(C.D. Stampley Enterprises, Charlotte, NC 2001). Used with permission.

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For a good retreat

St. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556)

Feast day: July 31

The Church is rich in spiritual classics but the most influential work of the last 400 years has been St. Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. It is the cornerstone of Jesuit religious formation and the basis of the contemporary retreat movement.

Ignatius Loyola was born into a family of Basque nobility in the family castle of Azpeitia in summer or autumn of 1491, the youngest of the thirteen children of Beltran de Loyola and Marina Saenz de Licona. From his earliest years Ignatius was enchanted by dreams of chivalry and adventure. His own father Beltran had performed deeds of valor in the final years of the Reconquista, the Christian reconquest of Spain from the Moors. His oldest brother Juan sailed with Columbus on the discoverer’s second expedition to the New World. Other Loyola brothers fought—and some died a hero’s death—in France, Naples, the Low Countries, and the Americas. With these models before him it is no wonder that Ignatius longed to sacrifice himself for a great king, to serve faithfully a beautiful lady, and win immortal fame in the eyes of the world.

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As a young man he tried to live out his notion of the gallant cavalier: he was ambitious, vain, prickly about his honor, a gambler, a fighter, and a sexual adventurer. He longed to prove himself in battle, and to this end at age 26 Ignatius entered the service of Antonio Manrique de Lara, Duke of Najera and viceroy of Navarre, a province which both the Spanish and the French claimed as their own. Ignatius was in Pamplona when the French attacked the city with an army of 12,000 men and batteries of heavy artillery. The city council surrendered, but Ignatius and the rest of the garrison of the citadel refused to give up. The French attacked and for six hours Ignatius led a desperate defense of the stronghold until finally under the relentless battery of the French cannons a portion of the fortress wall collapsed. Ignatius, sword in hand, stood at the breach, ready to fight to the death, when a cannonball passed between his legs, shattering the one and wounding the other. As Ignatius fell to the ground, the garrison’s courage gave way, too. They surrendered to the French commander who spared the lives of the defenders and sent his own doctors to treat Ignatius.

After two weeks a band of soldiers carried Ignatius in a litter home to Azpeitia to recuperate. The doctors the Loyolas summoned said Ignatius’ leg had been badly set by the army surgeons: it would have to broken and reset, a procedure Ignatius described in his autobiography as “butchery.” When the wounds healed and the bone mended Ignatius found to his dismay that one leg was now shorter than the other. Worse still was the unsightly protuberance of bone just below the knee which would make it impossible for him to wear the tight-fitting hose and boots that were the fashion at the time. Ignatius commanded his doctors to saw off the offending lump of bone and stretch his leg—a gruesome operation performed without anesthesia.

To help him pass the time during the long weeks of convalescence Ignatius asked his sister-in-law Magdalena for some novels of chivalry to read. She had no such books. In fact the only two books in the house were a life of Christ written by Ludolph the Carthusian and Jacobus de Voragine’s collection of saints’ lives, The Golden Legend. As he read these books Ignatius’ heart was touched by grace: he became ashamed of the vanity, pride, and lust that had ruled his life thus far. Ignatius had undergone a conversion, but he had not abandoned his chivalric ideals of suffering and self-sacrifice—instead he had shifted his focus from winning honor in this world to winning salvation in the next. His future course was confirmed for him one night in August or September 1521 when the Blessed Virgin and the Christ Child appeared in his room.

In February 1522 Ignatius set out on a penitential pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but first he traveled to the shrine of Our Lady at Montserrat. To a priest at the basilica he made a general confession of all the sins of his life. Then on the night before the Feast of the Annunciation Ignatius hung his sword and dagger on the grill before the altar of the Virgin of Montserrat and kept a nocturnal vigil, a deliberate imitation of the chivalric ceremony in which a gentleman prepared for knighthood by spending the night in prayer.

His next stop was the town of Manresa where he planned to stay only a few days. In fact Ignatius remained there for nearly a year. he lived in a cell in the Dominican monastery where the friars introduced him to such spiritual classics as Thomas á Kempis’ Imitation of Christ and taught Ignatius the basics of religious formation—all lessons which he would apply later in his own book, the Spiritual Exercises.

The Spiritual Exercises reflect Ignatius’ own conversion experience: they urge the Christian to leave behind the old man, the one obsessed with comfort, respect, success, even good health, and become a new person eager to do God’s will no matter how unpleasant, painful, personally demeaning, or even dangerous it may be. This theme is summed up in the prayer Ignatius composed to be said while performing the Exercises: Take O Lord and receive my entire liberty, my memory, my understanding and my whole will. All that I am and all that I possess you have given me: I surrender it all to you to be disposed of according to your will. Give me only your love and your grace; with these I will be rich enough and will desire nothing more.

During the full 30 days it takes to complete the Spiritual Exercises the retreatant is challenged to examine his actions, his motivations, and his desires, and to give up all spiritually harmful attachments. While other spiritual classics are inspirational, the Exercises is practical. The principles discussed in the book are meant to be put into action, a distinction which has made Ignatius’ Exercises a vital force in the spiritual life of the Church for over 400 years.

When at last Ignatius arrived in Jerusalem on September 4, 1523, he was so deeply moved by the Holy Sepulcher, the Garden of Olives, the Mount of the Ascension, and other sites associated with the life of Our Lord that he decided to pass the rest of his life in the Holy Land. The Franciscan guardian of the holy places would not permit it: he had encountered zealous, naive souls like Ignatius before and they were nothing but trouble. If they did not get themselves arrested by the Turks, the Middle Eastern climate made them ill. In any case a man such as Ignatius would only be a source of worry to the Franciscans. When Ignatius declared that he was resolved to remain in Jerusalem nonetheless, the Franciscan guardian responded that the {ln:Pope} had authorized him to excommunicate disobedient pilgrims. So Ignatius returned to Spain, to Alcala where he applied for admission to the university, thus taking the first step toward his long-term goal, ordination to the priesthood.

In his zeal to bring souls to God Ignatius began to teach university students and adults how to pray and how to interpret the gospels. Since he was a layman with no formal training of any kind in theology or biblical studies Ignatius’ makeshift religion classes fell afoul of the Inquisition. He spent 42 days in an Inquisition prison before he was cleared of any suspicion of heresy. Nonetheless his examiners insisted that he stop teaching religion until he had a solid education in philosophy and theology. Instead Ignatius left Alcala for Salamanca where once again he preached in the streets, and once again the Inquisition had him arrested. This time he spent 22 days in prison before he was released with the understanding that he could teach children but not adults.

Two terms in Inquisition prisons finally made an impression on Ignatius. He decided to get a formal education in Paris where the university was regarded as one of the pre-eminent theology schools in Europe. In Paris he shared rooms with St. Francis Xavier and St. Peter Faber. Under Ignatius’ influence both men abandoned their plans for worldly careers in favor a life dedicated to God. In 1534 when the number of Ignatius’ companions had grown to eight, the little band decided to take private vows of poverty and chastity. On the Feast of the Assumption they met in the crypt of the chapel of Saint Denis on Montmartre where Faber, the only priest among them, said Mass. Before they received Holy Communion they all recited their vows. The thought of forming a religious order had not occurred to them yet, but the private ceremony bound these men more closely together and strengthened their resolve to work for the greater glory of God.

Once all eight had completed their university education, perhaps inspired by Ignatius’ tales of his own journey to the holy places, they decided to make a group pilgrimage to Palestine. They traveled to Italy to embark from Venice but the presence of Turkish warships in the Adriatic made it too dangerous to sail. Instead they began preaching and teaching in Padua, Siena, Bologna, and Vicenza. When people asked who they were, they said they were the Compania de {ln:Jesus}, in Latin the Societas Jesu, from which comes the Jesuits’ English name the Society of {ln:Jesus}.

In November 1537 Ignatius, Faber and James Lainez set out for Rome to offer their services to {ln:Pope} Paul III. In a chapel at La Storta a few miles from the Eternal City Ignatius had a vision of God the Father in which he promised, “I will be favorable to you in Rome.” And he was: these zealous, university-trained men impressed Paul III. He assigned Faber and Lainez to teach theology and Scripture at Rome’s Sapienza University while Ignatius carried out his own impromptu ministry of preaching, teaching, and bringing souls to God. In Rome Ignatius, now a priest, offered his first Mass on Christmas Eve in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in the Chapel of the Manger where the relic of Christ’s crib is displayed.

By now Ignatius and his companions began to see themselves as a distinct religious congregation: teachers of Catholic doctrine, living in community under obedience to their superior, and ready to do anything or go anywhere the {ln:Pope} felt they were needed. On September 27, 1540, {ln:Pope} Paul III gave formal approval to the Society of {ln:Jesus}. Ignatius was elected unanimously the first general of the order.

For the last fifteen years of his life Ignatius directed the Jesuits, overseeing the expansion of his order from eight to 1000 members with 76 houses in 12 provinces across the globe—including Brazil, Japan, and India. He preached in the churches of Rome, taught catechism to children, interviewed prospective candidates for the society and personally directed them through the Spiritual Exercises. In addition he founded a seminary for German Catholics in effort to turn back the effects of the Reformation in Germany.

During a heat wave in July 1554 Ignatius fell ill with a stomach ailment. The doctor believed it was not serious and the founder would recover. On July 30 Ignatius asked his secretary Juan de Polanco to go to the {ln:Pope} with a request for his blessing on Ignatius and the Society of {ln:Jesus}. Polanco did not think Ignatius was dying so he put him off saying he had several letters he had to write that day, he would go see the {ln:Pope} tomorrow. “I would be pleased more today than tomorrow, or the sooner the better,” Ignatius said. “But do what you think best in the matter.”

At dawn the next day the infirmarian visited Ignatius’ room and was shocked to see that the founder was in the death throes. Polanco raced to the Vatican but by the time he returned Ignatius Loyola had already died—without the papal blessing or even the last rites.

He was buried in the little church of St. Mary of the Way. When that church was replaced by the magnificent Gesu, Ignatius’ remains were transferred there. {ln:Pope} Gregory XV canonized Ignatius on March 12, 1622, in the same ceremony in which he canonized Teresa of Avila, Isidore the Farmer, Philip Neri, and Francis Xavier.

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