| Vol. 41, Issue No. 113 |
St. Ignatius of Loyola, Knight of Mary
When, during the fifteenth century, the leaders of the Protestant
revolt began to "reform" God's revealed Religion, Divine Providence chose a
young soldier to help save and rebuild the Church of Christ: a young Spanish nobleman
named Iņigo de Loyola. And, as we shall see in significant excerpts from his
autobiography, this extraordinary man, who became the Founder and Commander-in-chief of
the vast army of well-trained soldiers of God known as the Society of Jesus, was converted
in only one year by the Blessed Virgin herself from a very worldly life to one of heroic
sanctity.
A few months before he died, St. Ignatius dictated to a friend, in the
third person, an account of his youth and conversion, in which he admitted that "up
to his twenty-sixth year, his heart was fascinated by the vanities of the world. His
special delight was in the military life, and he seemed to be led by a strong and empty
desire of making a great name for himself."
As a youth, Ignatius was proud and ambitious, a great reader of tales
of chivalry, and quite vain. While attached to the service of a nobleman, he always bore
arms and wore an open cloak. He was very overly fastidious about his appearance, took much
care of his delicate hands and long hair, and always dressed according to the latest
worldly fashions.
At this time, according to one of his closest friends, "he did not
live in harmony with his holy Faith, and did not keep himself from sin. He was
particularly prone to gambling, duels, and other vices common to his worldly
inclinations." Once Ignatius and one of his brothers were arrested for some
unspecified escapade, perpetrated at night, which had caused considerable damage. That he
was a typically hot-blooded Spaniard is proven by the fact that one day, when some men on
a street happened to crowd him to the wall, Ignatius drew his sword and pursued them, and
"if he had not been held back, it would have ended in a murder", according to an
eye-witness.
But He was also a loyal patriot and a fearless soldier. When the French
invaded his country, during the month of Our Lady in the year 1521, Ignatius confessed his
sins in the chapel of Our Lady, and then bravely fought off a six-hours siege, until a
cannonball struck his legs, breaking one and wounding the other. Soon after he fell, his
troops surrendered.
Despite his extremely painful wounds, he was carried to the Loyola
family home on a stretcher. The doctors then decided to break his leg again in order to
reset it correctly. During this "butchery", as Ignatius called it, he stoically
gave no sign of suffering, except for tightly clenching his fists. But soon he lost
strength and could not eat. On the Feast of St. John the Baptist (June 24) the doctors
gave up hope for his recovery and advised him to make his last Confession. And on the
Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul he received the Last Sacraments, for the doctors expected him
to die that night.
But Christ the King had other plans for His future soldier. As Ignatius
put it, "He was already devoted to St. Peter" (the Patron Saint of the Loyola
family), "and therefore it pleased Our Lord that that very night he began to get
better, and within a few days he was considered out of danger." But the worldly young
Spaniard was not yet converted, for when he saw that one leg was deformed and shorter than
the other, "out of vanity, because he still wanted to spend his life at court",
he willingly underwent a still more painful operation which involved the sawing off of a
protruding bone, after which he had to stay in bed for many weeks while the wound healed.
To pass the long hours, Ignatius asked for some of the worldly books
and romance novels which he liked. But, by God's design, his devout sister saw to it that
the only reading material available to him was a "Life of Christ" and a book on
the "Lives of the Saints." Now the future Saint himself will tell us the
striking story of his conversion:
"By frequently reading these books he began to acquire some love
for spiritual things. This reading led his mind to meditate on holy subjects, yet
sometimes it wandered to thoughts which he had been accustomed to dwell on before. While
going through the life of Our Lord and the Saints, he began to reflect and say to himself:
'What if I should do what St. Francis did? What if I should act like St. Dominic? St.
Francis did this—therefore I will do it too!' These heroic resolutions remained for a
time, and then other vain and worldly thoughts followed. But in these thoughts there was
this difference: when he thought of worldly things it gave him great pleasure, but
afterwards he found himself dry and sad; but when he thought of journeying to Jerusalem
and of living only on herbs and practicing austerities, he found pleasure not only while
thinking of them, but also when he had ceased.
"By experience he learned that one train of thought left him sad,
the other joyful. This was his first discovery in spiritual matters. When gradually he
recognized the different spirits by which he was moved—one of the Spirit of God, the
other the Devil—and when he had gained considerable spiritual enlightenment from
reading religious books, he began to think more seriously of his past life and how much
penance he should do to expiate his past sins. The holy desire to imitate saintly men came
to his mind. His resolve was not more definite than to promise that, with the help of
Divine grace, he too would do what they had done. His one wish after his recovery was to
make a pil grimage to Jerusalem. He fasted frequently and scourged himself to satisfy the
desire for penance which ruled a soul filled with the spirit of God. The vain thoughts
gradually decreased."
Then, during the glorious Feast of Our Lady's Assumption, there
occurred that decisive intervention of the Blessed Virgin Mary which permanently changed
the worldly young Spanish soldier into a great and fervent and pure saint of God.
One night, while Ignatius was praying, "he distinctly saw the
Blessed Mother of God with the Holy Infant Jesus! And at this sight, for quite some time,
he was overwhelmed with consolation. And he remained with such disgust for his whole past
life, and especially for impurity, that it seemed to him as if all the impressions which
had hitherto been imprinted on his soul were torn away." From that moment until the
end of his life, "he never again gave the least consent to impure sin. Consequently,
the experience may be considered as having been from God.
Henceforth "his brother and all in the house noticed from his
appearance what a great change had taken place in his soul. Meanwhile, he continued his
reading and kept the holy resolution he had made. At home, his conversation was wholly
devoted to Divine matters and had a spiritual influence on others." He proceeded to
make an intensive study of the Gospels. and to write out all their most important passages
in a notebook. Thus he reverently filled three hundred pages, using red ink for Christ's
words, and blue ink for those of Mary. As soon as he could get up, he spent much of his
time in the Chapel of the Annunciation in his home. Now he also "began his habit of
taking the discipline every night. During these days his greatest source of consolation
was to gaze at the heavens and stars at night, which he did frequently and for a long
time, experiencing in his soul a very generous impulse to serve Our Lord." And he
seriously considered becoming a Carthusian monk after his pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
As soon as his health permitted, he left home, taking with him a
picture of our Sorrowful Mother; a prayer book containing the Little Office of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, and his notebook of the Gospels. Setting out on his pilgrimage, and at the
same time on his new life, Ignatius went immediately to the nearest shrine of Our Lady,
and spent the night there in prayer; thanking his Queen for his conversion, praying for
strength for his journey, and receiving such stirring consolations that thirty years later
he still spoke of them with intense gratitude.
Traveling on, he collected some money owed to him, and spent half of it
on the restoration of a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary in a church on the way. And it
was probably at this time that he solemnly made, before God and through the mediation of
Our Lady, a private vow of perpetual chastity.
Yet, as he admitted later, "his knowledge of spiritual things was
still very obscure. To do something great for the glory of his God, to imitate saintly men
in all they had done before him—this was his only object in his practice of external
mortification." Yet his love for Our Lady and his zeal for spiritual progress caused
him to grow daily in virtue.
His noble upbringing and chivalrous spirit lent a remarkable character
to his tender love for his Lady, the Immaculate Queen of the Universe, and gave him a
truly admirable intolerance for the least offence against her virtue and dignity. Once, a
Moslem, riding his donkey along the way with Ignatius for a while, insisted, despite all
argument, that the Mother of Christ could not have remained a perpetual virgin after the
Birth of her Divine Son. Ignatius gave vent to such outrage at the unspeakable blasphemy
of this obstinate infidel that both his horse and the Moslem's donkey were terrified at
his mighty roar, and bolted. As Ignatius was "sorely troubled and feeling impelled by
a strong impulse to hasten after him and kill him", the animal's flight saved the
infidel's life. As for Ignatius, he resolved to settle all his doubts in the following
novel way: if on coming to the next crossroad his horse followed the infidel, he would
pursue him and kill him. "Through the Providence of God" the horse took the
other direction, and Ignatius decided that, in this instance at least, God "desired
not the death of the sinner, but that he be converted and live." This is a glimpse of
the totally Catholic outlook, intolerant of error and heresy, an expression of true love
of God, which would become the hallmark of Ignatius' forthcoming battle campaign for the
salvation of souls.
Next he went to the famous ancient Shrine of Our Lady of Montserrat in
order to spend an entire night in prayer before her altar and thus, like the knights of
chivalry, to become one of her soldiers by taking up the arms of Christ. And on the eve of
the Feast of the Annunciation, 1522, after a general confession that lasted three days,
the twenty-nine year-old Ignatius Loyola, dressed only in a piece of sackcloth
"filled with prickly wooden fibers... hastened at nightfall to the church, where he
threw himself on his knees before the altar of the Blessed Mother of God, and there, now
kneeling, now standing, with staff in hand, he passed the entire night. After receiving
the Blessed Sacrament, he left the town at daybreak."
Ignatius now went to a small nearby town named Manresa, which was
situated in a lovely valley and which had a Cathedral and eleven other churches dedicated
to the Mother of God. Here the holy knight of Mary begged alms for his living and spent
most of his time in the hospital and the churches. He also taught catechism to children
and began to speak about religion to all who associated with him. Here too, he underwent
various spiritual trials and mystical experiences. He went to Confession and Holy
Communion once a week, and during Mass every day he read the Passion in one of the
Gospels, which filled his soul "with a joyful feeling of uninterrupted calm." He
often spent hours meditating in a lonely cave outside the town, which has now become the
famous Shrine of Manresa. He lived in a Dominican monastery, and "kept up his usual
custom of praying on bended knees for seven hours a day, and scourged himself three times
a day and during the night.
During this extraordinary novitiate, Mary's soldier, no doubt through
her intercession, received numerous heavenly favors. "Once while reciting on the
steps of the monastery the Little Hours in honor of the Blessed Virgin, his vision carried
him beyond the earth. He seemed to see the Holy Trinity, and this vision affected him so
much that he could not keep from weeping and sobbing. During the rest of his life,
whenever he prayed to the Holy Trinity, he experienced great devotion."
"Often in prayer, and for a long time, he saw with the eyes of his
soul Our Lord and His Humanity... perhaps twenty or even forty times. He saw the Blessed
Virgin Mary likewise. These visions gave him such strength that he often thought that even
if Holy Scripture did not bear witness to these mysteries of the Faith, still, from what
he had seen, it would be his duty to lay down his life for them."
It was during his stay of ten months at Manresa that St. Ignatius wrote
the first draft of his famous Spiritual Exercises; a series of systematically graded
examinations of conscience and meditations on the life of Christ, designed for a
thirty-days' retreat, which have in thousands of cases converted
retreatants—including many well-known priests and lay apostles—to a new life of
loving, selfless service to Christ. While Jesus and Mary may not have literally dictated
these powerful Spiritual Exercises to the Saint, it is certain that they did directly or
indirectly inspire him to write them.
Such was the thorough ascetical and mystical training which the Blessed
Virgin Mary gave to her chosen soldier before sending him out into the world in order, not
unlike St. Francis of Assisi, to rebuild the Church of Christ.
After a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Ignatius studied for the
priesthood in Spain and at Paris, where he gathered around him a small group of
outstanding followers like the future St. Francis Xavier. Later in Rome they founded the
illustrious Society of Jesus, which for several centuries gener ously gave to Holy Mother
Church hundreds of saintly scholars, educators, and missionaries, such as St. Peter
Kanisus, St. John Francis Regis, St. Aloysius Gonzaga, and the North American Martyrs.
To Mary's soldier, St. Ignatius Loyola, perhaps more than to any other
saint in his time, belongs the glory of having taken up the blood-stained banner of
Christ, and valiantly led the charge against the raging enemies who would fain have
destroyed His One, True Church by their Protestant Revolution. His uncompromising zeal for
holiness was matched only by his unshakable fidelity to the Church and to the Holy Father,
to Whom he bound all of his sons by a unique vow of instant and total obedience, as to the
"Commander-in-chief" in the battle against the enemies of God. May St. Ignatius
intercede for us to imitate his loyalty to the Church and Her legitimate authority in our
time, when once again, She is being attacked by powerful enemies who are determined to
destroy Her.