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St. Ignatius of Loyola
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam (For the Greater
Glory of God)
St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491 – 1556) was born into
Basque (Spain) nobility in the family castle of
Azpeitia, the youngest of thirteen children. Baptized
Iñigo Lòpez de Loyola, his childhood dream was one of
chivalry and adventure. His father (Beltran de Loyola)
performed deeds of valor in the final years of the
Reconquista (the Christian re-conquest of Spain from the
Moors). His older brother, Juan, sailed with Columbus on
the explorer’s second expedition to the new world. Some
of his other brothers fought (and some died) in France,
Naples, the Low Countries (Belgium, the Netherlands,
Luxembourg and parts of northern France and western
Germany) and the Americas. Like his brothers, St.
Ignatius longed to sacrifice himself for a great king,
serve faithfully a beautiful lady and win immortal fame
in the eyes of the world. His early adult life was
marked by gambling, womanizing and fighting. He longed
to prove himself in battle.
In 1516, Ignatius went to Pamplona
and obtained a position in the army of the local duke.
Spain and France were fighting over a land that both
claimed to be their own. France attacked the city with
an army of 12,000 men and heavy artillery. The city
council surrendered, but St. Ignatius and his troops
refused to give up. The fighting continued for another
six hours, and St. Ignatius was ready to fight to the
death. He stood with his sword in hand at the fortress
wall when a cannonball passed between his legs,
shattering one and wounding the other. As St. Ignatius
fell to the ground, his troop’s courage did too. They
surrendered to the French commander who spared the lives
of St. Ignatius and his men and sent his own army
doctors to treat St. Ignatius.
After two weeks, St. Ignatius was sent back to his
parent’s home (castle) to recuperate. The doctors said
St. Ignatius’ leg had been badly set by the army doctors
and that it would have to be broken and reset. (St.
Ignatius describes the procedure in his autobiography as
“butchery.”) When the wounds healed and the bone mended,
St. Ignatius found, to his dismay, that one leg was
shorter than the other. His bone protruded causing St.
Ignatius to not be able to wear the tight-fitting hose
and boots that were fashionable at the time. St.
Ignatius commanded his doctors to saw off the offending
lump of the bone and stretch his leg – all without
anesthesia.
As he convalesced, he asked for some novels on chivalry,
but his sister-in-law (Magdalena) who was caring for
him, said she had none. The only two books in the house
were one on the life of Christ and the other on the
lives of the saints. As he read these books, St.
Ignatius’s heart was gradually transformed. He became
ashamed of the vanity, pride and lust that ruled his
life. While recuperating, St. Ignatius underwent a
conversion, but he did not let go of the chivalric
ideals of suffering and self-sacrifice. He shifted his
focus from winning honor
in this world to winning
salvation in the next. One night, it is said, that he
had a vision of the Blessed Virgin and the Christ Child
in his room, which filled him with an intense joy for
several hours, but also a feeling of shame over his
former ways. He was determined to change. He decided, as
soon as he was well enough, to set out for Jerusalem as
a humble pilgrim. On his way he stopped at a Benedictine
monastery in Montserrat. He exchanged his knight’s
clothes (giving them to a beggar) and took on the
clothes of a poor pilgrim. Imitating the chivalric
ceremony in which a gentleman prepared for knighthood,
St. Ignatius laid down his sword before the altar of the
Virgin of Montserrat and spent the night in prayer. His
next stop was Manresa, where he planned to spend only a
few days. Plans changed and he remained there for nearly
a year. He lived in a cell in a Dominican Friary where
the Dominican’s introduced him to Thomas á Kempis’
Imitation of Christ and taught St. Ignatius the basics
of religious formation. In his effort to repent for his
past sins, he embraced an austere program of fasting and
physical penance. He gradually came to experience an
inner peace which he claimed to have enjoyed the rest of
his life – a peace that he said comes from knowing that
one is doing the will of God. (This becomes a critical
component of his “discernment of spirits.”)
It was during this time that he began writing what later
became the Spiritual Exercises (one of the classics of
Western spirituality). The
Spiritual Exercises lay out a
program (usually for thirty days, in solitude) of
examination of conscience, contemplation, meditation
based on a vivid representation of scriptural events and
discernment of God’s will in one’s life. After the
Manresa experience, the Inquisition examined the
Spiritual Exercises for heresy and revisions were forced
to be made.
St. Ignatius was drawn to the monastic life, but decided
that his own vocation was to be an active apostolate,
one built on the foundation of personal conversion and
individual sanctification. In 1523 he left Manresa for
Jerusalem. Intending to stay in the Holy Land for the
rest of his life with the implicit mission to convert
Muslims, his plans were derailed when a Franciscan
guardian of the holy places ordered him to leave the
city to avoid capture and even death at the hands of the
Turks. When St. Ignatius refused, the guardian responded
that the pope had authorized him to excommunicate
disobedient pilgrims. So St. Ignatius returned to Spain
where he enrolled in the university with his first step
toward his long-term goal of ordination to the
priesthood. He was thirty-three at the time.
His zealousness to bring souls to God led him to teach
university students and adults how to pray and how to
interpret the Gospels. It was at this point in his life
he began to show the moderation that had been absent
from his own previous spiritual life and which would
become the hallmark of Jesuit confessional practices and
approaches to moral theology. He and his group of
disciples (men and women alike) began to wear clerical
dress and a tonsure (traditional practice of clerics and
monastics of cutting or shaving the hair from the scalp
[while leaving some parts uncut]). Since he was a layman
with no formal training of any kind of theology or
biblical studies and he was not part of a religious
order, this behavior drew the attention of the local
Inquisition. He was summoned before it and released only
on the condition that he and his friends not dress as
members of a religious order. The Inquisition summoned
him again for his makeshift religion classes, and he
spent 42 days in an Inquisition prison before he was
cleared of any suspicion of heresy. He was released
under the conditions that he wear the dress of an
ordinary student and not hold meetings. He could not
accept the latter condition and so he moved to
Salamanca, Spain, where he ran into similar problems.
During that time, he was imprisoned for three weeks
while his Spiritual Exercises were examined. He was
again cleared of heresy, but St. Ignatius concluded he
had to leave Spain entirely. He moved to Paris in 1528
where he studied philosophy for three years and
graduated with a Master of Arts degree in 1534 from the
University of Paris.
In Paris, he was joined by other followers who were to
become the core of his group. He shared rooms with St.
Francis Xavier (the great missionary-to-be) and St.
Peter Faber. Under St. Ignatius’ influence, both men
abandoned their plans for worldly careers in favor of a
life dedicated to God. As the group grew to eight, the
little band decided to take private vows of poverty and
chastity and also one to go to Jerusalem to convert the
Muslims, or failing that, to place themselves at the
service of the pope.
“The companions” worked among the sick and dying in
Paris. Their plans to travel to Jerusalem were postponed
due to an outbreak of war between the Turkish Empire and
Venice, and they took advantage of the delay to become
ordained and make a long retreat together. They split
into twos and threes to work in different cities on the
Italian peninsula. Though not formally a religious
order, when people asked who they were, they said they
were the “Compaña de Jesús" or in Latin, the
Societas
Jesu (in English, the Society of Jesus).
In November 1537, on his way to Rome to offer their
services to Pope Paul III, St. Ignatius had a vision of
God the Father in which He promised, “I will be
favorable to you in Rome.” God was favorable and St.
Ignatius and his companions, St. Peter Faber and James
Lainez impressed Pope Paul III. The pope assigned Faber
and Lainez to teach theology and Scripture at Rome’s
Sapienza University while St. Ignatius carried out his
own impromptu ministry of preaching, teaching and
bringing souls to God.
By now, St. Ignatius and his companions began to see
themselves as a distinct religious congregation of
teachers of Catholic doctrine, ready to do anything and
to go anywhere at the command of the pope. St. Ignatius
spent time drawing up an initial constitution for the
companions in 1539. The apostolate was to focus on
preaching, hearing confessions, teaching and caring for
the sick, but it involved none of the traditional
elements of a religious order such as praying the Divine
Office in common or other prescribed prayers and
penances. The element of direct obedience to the pope
was also a novel feature. While the lack of prayers said
in common was highly criticized, St. Ignatius insisted
that his company must have sufficient flexibility to
engage in the apostolate, wherever and whenever they
were needed. Pope Paul II gave formal approval to the
Society of Jesus on September 27, 1540. St. Ignatius was
elected superior in 1541.
St. Ignatius spent the rest of his life in Rome,
administering the Society and caring for the poor, the
sick, orphans and prostitutes. He was a prolific letter
writer and would keep in touch with his members through
correspondence. He also wrote to people in high places
to provide spiritual direction and to win financial
support for the society’s work. His governing style was
collegial rather than authoritarian. He preferred to
leave decisions to the judgment of those closest to the
situation (subsidiarity). Since all the members had
experienced and knew how to integrate the
Spiritual
Exercises into daily life, St. Ignatius felt that was
sufficient for decisions to be made at the local level.
However, he regarded obedience as the best means of
self-denial. The model was always Jesus, who was
“obedient to death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8).
St. Ignatius placed such a high premium on obedience and
as a result, stressed the importance of selecting the
right people for positions of leadership in the Society.
In the Society of Jesus’ constitution, the amount of
study required of Jesuits would be more extensive than
in other orders and solemn vows were to be postponed
until an aptitude for such study had been tested. St.
Ignatius was convinced of the need for an educated
clergy and of the importance of an educated laity as
well. The first of many colleges and universities
founded by the Jesuits was opened in Padua in 1542.
Courses in philosophy and theology leading to ordination
were added in 1553 and the famous Gregorian University
in Rome was born. Institutions of higher education were
spread throughout the world including Germany, Spain,
Portugal, France, India, Brazil and Japan within a
decade after his death. Today there are Jesuit colleges
in 42 different countries. In the Unities States alone,
there are 28 Jesuit colleges and universities.
St. Ignatius died suddenly on July 31, 1556 and was
buried next to the high altar in Santa Maria della
Strada. When the church was later demolished, his
remains were enshrined in the Church of the Gesú, in
Rome, Italy (the Mother Church of the Jesuits). He was
beatified in 1609 and canonized in 1622, along with St.
Teresa of Avila, St. Philip Neri, St. Francis Xavier and
St. Isidore the Farmer. St. Ignatius is often associated
with the following words, which is the motto of the
Jesuits, “ad majorem Dei gloriam” which means “For the
Greater Glory of God.” We celebrate St. Ignatius’ feast
day on July 31.
Resources on St.
Ignatius Loyola
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