower, recreating, and sleeping — the structured routine that initiated novices in settling into the discipline of religious life. De more assured that there was a proper time for everything. It became our "daily grind."

The "daily grind" was not a misnomer; after the first few months, it wore out the novelty of the novitiate. Back then, it was a struggle to survive the boredom of the routine and the ordinary. If anything, de more disabused me of my romantic notions of Jesuit life.

The "daily grind" of de more sharpens your life into what is essential. But I did not see it that way. I was young and I did not appreciate the tedium of de more. I had just taken my first few steps, and I was already wondering if this was the same thing I enlisted for. I was disappointed. Things did not turn out to be as exciting as I would've wanted them to be.

I didn't know it then, but that disappointment marked the first of many. I became well-acquainted with disappointment. I experienced it firsthand, and I acquainted others with disappointment, too. Jesuit life followed a certain "way of proceeding," which was a fancy term to refer to how a Jesuit should think and act and live out their lives. I tried to configure myself in relation to that standard. I evaluated who I was in terms of what I was expected to be. It turned out to be tiring and disappointing.

Disappointment is not really about expectations not matching reality; it is all about blindness to what is actually happening. Disappointment is obstinately seeing what one wants to see, instead of paying attention to reality as it unfolds before one's very eyes.

My first real adventure in the Society of Jesus was not being sent to the missions in Bukidnon, or working in a factory in Pasig. It was nothing of that sort; the adventure was getting in touch with reality, sifting through who I thought I was and who I really am, of what I wanted to happen and what was really happening, of breaking through the superficial and plunging into the deep.

I had imagined Jesuit life literally taking me to distant places. But the real journey was going to take place within. I was not setting out from home; in fact, I was going to find my way back home.

It was uncharted territory. I knew I was heading for something definite, but I didn't know how to get there. There were no clear roads to take at that point. Everything then seemed shrouded in a fog of uncertainty.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon – don’t be afraid of them...

From an outsider's perspective, religious life seems incomprehensible and outrageous. How do you make sense of a rule that prohibits the use of shampoo and deodorant? How do you make sense of men who could be earning more voluntarily subsisting on a monthly allowance of P150? How do you make sense of a month-long silent retreat? How do you make sense of the vow of poverty? Or chastity? Or obedience? After the first fervor, the vows suddenly seemed like anachronisms. I had a lot of questions because I could not understand. Despite the fact that I had already spent a few years as a Jesuit, I still viewed everything as an outsider.

One is bound to be disappointed with religious life if one persists in seeing things in the usual way.

Religious life thrives on seeing the inherent paradoxes of life. To appreciate a paradox, one must look at it closely. It demands to be examined because how else can you make sense of "joy in suffering" or "strength in weakness" if not by looking at it and seeing beyond the seeming contradiction. Avoiding any form of suffering is an almost instinctive reaction, yet there is also such a thing as redemptive suffering. But how can that be? 

Religious life thrives on reversals. Those who mourn will be comforted. The poor shall inherit the earth. The humble will be exalted. The wise will not understand. This kind of order thwarts the logic of the world. It is a scandal to common sensibility. Yet these reversals beg one's curiosity: How can that be?

I was young and I did not understand paradoxes or reversals. Because I did not understand, I was afraid.

Keep Ithaca always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaca to make you rich.

I never thought I would reach this far, nor did I even imagine that I would reach this point. The road has been a long one, and there were times when I thought of stopping and turning back. It was not easy. Many times, I felt impatient about whether this path was meaningful at all. Many times, I felt that I was missing out on a lot of things. Many times, other options were just as equally attractive.

I was young when I began this journey. I've grown older since; in the next eight years, I will have already spent half of my life as a Jesuit. Over the years, disappointment has given way to some truth. While there were breakthrough moments that seemed extraordinary enough to sustain one's interest, for the most part, the real discoveries actually happened in the ordinary, the uninteresting, the routine, the tedious. But one does not usually see these as they happen. Sometimes, the eyes have to be washed with tears to be able to see clearly.

Some people think that religious life is totally immune from what everyone else has to deal with. It may be true in certain matters, but I cannot totally agree with that. Life happens to everyone. There is no escaping it. Not even in religious life. Life's rawness has a way of making you honestly deal with who you are. Pain, failure, suffering, loss — they are like friends who tell you things you don't really hear from people who don't know you that well. Pain, failure, suffering, loss — they arrest your attention and focus it on what you should really be focusing on. These realities empty you out so that you can eventually be filled.

Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
 

In two days, I will be ordained a deacon, and in the next six months, a priest.

There is that privileged moment that occurs after being away for a long while, and home is already within sight. It is a time when one feels somewhere in between a desire to go home and a desire to just keep on going. It is a time when one recognizes that while the destination may have motivated you to begin and continue your journey; in the end, it is the journey that eventually makes the destination meaningful.

Most people only get to see what we have become, and point to that as a manifestation of how grace has worked in our lives. Sometimes, I think that way, too. But seeing it that way is missing the real spectacle.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca won’t have fooled you. 

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithacas mean. 

There is a time for everything. In the same way that one cannot force a seed to grow into a plant, an insight cannot be forced if its time has not yet come. Growth involves a lot of waiting patiently, hopefully, and respectfully. My initial disappointment with Jesuit life was because I could not wait patiently, hopefully, and respectfully.

I'm not as young as I used to be. Over the years, reality has remained the same. But I'm learning to embrace pain, failure, suffering, and loss. I'm also learning to appreciate paradoxes and reversals. In other words, I'm learning to pay close attention to life as it unveils. God is in the details of the ordinary.

My destination is almost within sight. The paradox and reversal in my entire journey is clearer:

God calls the unworthy; I am a sinner, yet called.

I wrote this on a Wednesday morning, a few days before my diaconate ordination. A fellow Jesuit, F.D.A., asked me to write a brief reflection for the Jesuit website, phjesuits.org.