Over the last few weeks, I’ve been overwhelmed with new responsibilities.  My supervisor, a nun, got sent by her congregation to a new mission, so until we hire somebody new, I’m doing both her job and mine.  And in my Jesuit community, the guy who was in charge of the house’s economy was sent to study overseas, so I’m now the house treasurer.  Both of these changes have coincided with intense times: at home, we’re merging two Jesuit communities, which means merging the two banks accounts and economic records… and at work, we’re restructuring departments, receiving all kinds of important visitors, and dealing with emergency after emergency, in part related to a looming economic crisis which goes hand in hand with repression against the government’s favorite scapegoat, Haitian immigrants.  Needless to say, I’m feeling a little stressed.

My big temptation is to start waking up well before the crack of dawn to get ahead on all the paperwork that I have backed up, and to stay late in the office, even if it means skipping Mass, to finish all the e-mails and phone calls I have to make.  Work-wise, I could certainly use the extra hours.  But by now, I know better than this.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in regency (the stage of Jesuit formation I’m in) so far, it’s that I need to rest, I need to share in gratuity with people, and I need to pray.  I also know that I’m the type of person who tends to neglect these needs when faced with other peoples’ “limit situations.”  What I’ve learned, in a sense, is that “you will always have the poor among you” — in this line of work, the “limit situation” is permanent, and if I don’t guard those things that keep me going and keep me oriented, I can easily fall into traps that poison everything I do.

But with all this work, it’s not like I can start taking more time than I already do to rest and share and pray, either.  Rather, I need to use that time better — I need to find the most re-creational ways to rest, share more meaningfully by being more present to people, and “tune-up” my prayer habits.  I may not have two extra hours to pray, but I can be more careful with those little details that Ignatius is so insistent on, like preparing my morning prayer from the night before and being attentive to my posture and the place where I pray, so that I’m more available to God during the time I do pray.  In my examens, I can’t afford to just go through the motions — in order to keep some “horizon of meaning,” I need to really listen for God’s voice as I watch refugees lose their sense of dignity after one too many years in legal and economic limbo, and also as I watch Dominicans and Haitians come together to improve literacy in their neighborhood.  When a development project, like a water well we recently built, unexpectedly unleashes all kinds of rivalries and conflicts in a community, and when it’s time to do evaluations for the staff I now supervise, I need to really ask for the grace to feel, discern and act in that situation in tune with the heart of Jesus.

That’s where my magis is right now.  I can’t physically work more than I do, and I don’t have time to pray or rest or share more than I do.  But I feel the Spirit inviting me to do all of those same things in a way that’s more centered on God, in a way that digs deeper and listens more attentively.  Precisely at the limits of my availability in terms of time and energy, I’m being stretched in my inner availability, learning to let my intentions, actions and operations be carried and guided more by the Spirit.  God’s grace is at work, bringing my work and my prayer closer together so that both become more life-giving.

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