This coming Thursday is the feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola and I thought we might talk about the history of how he became a devout Catholic and came to found the Society of Jesus. Jesuits, it seems to me, are a bit mysterious. No one quite knows what they are up to or where their intense commitment comes from. Historically, even Kings have been afraid of Jesuits and attempted to suppress them and drive them out of their kingdom. If anyone has seen the movie "The Mission" it is set in an era when there is intense political pressure on them to cease evangelizing. Jeremy Irons, the Jesuit priest in the movie, of course does not stop, an action for which he eventually pays with his life. In order to understand where this devotion and commitment comes from, we need to understand the personality of St. Ignatius.

In 1491, as Christopher Columbus was preparing to sail the ocean blue, Ignatius was born the youngest of 13 siblings. He was sent to become a page to a nobleman and he loved the royal court. He loved gambling and ladies and fighting people with swords. He was reckless to the point of even ambushing some priests of another family that he was having a dispute with. In time, he was sent to Pamplona to help defend against a French army. During the battle, his leg was struck by a cannonball. The leg was broken and had to be broken and reset twice before it would heal! Even after it healed it wasn't set right and a piece of bone was still crooked, causing the leg to be shorter than the other. He ordered it to be broken yet again and reset, all of this, mind you, without anesthesia! We are talking about a tough, courageous man. His leg did remain shorter and all his life Ignatius walked with a limp.

While his leg healed, he asked for romance novels to read to pass the time, instead he was given a book on the life of Christ. This appealed to him and he then read books about the saints. Their heroic lives and their courageous deaths for the faith fired his imagination. Finally he had found something worth fighting and dying for. Once on his feet again he went to the Altar of Our Lady of Montserrat and left his sword there, thus pledging his knighthood to Mary and the Church.

After this, he spent 10 months living in a cave where he encountered God in a vision and began to form his ideas about prayer and spirituality. His Spiritual Exercises are meditative and contemplative prayers that use the imagination and discipline to center the soul on God and his plan for life. All of the men in the seminary today learn the spiritual exercises and many lay people do as well because they are designed for people who live active lives, jobs and family and whatnot, to be able to participate in.

Around this time, companions including Francis Xavier are gathering around Ignatius and forming the nucleus of the Society of Jesus, nicknamed the Jesuits. In 1534, these men took their vows to serve the Pope as missionaries wherever he might send them. It turns out that what was frequently needed was education, which is why the Society today runs a number of schools. Other missions involved evangelizing hostile cultures, often these missions were extremely dangerous. For instance, in the 17 ^th century the Jesuits sent a mission to England where it was illegal at the time to be a priest. A large number of them were caught and martyred but they continued to go because, as St Edmund Campion proclaimed, they were willing to give up their own lives for the salvation of England. Today, I might point out, there are more Catholics in mass on Sunday morning than there are Anglicans. We can thank the Jesuits for that.

We see how the personality of Ignatius set the culture of the Society very early on. These men are soldiers in the army of God. They are willing to die for their Christ the King, to take on any challenge no matter how difficult the odds. Combined with this fortitude is a prayer life that is designed to promote contemplation even in the active life. In order to be filled with virtue and zeal, these men strive to know God and through knowing him to know themselves. In all things, these men inspire us to follow their motto "Ad Majorem Dei Glorium" To the greater glory of God.

This Thursday, say a prayer for all of our dedicated Jesuits and ask Ignatius to intercede for you with Our Lord