Last Sunday a person came up to me after Mass and said, Father next Sunday is the feast of St, Ignatius, why don’t you preach about him. This inspired me to write something about St. Ignatius of Loyola of whom many of you already know.
Saint Ignatius of Loyola, 1491-1556—Feast Day July 31
Ignatius lived in Spain during the sixteenth century. It was a time of kingdoms and battles, armies and soldiers. Iñigo was the youngest of 13 children, raised in a family culture of high Catholic piety but lax morals. His mother died when he was a child, and his father died when he was 16.
From the time he was a teenager, Ignatius had been a soldier. His life was full of adventure and excitement. He spent a lot of time in the palaces of dukes and princes. He was strong and full of life. Ignatius believed in God, but he didn’t do much about his faith. He didn’t do much more than go to Mass and say his prayers. He spent his spare time doing things that weren’t exactly admirable. He used his time and his talents for his own glory and pleasure and not much else.
Ignatius had been living this way for a long time when one spring day he found himself in a frightening position. He was fighting with an army of fellow Spaniards, and they were in a battle with the French. While Ignatius was defending the city against the French siege, a cannonball struck him in the leg. The French victors assured transport of the wounded man back to his family’s castle. During his convalescence, Ignatius requested books on chivalry. Instead his sister-in-law gave him two works, Life of Christ, and a Spanish version of Lives of the Saints. Contemplating these books, Ignatius underwent a conversion, rejected his past, and chose to live as a hermit in Jerusalem. He traveled through the town of Montserrat, Spain where he gave away his fine clothes to a poor man. Then, in an all-night vigil before the Black Madonna in the church of the Benedictine abbey there, he hung up his sword and dagger. Effectively, his old life was over and his new life had begun.
Ignatius greatly desired to share this experience of God with others. But in those days it was dangerous for an unschooled layman to teach publicly about religious matters. He had to go back to school at the age of 30 and become a priest. He went to the University of Paris. There he found companions, among them Francis Xavier, who was to become a renown Jesuit missionary to the East.
Later these companions, now a group of nine, decided to offer themselves to the Pope for whatever ministry he wanted them to undertake. They came to realize that God was calling them to form a new type of religious order to be sent, on a moment’s notice, to any part of the world where the need was greatest. The Society of Jesus was approved by Pope Paul III in 1540 and thus became an official Catholic religious order. Ignatius was elected the head of this new religious order. As the Superior General, he sent companions all over Europe and around the world. He called them to “hurry to any part of the world where…the needs of the neighbor should summon them.” And he counseled them to serve “without hard words or contempt for people’s errors.” He wrote to high and low in church and state and to women as well as men. But most of these letters were to his Jesuit companions, thus forming a vast communication network of friendship, love, and care.
In contrast to the ambitions of his early days, the fundamental philosophy of the mature Ignatius was that we ought to desire and choose only that which is more conducive to the end for which we are created – to praise, reverence, and serve God through serving other human beings.
He prayed:
Teach us, good Lord, to serve you as you deserve;
to give, and not to count the cost,
to fight, and not to heed the wounds,
to toil, and not to seek for rest,
to labor, and not to ask for reward,
except that of knowing that we are doing your will.