From a spiritual conference by Father John Hardon:

In the words of St. Ignatius, I quote, “Christ our Lord, the Lord of all the world, chooses so many persons, apostles, disciples and sends them throughout the whole world to spread His Sacred doctrine among all men. No matter what their state or condition may be, the address which Christ our Lord makes to His servants, whom He sends on this enterprise, is to urge them to seek to help everyone. First, by attracting them to the highest spiritual poverty and should it please the Divine Majesty and should He deign to choose them, even to actual poverty. Secondly, by encouraging them to desire insults and contempt, for from these two things comes humility. So then, there are three steps. The first poverty, opposed to riches, the second scorn or contempt, opposed to worldly honor, the third humility, opposed to pride. From these three steps Christ leads them to all virtues.”

We now have the contrast and what a contrast this is. Christ’s strategy is the direct opposite of Satan’s. It begins by inspiring His followers and future apostles in every age, in every state of life to practice the first beatitude, ‘blessed are the poor in spirit’, detachment of heart from earthly possessions. And even, if it is God’s will, attracting them to dispossession.

In all my years in the priesthood I don’t go to theological analysis when I invite people to work in the apostolate, but behind every invitation is the principle behind the Two Standards. The first condition is that the person who wants to serve Christ in winning souls for His Divine Majesty is himself, at least internally, detached from everything and I mean everything, and I mean everything, in this world, money is the most obvious but not only. This is so fundamental in the apostolate that in two thousand years, what am I saying, I mean it, in two thousand years there have been no exceptions, the only persons that Jesus Christ uses to spread His gospel are the people detached from the things of this world. And nobody cheats. You cannot play both sides. You cannot love, as Christ tells us, both God and mammon.

Then Christ inspires His followers just the opposite of the devil’s instigation. And those are the two words I always use theologically — instigation by the devil, inspiration by Christ. Christ inspires His followers to actually desire, of course, of course, under the influence of grace, to be scorned or contempted. I know whereof I speak. I made the Spiritual Exercises for the first time at the ripe old age of twenty-two. I have not had to change one syllable ever since. You must want, I mean it, you must want, and I quote Ignatius, “to be scorned, despised, ignored, rejected.”

That doesn’t mean you go around behaving as somebody who is well, out of his mind. But, for the world, and I mean that in the most generic sense possible, for the world anyone who follows Christ faithfully is out of his mind, do you hear me. And in the world’s estimate we are only as out of our mind as we are faithful in the following of Christ. And having, God knew I didn’t know then, having done my own graduate studies and got my degree in psychology, having read, because, well I had to, volumes of Siegmund Freud. One of his favorite definitions of a psychotic, “a psychotic is anyone who believes that he will be rewarded after death for the good that he has done here on earth.” Pardon me ladies and gentlemen, my dear fellow psychotics. In other words, presumed behind all that we are saying is that sincerely to imitate Jesus Christ is to be considered, well, not just unworldly, but irrational. And the best we can do is, well, hide or protect or mask what the world calls our irrationality, quite an art. I give a whole course on that subject.

(Don’t forget to read Part 1: The Standard of Satan: Pride)

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