James Martin - In Good Company: The Fast Track from the Corporate World to Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience

Praise for

In Good Company

From the Wharton Business School and a secure place in corporate America to a $35-a-month allowance and the insecurity of a life of faith, this may seem a precautionary tale of downward secular mobility, but as we follow James Martin through his life and Jesuit training, we find it is all about ascentto God and to true happiness.

Paul Wilkes, author of Beyond the Walls:
Monastic Living for Everyday Life

Martin has a frank, straightforward style, reminiscent of the young Thomas Merton, but just a bit more polished.... Hes funnier than Merton, and exhibits youthful high spirits.... If you know nothing about prayer and a life of service, you can find it all in this unstuffy, un-self-conscious book. And if you know everything about prayer and a life of service, you will start at the beginning and learn it all over again.

Emilie Griffin, America Magazine

Candid, charming, self-effacing, and unfailingly interesting, In Good Company ultimately teaches what all spiritual autobiographies do: that zest and happiness in life depend on paying attention to the quiet promptings of God. Its the finest book on finding a religious vocation since Thomas Mertons Secular Journal.

Ron Hansen, author of Exiles

In Good Company is the quixotic and deeply moving spiritual odyssey of a young man moving from the rapid-fire, lavish and ultimately brutal world of corporate America to the slums of Kingston and New York as a novice in the Company of Jesus. Its a savvy, hilarious, vulnerable and beautiful story of how the Spirit works, and I could not put it down until the tale had been told.

Paul Mariani, author of Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life

The story of James Martins fast track from GE to the Jesuits is confirmation, if any were needed, that God has a sense of humor. The pursuit of happiness is ultimately inseparable from the call to holiness. Martin has written a Seven Storey Mountain for a new generation of seekers.

Robert Ellsberg, author of All Saints

This engaging and entertaining book packs a double punch: the world of the Jesuits, which at first is unfamiliar if not downright mysterious, comes to seem a sane way of living in the world, while what we think of as the normal world of corporate America is revealed as very strange indeed. James Martin has given us some savory food for thought.

Kathleen Norris, author of The Cloister Walk,
Amazing Grace, and Acedia & Me

Martin is both a natural storyteller and a self-effacing fellow, and he pairs that to fine effect in this honest and accessible story.

The Philadelphia Inquirer

For all those considering a vocation, or needing a reminder about the vocation they chose, Father Martins journey towards seeing life whole is well worth traveling.

The Tablet (London)

An engaging account of his journey from successful businessman to vowed Jesuit... inviting, sane, grateful and gracious.

Christopher Ruddy, Commonweal

IN GOOD
COMPANY

Fratribus carissimis in Societate Jesu

THE FAST TRACK FROM THE CORPORATE WORLD
TO POVERTY, CHASTITY AND OBEDIENCE

10th Anniversary Edition

JAMES MARTIN, S. J.

Published by Sheed & Ward

An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200
Lanham, MD 20706

Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom

Distributed by National Book Network

Copyright 2000 by The Society of Jesus of New England

Introduction to the tenth anniversary edition 2010 by
The Society of Jesus of New England

Imprimi potest:

Very Rev. Robert Levens, S.J.
Provincial, The Society of Jesus
New England Province

Interior design: GrafixStudio, Inc.

Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1946, 1952, and 1972 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The previous edition of this book was cataloged by the Library of Congress as follows:

Martin, James, S.J.

In good company : the fast track from the corporate world to

poverty, chastity and obedience / James Martin.

p. cm.

Martin, James, S.J. 2. JesuitsUnited StatesBiography.

3. MissionariesKenyaNairobiBiography. 4. MissionariesUnited StatesBiography. I. Title.

BX4705 .M41243 A3 2000

271'.5302dc21

00-041968

ISBN 978-1-58051-236-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-58051-237-4 (electronic)

Printed in the United States of America.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Part I
Restless Hearts

Part II
Come and See

Part III
Late Have I Loved You

This is the book of a young man, or at least a younger one.

A few years after entering the Jesuits in 1988, I was sent to work in East Africa. My job was to help refugees who had settled in Nairobi, Kenya, start small business to support themselves. But after too much work and too little sleep, I ended up with a bout of mononucleosis. You traveled halfway around the world to get that? joked a friend. You could have gotten that in college!

The local doctor was strict: two months of bed rest and no work. But after two weeks, and reading through most of the books we had in our Jesuit house library, I found that I had an enormous amount of time on my hands. So I started to write this account of my leaving the corporate world and entering the Jesuits. I wanted to get the story down before I forgot the details: the sights, the sounds, the emotionsand, especially, the conversations. After I recovered, I stored the book on a computer disk and forgot about the manuscript.

Eight years later, after I published a book on my time in East Africa, a friend at Sheed & Ward asked if had any other writing projects I might be interested in publishing. So I fished out the old computer disk and sent it along, but not before printing out a copy of the manuscript. Reading it again was something of a shock, somewhat akin to hearing yourself on an old tape recording, or seeing yourself on an old video. Its you of course, but its also a markedly different person.

Rather than revising the manuscript, I decided to leave it essentially untouched, preferring instead to let that younger personstill fresh with memories of the first stirrings of a vocation, still carrying the glow of the novitiate, still full of definite (and rather strong) opinions about life in a religious order, that is, still very much a