Jon M. Sweeney - James Martin, SJ: In the Company of Jesus

Cover design by Red+Company. Cover illustration by Philip Bannister.

2020 by Jon M. Sweeney

Published by Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, except brief quotations in reviews, without written permission of Liturgical Press, Saint Johns Abbey, PO Box 7500, Collegeville, MN 56321-7500. Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019946171

ISBN 978-0-8146-4417-1 978-0-8146-4442-3 (e-book)

For my parents,

Mark and Janet Sweeney

Prologue

Those who knew James Martin as a child and teenager in the suburbs of Philadelphia would never have imagined he would become a Jesuit and a priest. A success, yes, but a religious one? They might have envisioned their imaginative, fun-loving, thoughtful, but not-too-serious friend growing up to become a television, media, and film personality. He was articulate and winsome from an early age. But one of the two or three most recognized priests in the United States? Not a chance. They certainly would not have been able to see a future in which their Jim became a lightning rod for traditionalist Roman Catholics who viewed themselves at odds with the Holy See in the second decade of the twenty-first century.

Yet the ways that God invites people to become who they are, to quote the title of one of Jims books, are sometimes hard to imagine. This happens in a variety of ways: sometimes through a series of seeming coincidences, sometimes through longings and desires that are hard to understand, sometimes through a chance conversation with a friend. For Jim, the course of his vocation from a somewhat dreamy child to an extroverted adolescent to a hardworking corporate executive and finally to a Jesuit priest came mainly through a book that he chanced upon after seeing a television show. But thats too simplistic an explanation.

In truth, the seeds of his vocation and his later accomplishments can be seen all throughout his life, a life that many people are now coming to know and one that this book invites you to discover.

Basic Chronology

1960 Born in Philadelphia, December 29. Family lives in an apartment in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. Later that year, they move to Plymouth Meeting, a suburb of Philadelphia, where Martin resides for seventeen years, attending elementary school, junior high school, and high school there.

1978 Graduates Plymouth-Whitemarsh High School. In August, at the age of seventeen, enrolls at the University of Pennsylvanias Wharton School of Business.

1982 Graduates college. Moves to an apartment in Manhattan and begins working for General Electric in Midtown. Moves two years later to Queens and then, in 1986, to Stamford, Connecticut, with GE Capital. Promoted to SpecialistCorporate Financial Management Development, he stays at GE until summer 1988.

1986 His parents separate. He begins to consider the direction of his life and then a religious vocation.

1988 August 15, accepted into the Society of Jesus. Thirteen days later, enters Arrupe House, the Jesuit novitiate in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. Fall, works in a hospital for seriously ill patients in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1989 February, sent to Kingston, Jamaica, as a Jesuit novice, to work among the poor with the Missionaries of Charity at Our Lady Queen of Peace hospice. June, completes the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius at Eastern Point Retreat House in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

1990 August, pronounces First Vows (poverty, chastity, and obedience) at the completion of his novitiate. Moves to Arrupe House at Loyola University Chicago for two years of philosophy studies, the second stage of his Jesuit formation. Works with street-gang members and homeless men and women. Begins writing.

1992 Early August, arrives in Nairobi, Kenya, on Jesuit mission for his regency. Works with the Jesuit Refugee Service/East Africa for two years, helping refugees start small businesses. Publishes his first article in National Jesuit News , in December, and begins to desire authorship.

1993 MarchMay, writes In Good Company , a memoir about working at GE and joining the Jesuits while in Kenya sick with mononucleosis. A memoir article first appears in The Pennsylvania Gazette , his college alumni magazine; the book wouldnt be published until 2000. August, cofounds the Mikono Centre, a shop marketing refugee handicrafts in Nairobi.

1995 Briefly moves to America House, New York City, to complete his regency, then to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to begin theology studies at Weston Jesuit School of Theology.

1997 May, first book published: How Can I Find God? The Famous and the Not-So-Famous Consider the Quintessential Question .

1998 Ordained a deacon. After completing theology studies, missioned to work at America magazine, New York City, where he remains to this day. Also works for one year as a deacon at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in New York.

1999 June 12, ordained a priest in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, and celebrates First Mass, at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in New York City. January, This Our Exile , about his work with East African refugees, published.

2000 In Good Company published, and Martin receives early taste of national publicity.

2006 My Life with the Saints , another spiritual memoir, published March 1. It becomes his first bestseller, with sales of fifty thousand copies in the first twenty-two months; one hundred thousand in forty-eight months.

20072008 Summers, completes his tertianship, the final stage of Jesuit formation; makes the Spiritual Exercises for the second time at the tertianship program in Culver City, California.

2009 November 1, pronounces his Final Vows at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, New York City, on the Feast of All Saints, ten years after being ordained a priest, and twenty-one years after entering the Jesuits.

2010 March 28, The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything hits the New York Times Best Sellers list. The Times editors describe it: A priest explains the easily applied traditional wisdom that Jesuits use to help other people in their daily lives.

2011 First pilgrimage to the Holy Land, as part of research for his next book.

2014 Jesus: A Pilgrimage published in March, becomes a New York Times Best Seller.

2015 A first novel, The Abbey: A Story of Discovery , published in October. It began as a dream.

2017 The first edition of Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity leads him into a maelstrom of both praise and backlash from fellow Catholics that lasts several years.

2019 Continues to give frequent talks on the importance of welcoming LGBT Catholicsthe most marginalized people in the Church today. Finishes Learning to Pray .

2020 Working on a book about Lazarus. Continues to work at America Media.

Chapter One

Plymouth Meeting, Wharton, General Electric

The house Jimmy Martin grew up in, at 107 Kings Road in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, looks as ordinary as any suburban dwelling on a quiet neighborhood street. Its 1,600 square feet, split-level, three bedrooms, one-and-a-half baths, were built in the late 1950s. Situated on a small lot with neighbors on either side, it remained unchanged throughout young Jims life. His mother would not sell it until 2012.

Jim was born at Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia on December 29, 1960. His only sibling, Carolyn, was born three years later. Jim was named for his father, who was married to Eleanor, Jims mom. Both parents were Philadelphia natives.