Paying Attention To The Sky

Iñigo of Loyola was born in 1491 in the Basque Country of northern Spain. As a boy, he served as a page in the court of a local nobleman, and later distinguished himself as a valiant soldier. He describes himself in his short autobiography as “a man given over to the vanities of the world,” particularly concerning his physical appearance. He seems also to have been a ladies’ man. At least that’s how he fancied himself. He was definitely a rake. It was rumored that he fathered an illegitimate child. (There is some evidence to support this, but it is inconclusive.) And he may be the only canonized saint with a notarized police record, for nighttime brawling with intent to inflict serious harm.

During Iñigo’s soldiering career, his leg was struck by a cannonball in a battle at Pamplona in 1521. This pivotal incident, which might have been merely tragic to another person, marked the beginning of a new life for Iñigo. It is also one of the scenes most often depicted in murals and mosaics of the saint’s life. At St. Ignacius Loyola Church in New York City, high over the main altar is a brightly colored mosaic of the battle at Pamplona. Atop the parapets of a medieval castle, the injured Iñigo, still clad in a suit of gray armor over a sky blue doublet, reclines in the arms of his fellow soldiers. As the battle rages about him and soldiers scale the castle walls on rickety wooden ladders, Iñigo gazes placidly heavenward, as if already anticipating something new from God.

After the battle, he was brought to his elder brother’s home, the family’s ancestral castle of Loyola, to recuperate. The bone in his leg was set poorly, and Iñigo, “given over to the vanities of the world,” wanted the leg to look smart in his courtier’s tights. He therefore submitted to a series of gruesome and painful operations. The leg never healed properly, and he was left with a lifelong limp.

Confined to his sickbed, Iñigo asked a relative for some books. All she could offer was pious reading, which he took grumpily and grudgingly. To his great surprise, the soldier found himself attracted to the lives of the saints and began thinking, If St. Francis or St. Dominic could do such-and-such, maybe I could do great things. He also noticed that after thinking about doing great deeds for God, he was left with a feeling of peace — what he termed “consolation.” On the other hand, after imagining success as a soldier or impressing a particular woman, though he was initially filled with great enthusiasm, he would later be left feeling “dry.” Slowly, he recognized that these feelings of dryness and consolation were God’s ways of leading him to follow a path of service. He perceived the peaceful feeling as God’s way of drawing him closer. This realization also marked the beginning of his understanding of “discernment” in the spiritual life, a way of striving to seek God’s will in one’s life, a key concept in Ignatian spirituality.

Iñigo decided after his recovery that he would become a pilgrim and tramp to the Holy Land to see what he might do there in God’s service. First he made a pilgrimage to a well-known monastery in Spain, in Montserrat, where he confessed his sins, laid aside his knightly armor, and put on the homespun garb of a pilgrim. From Montserrat, Iñigo journeyed to a nearby small town called Manresa, where he lived the life of a poor pilgrim: praying, fasting continually, and begging for alms.

During his time in Manresa, his prayer intensified and he experienced great emotional variances in his spiritual life, as he moved from a desolation that was nearly suicidal to a mystical sense of union with God. In the end, his prayer made him more certain that he was being called to follow God more closely. Iñigo spent several months in seclusion in Manresa, experiencing prayer that grew ever deeper, and then commenced his journey to Jerusalem.

After a series of mishaps in Jerusalem and elsewhere, he decided that to accomplish anything noteworthy in the church of his time, he would need more education and perhaps even to become a priest. So the former soldier vowed to recommence his education, an arduous process that took him to the university cities of Alcalá, Salamanca, and, finally, Paris. And since he had little knowledge of Latin, he had to sit in class — at age thirty — with small boys learning their Latin lessons. Even in my third or fourth reading of the saint’s story, I found this chapter of Ignatius’s life impressive and touching. It always called to mind the image of the middle-aged man seated at a too-small desk, hunched over his books. The proud courtier who had hoped to win the attraction of influential men and highborn women nonetheless found the humility necessary to admit that in many ways he was no more advanced than a schoolboy.

While studying in Paris, Iñigo attracted attention as a result of his ascetic penchant for dressing in the poorest clothes, begging for alms, helping the poor, and assisting other students in prayer. In Paris he also completed what later become known as The Spiritual Exercises, a handbook of practices on prayer, on the human condition, on God’s love, and on the life of Jesus, all designed to help people draw closer to God. Iñigo also led his new roommate, Francisco Javier, through these exercises. His friend would later become better known, of course, as St. Francis Xavier, one of the church’s great missionaries. Around this time in Paris, Iñigo, for reasons still unknown, changed his own name to the more familiar-sounding Ignatius.

Gradually, Ignatius gathered around him a tight-knit group of six men, who decided they would work together in the service of God.

But doing what? Initially, they decided to go to Jerusalem, as so many Christians before them had done. If that was not possible, they would present themselves directly to the pope, who, by virtue of his knowledge of the needs of the universal church, would be better able to discern a direction for the group. Eventually, the men decided to form the Company of Jesus, or Societas Jesu in Latin, for the purpose of “helping souls.”

At first, Ignatius had a tough time winning formal acceptance for his society. For one thing, some in the church hierarchy were disturbed that he was not founding a more traditional religious order, with an emphasis on common prayer and a stricter, even cloistered, community life. But Ignatius’s men (derisively called “Jesuits” by their critics) wanted to work in the world. Ignatius, ever resourceful, shrewdly enlisted the help of powerful churchmen to speak on the society’s behalf.

From these humble efforts began the Society of Jesus. After settling in Rome and receiving papal approval for his new order, Ignatius began the difficult task of writing the Jesuits’ constitutions and mapping out plans for the work of its members. In all of these efforts Ignatius proved both ambitious and persistent. At the same time, he was flexible and ready to do whatever might be God’s will. He fought for the Society whenever a church official raised another objection about his new order. Yet he used to say that if the pope ever ordered the Jesuits to disband, he would need only fifteen minutes in prayer to compose himself and be on his way.

In my novitiate, St. Ignatius was presented as the model Jesuit: intelligent, prayerful, and disponible – available, disposed to do God’s will. He was ambitious to do great things ad majorem Del gloriam— for the greater glory of God. Another way of expressing this is the Jesuit tradition of magis—the best, the highest, the most for God. It has often been noted how fortunate it was for the Catholic Church that Ignatius transformed his worldly ambitions into ambitions for the church. His courtier’s charm, his soldier’s tenacity, and his stalwart temperament combined to make him a formidable first superior of the Jesuits. (I remember thinking in the novitiate that Ignatius would not have done so poorly in the corporate world.)

Despite his remarkably compelling and undeniably inspiring life, St. Ignatius doesn’t elicit the kind of widespread affection afforded to saints such as Thérêse of Lisieux or Francis of Assisi. Descriptions of Ignatius often use such terms as intellectual, serious, austere, mystical — making the saint, while respected, a rather distant figure.

And while Jesuits revere their founder, more than a few hold “Fr. Ignatius” at arm’s length. An elderly Jesuit at Boston College once said to me, regarding the prospect of his judgment in heaven: “I have no problem with Jesus judging me. It’s St. Ignatius I’m worried about!”

It is true that, unlike Francis of Assisi, Ignatius is rarely characterized as endearingly silly (though he liked to perform impromptu Basque dances for melancholy Jesuits) or foolish (though early in his post conversion life he asked his mule to decide, by choosing which fork in the road to take, if he should pursue a man who had just insulted the Virgin Mary). And true, he was not a gifted writer with an instinct for the well-turned phrase, as was his compatriot St. Teresa of Avila or St. Benedict.

His Autobiography — which he dictated only after being asked, and then grudgingly — is occasionally moving in its frank descriptions of his mystical experiences but is sometimes awfully dry. Even Ignatius’s greatest contribution to Christian spirituality, The Spiritual Exercises, is not a compendium of warm reflections on the love of God. It is instead a series of clear, practical instructions, a how-to manual for retreat directors — that is appreciated more in the doing than the reading. The young Thomas Merton once “made” the Spiritual Exercises on his own, sitting cross-legged on the floor of his apartment in Greenwich Village in the late 1930s. It was a mixed experience for Merton, somewhat akin to attempting to psychoanalyze oneself.

But the two writings into which Ignatius poured his heart and soul—the Spiritual Exercises and the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus — do work, and have worked well for more than 450 years. For Ignatius of Loyola was nothing if not practical. After discerning God’s will for himself, he resolutely set out to do it. He amended his life. Left his military career. Returned to school. Gathered his friends together. Put himself at the disposal of God and the pope. He organized, led, and inspired what he called his “least” Society of Jesus. He wrote their constitutions, opened schools, and sent out missionaries.

Yet at the heart of what can seem like frenetic activity was an intimate relationship with God, which Ignatius often found difficult to put into words. His private journals show minuscule notations crowded beside his entries for daily Mass. As scholars have concluded, these indicate, among other things, those times when he wept during Mass, overwhelmed by love for God. Ignatius found God everywhere: in the poor, in prayer, in the Mass, in his fellow Jesuits, in his work, and, most touchingly~ on a balcony of the Jesuit house in Rome, where he loved to gaze up silently at the stars at night. During these times he would shed tears in wonder and adoration. His emotional responses to the presence of God in his life gives the lie to the stereotype of the cold saint.

Ignatius was a mystic who loved God with an intensity rare even for saints. He wasn’t a renowned scholar like Augustine or Aquinas, not a martyr like Peter or Paul, not a great writer like Teresa or Benedict, and perhaps not a beloved personality like Francis or Therese. But he loved God and loved the world, and those two things he did quite well.

The above was adapted from My Life With The Saints by James Martin, S.J. Tomorrow I will feature reading selections and a book recommendation for The Examen Prayer by Fr. Timothy M. Gallagher. I have not found a better book on prayer than this one and it lead me to wonder about Saint Ignatius and what kind of man could be so practical and yet so rooted in a life of faith. The two posts are actually one but it seemed a good idea to split it up.