Feast of St. Ignatius

Today, on the anniversary of his death in 1556, the Catholic Church remembers Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus. It's the biggest celebration of the year for Jesuits, and an occasion to celebrate our callings and our communities, our ministries and missions.

Jesuit Community
College of the Holy Cross, Worcester MA

Ignatius' life story is difficult to condense, and his many stations in life elude easy categorization. A soldier and a saint, a pilgrim and a planner, a seeker and a guide, among his many contributions (a global religious order with a 460-year history, a framework of spiritual discernment, an extensive corpus of hand-written letters, innovative insights into the human condition) is the example of striving to recognize God at work in individual lives and the world as a whole, and approaching the most profound relationships and the most mundane decisions in light of that deeply held belief.

DuBourg Hall
Saint Louis University, St. Louis MO

Having recently completed my annual eight-day silent retreat, I feel that I've been renewed in my sense of who Ignatius was and how his life and experience can inform mine. His course of "formation" in the years from his conversion to his establishment of the Society took him all over Spain and through several major European cities; he studied and worked, begged and offered counsel, suffered rejection and found friends. In the past year, I've transitioned from a middle school teaching position to a higher education administrative position, and found new gifts in a line of work (grant writing) at which I was completely new last June. I've been fortunate to visit friends up and down the East Coast as well as in the Midwest, and blessed by the opportunity to maintain contact with those further afield, much as Ignatius did when some of his beloved friends and fellow Jesuits were sent to the Far East and South America.

Personal correspondence
(The writer of this particular letter may recognize the handwriting!)

Perhaps most crucially of all, I've seen how deeply all of my progress and growth this year is rooted in the gradual work of God's grace, the support and guidance of my local community and extended family in the Society of Jesus, and the eagerness of many good friends to share their life stories and listen to mine as we work out the details of our respective callings and strive to live them faithfully. In one of his many letters– thousands survive– Ignatius put this far more eloquently, so I'll conclude with his words:

However for our part, to find that way through the medium of [God's] grace we will be greatly helped if we search about and make many kinds of experiments, so that we can follow the route that He most clearly shows to one, the happiest and most blessed route in this life, completely governed and directed toward that other life, which is without end, embracing and united to these most holy gifts... then it is not just the soul that will be healthy; we will have a sound mind in a sound body, and thus everything will be healthier and better fitted for the divine service.

– Letter to Francis Borgia,  September 1548