“How many sign-ups do we have?” I asked excitedly at the start of the meeting.
“One,” he replied. “Just one so far.”
We were meeting to plan the next offering of a course on Ignatian spirituality, and “one” was a smaller number than I expected to hear so close to the start. The previous offerings had been well-attended, enriching, and successful, but this upcoming one was struggling to get off the ground. During the call, the three of us present discussed ways to encourage sign-ups over the next two weeks. “Just know,” I said right before we ended the call, “I’m ready to teach this course for 20 or for one. It’s worth it if it’ll be spiritually helpful for even one, isn’t it?”
I sensed the others weren’t necessarily on board with my reasoning, but I had to run to my in-person class starting in just a couple of minutes. I said my goodbyes and switched my attention to the topic of the day.
That day I was teaching my seniors about the term magis. I had them read for homework the article, “What Magis Really Means and Why It Matters,” by Barton T. Geger, SJ (Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal, Vol. 1: No. 2, Article 16, 2012), in which Geger addresses the long-time confusion surrounding this Ignatian term. Despite its widespread use in Ignatian circles, it is a term that is often misunderstood, misused, and misinterpreted.
When I first learned the word, I thought it meant “doing more,” as long as the “more” was always oriented toward the service of God and others. This led to me accepting every invitation that was linked in any way to my service as a Catholic school educator and campus minister, even if I spread myself too thin or accepted invitations for things that I was not uniquely gifted to do.
After engaging more deeply in Ignatian spirituality and the Spiritual Exercises, I came to believe the magis meant accepting only the invitations that reflected the person God had uniquely created me to be and the work God was uniquely calling me to do. As I leaned into these invitations alone, I felt more joyful and connected to God. Saying “yes” felt right and good and even virtuous. That was until I realized that saying “yes” to only these invitations still meant that I was saying a whole lot of “yeses.” I was inadvertently still spreading myself too thin. I was moving full speed ahead to serve the “one” and the “20” without any awareness of how much impact I was actually having for either.
Then, someone sent me Geger’s article. He addressed my misunderstandings of magis before introducing me to what he has settled on as the best, most accurate definition that both honors the original intentions of St. Ignatius and the mission of the Society of Jesus. Geger wrote that the best definition of the magis is “the most universal good,” or that which does the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
That day, as my seniors and I discussed the article, I found myself telling them, “In life you often will be faced with many good options, and, out of a desire to serve God and others, you might feel compelled to say ‘yes’ to all of them. You might even discern that you will only say ‘yes’ to the invitations that utilize your unique gifts and talents and feel in line with the work God is calling you to. But I am inviting you to ask yourself, What are the ‘yeses’ that will have the widest impact? Do I sometimes have to say ‘no’ to something good to say a deeper, more profound ‘yes’ to something greater?”
As I returned to my office after class, I realized I was not taking my own advice. Instead, I was letting my fear take over, fear of disappointing others, looking like a failure, or letting go too soon of something that might have some good left in it if I just worked a bit harder. I was letting fear stand in the way of the question I really needed to ask: Is this the good thing God is inviting me to say “yes” to today? Or do I need to let go of this good to allow time and space for something else with wider impact to flourish?
Is there a choice among good things you need to make right now? How is God inviting you to live the magis today?
