Apostleship of Prayer

 IGNATIUS
THE  MAN  WHO  WAS  ALWAYS  GROWING

 When we first meet Ignatius in his Autobiography he is an ambitious, self-centred person who only wanted his own fame and glory without caring too much for others.
By the end of his story, God had so taken hold of him that, he tells us, whenever he “wanted to find God, he found him”.

 What had brought about this remarkable growth and change?  It would seem that Ignatius learnt to be attentive and sensitive to God, a God who entered his life through the events of his ordinary life and Who sought to “teach” him through these.

 The most dramatic of these events was the wounding he endured at the battle for the town of Pamplona.  He had gone there to defend the town and win glory for himself.  But in the course of the battle he was hit by a canon ball and his leg was shattered.  The town was forced to surrender and Ignatius was taken back to the family castle at Loyola to recover.

 Bored by his forced inactivity he asked for some books to read, hoping to get some stories of knights and their deeds of bravery.  However, the only books available in the castle were the Life of Christ and a book of Lives of the Saints.  As he red these he found that he was being quite moved, and the desire grew in him to imitate the Saints whom he now saw as knights of Christ going out to do battle for Him.
 Thus the event at Pamplona and the shortage of books in the castle became God’s invitation to him to reflect on the sort of life he had been living and to respond in some way.

 As he slowly recovered, his one wish was to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem because that was what some of the saints had done.  As soon as he was well enough he left his family and headed for the Holy Land.  For some reason, he did not proceed directly there but diverted to a small town called Manresa.  There he spent 11 months in prayer and penance, again in imitation of some of the saints.
At this time he was still very much a beginner in the spiritual life, but he was filled with generosity and had a strong desire to make progress.
 But he was still very self-willed, and the earlier ambition for worldly fame had now become an ambition for spiritual glory, which he hoped to achieve by his own efforts.  For this reason he spent many hours in prayer, performed excessive penances and lived like a hermit.
This turned out to be a very difficult time for him and he suffered from severe scruples which almost drove him to suicide.
 He described himself as being like a young “pupil” whom God was teaching and he learnt much by reflecting on the experiences of this period.  He was attentive to his “lessons” and these became the means for his growth.  At the end of his stay at Manresa, God gifted him with extraordinary spiritual experiences and enlightenments.

 As he continued his pilgrimage to Jerusalem his intention became to spend the rest of his life in the Holy Land, visiting the places where the Lord had been and helping other people to come closer to God.  But to his surprise he was refused permission to remain there and had to return to Spain.  This was an important moment in his life, a turning point.  From this esperience he understood more clearly that he was not to determine the course of his life, but by noticing and reflecting on events he would learn the direction that God wished him to take.

 As he pondered what to do, he felt an inclination to study.  So he went to Barcelona to begin what was to develop into 11 years of study. Again it was the things that happened to him during this time that enabled him to understand God’s wishes for him.   These became clear to him in a variety of ways: the advice of his friends, persecution from Church authorities, and a growing desire to gather around him a group of friends who would share his call to help others to grow spiritually. One consequence of this was that he found himself moving physically from one place to another - from Barcelona to Alcala, then to Salamanca and finally to Paris.  This physical movement was symbolic of the spiritual movement in himself as he let go of his own plans and learnt to see in these events and experiences the guiding hand of God.

 All this time he was becoming more attentive and sensitive to the presence of God in the ordinary happenings of his life.  As he pondered these he realized that God was using them, not only to teach him “spiritual matters”, but also to reveal to him the future direction of his life.

 At the University of Paris he was able to bring together a group of friends in the Lord and together they decided to do what Ignatius had originally intended for himself - to go to the Holy Land and spend the rest of their lives there.   But again events forced them to change their plans.  They were not able to get a ship to Jerusalem, and were abliged to adopt their alternative plan, to go to Rome and put themselves at the disposal of the Pope so that he could send them wherever he thought they could help others.

 Though his companions were to travel Europe and the world spreading the good news of Christ, Ignatius was to spend the rest of his life in Rome. His own days of moving around had now ended, but he continued to grow in his relationship with the Trinity, becoming even more aware of how God was touching him in the experiences of his daily life.  This growth was to continue in him till his death.

Gerald Coleman, SJ

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