IGNATIAN SPIRITUAL EXERCISES TRAINING (ISET)
2023-BLOCK ONE – SESSION 2
[00:00:00] Adri-Marie: So, I am just inviting you to become present in whichever way feels good to you. So perhaps you want to wiggle around on your chair. I’d like to invite you to turn your screens off just for this time of prayer. And if you need to, perhaps just give a great big sigh. . . Ummmm.
I find it so wonderful the way we’re created that actually physically . . . Ummm . . . sighing was designed as a form of breath to actually calm our bodies down. Let’s become aware of that breath. So [00:01:00] again, I invite you to just feel the weight of yourself on your chair, and turn off your screen, perhaps for this time to just become fully present.
I’m going to turn my screen off also.
So, as you are present, imagine yourself on one of your favorite, favorite places to sit. Some of us have a little bench somewhere that we really enjoy. So, as you are present, just here with us. Imagine yourself on one of your favorite benches.
[00:02:00] Attune yourself to what you are hearing, seeing, feeling on your skin, under your feet, smelling. And as you are present on this favorite bench, become aware that Jesus, your good friend, is present also with you, next to you on this bench[00:03:00] and for a moment, just enjoy, enjoy the surroundings together with Jesus and in your own way, just express your own openness and generosity towards Jesus. And in the same moment, also just become aware of Jesus’s openness and generosity towards you.[00:04:00]
(Period of Silence) And as you are sitting there, Imagine Jesus speaking the following words to you as if for a first time, hearing them as if for the first time.
I am the Good Shepherd. [00:05:00] The good shepherd puts the sheep before himself, sacrifices himself if necessary. A hired man is not a real shepherd. The sheep mean nothing to him. He sees a wolf and runs for it, leaving the sheep to be ravished and scattered by the wolf. He’s only in it for the money. The sheep don’t matter to him.
I am the good shepherd. I know my own sheep, and my own sheep know me. And in the same way, the father knows me, and I know the father. I put the sheep before myself, sacrificing myself if necessary. [00:06:00] You need to know that I have other sheep in addition to those in this pen. I need to gather and bring them too. They’ll all recognize my voice. Then it will be one flock and one shepherd.
This is why the Father loves me, because I freely lay down my life, and so I’m free to take it up again. No one takes it from me. I lay it down of my own free will. I have the right to lay it down, I also have the right to take it up again. I receive this authority personally from my father.[00:07:00] (Period of Silence)
Just be with Jesus on this favorite bench and converse about what’s stirred in you, with just how you’re doing, what you are hearing, sensing, feeling and just be together.[00:08:00] (Period of Silence)
[00:09:00] And now consider also the part of you that desires, are excited about learning to take people through the exercises, a gift given through generations. What is it that either of you would like to say, share? Ask? (Period of Silence) [00:10:00] And as we are gently closing our prayer time, perhaps you would just like to ask for what it is that you want or need for this time together.
[00:11:00] I am the Good Shepherd. I know my own sheep and my own sheep know me. In the same way, the Father knows me, and I know the Father and I put the sheep before myself, sacrificing myself if necessary. You’d need to know that I’ve other sheep in addition to those in this pen. I need to gather and bring them to you. They’ll also recognize my voice. Amen.
Annemarie: Amen. Thank you, Adri Marie.[00:12:00]
Russell: Thank you, Adri Marie. And welcome to everybody. As you would have seen, this week we’re going to dig a little bit into the life of Saint Ignatius. And so, what I’m going to do is just make a few opening remarks, as you’ll see from the text that you were sent—the outline—and then we’ll dig a little bit through Ignatius’s life.
You were sent last week the autobiography of Ignatius to look at. It’s a very short document. We send it out on a PDF partly because it just keeps costs down, but also, it’s not something that we’re going to be using all the time, but it’s helpful for you to have as a resource. If you’ve had a chance to read it, then some of what I’m going to say is going to be familiar with you, before you. And if you haven’t and you do get a chance, it would be helpful for you to take a look at that text.
So, just a couple of opening remarks about the life of Ignatius and especially the autobiography.[00:13:00] Sometime in around the year 1552, Juan Polanco and Jerome Nadal, two of Ignatius’s closest companions make a special request of Ignatius and they say to him we want you to record your life. We want you to leave, as they put it, some admonition as a testament that would show others the way to virtue.
Now, Ignatius was already near the end of his life. He’s written the Constitutions for the Society of Jesus, and they say, well, we want something. Saint Francis and Saint Dominic did this, and we think it’s fitting that we have something about you as well.
Well, Ignatius was not very happy about this, and he says that he doesn’t want to talk about himself, that he is not interested really in having an autobiography. And he kind of procrastinates and [00:14:00] doesn’t get back to them. And eventually, another Portuguese Jesuit, one day in the garden in Rome at our headquarters says well, you know, I think it’s important that you do this, because there’s two reasons really. We want you to narrate how God guided you from the first days of your conversion, because it’ll be helpful for others of us now.
And he also says to Ignatius you know, some of us, obviously talking about himself, battle with things like vainglory, and it might be helpful to know your story so that we can perhaps deal with these challenges in our own lives. And so, Ignatius, who’s 62 at the time, sees something perhaps of himself in this 34-year-old, young, zealous Jesuit, de Gonzales, and Ignatius says, okay, if writing my story is going to be helpful [00:15:00] to others, maybe I should do this.
And so, by the end of August 1553, a year after Nadal and Polanco had approached him, Ignatius agrees to dictate his story to Gonsalves, and he does exactly that.
Now, Gonsalves doesn’t sit there and write word for word what Ignatius is saying, but he listens to Ignatius, and he makes a few notes. And then he goes off and he writes a text of Ignatius’s life, or the story that Ignatius is telling him, but this work is interrupted.
They start in August 1553, and in September 1553, while Ignatius is describing his first days in Manresa, there’s an interruption, and that interruption lasts 17 months. So, he only returns to telling Gonzalves some more of his story in March 1555. And so, they begin at the beginning of [00:16:00] March, but at the end of March, Pope Julius III dies.
And so, once again, this is interrupted for six months. And then Ignatius decides in 1555 September that Gonçalves should go back to Portugal. He’s going to move him back to Portugal from Rome. And so Gonçalves says to Ignatius, well, I can’t go until I’ve got the rest of your story. So, from September to October 1555, listen to me, 1555 Gonçalves takes down as much as he can, as he listens to Ignatius, some notes about his story, and then he goes to Genoa in the November, and while he’s waiting to get a ship to go back to Portugal, he continues to write out Ignatius story.
So, this autobiography is not a word for word, but rather it’s something that has been put together to try and encourage others. And the text doesn’t cover the whole of [00:17:00] Ignatius’s 65 years. It starts in Pamplona at his conversion. And so, his youth and his work as a courtier are not covered in the autobiography. And also, the last part of his life is not really covered where he’s setting up the Society of Jesus and writing the constitutions.
The Jesuits never gave this text of Ignatius a title. It was called The Autobiography. It was called by some, Ignatius’s Testament. It was called by others, Acts of Ignatius, A Pilgrim’s Testament, and they used the word pilgrim because Ignatius in the autobiography refers to himself as a pilgrim, a pilgrim on a journey through his life, a pilgrimage seeking God.
And so now a number of the texts are called, for example, The Pilgrim’s Way or The Story of the Pilgrim, but we still officially talk about The Autobiography.
So, what I’ve done is I’ve [00:18:00] divided Ignatius’s life up, you’ll see there, into five different sections—five parts—if you want to all it that, because I think it’s made easier for us, but also helps us to understand what I think are these five distinctive periods in the life of Ignatius.
And the first one there I’ve called a soldi world. So, Ignatius is born as a Basque in 1491 in Spain into a very noble Catholic family, and he is also born into a culture, an environment that is very traditionally Catholic.
So, for example, when he was asked if he kept the Sabbath holy when he was a young man, he said there are no Jews in my country because there was no mixing whatsoever. It was quite a traditional Catholic country, and especially the Basque region of Spain was very [00:19:00] traditional.
We’re told that at 16, he was very conscious of his noble origins and so he starts his life really with the best that life can offer—lives in a castle, is from a family of noble origins—and once he’s finished his basic schooling, he goes to work as a courtier in Arvelo in the service of high ranked public officials. And this opens for Ignatius a career in public administration, in politics, and eventually, what he really wanted, in the profession of arms, becoming a soldier.
And he’s described as a man who is ambitious, a man who’s proud, a man who’s arrogant. And what we might even call today a party animal, or if we had to use colloquial language here in South Africa, a real jollier would be Ignatius. And he had an eye for the ladies as well.
Eventually he becomes a soldier. [00:20:00] So he climbs up the, the ranks in society and he becomes a soldier. And there’s a rebellion in the kingdom, and we are told that Ignatius assists to quell these rebellious citizens. And we are told we see something there of Ignatius because we are told that he showed himself to be magnanimous, noble minded, and liberal, while some of the expeditions—some who were with him gave themselves to sacking and looting the town, whereas Ignatius took nothing for himself because he deemed it unworthy to do such a thing.
And so, he’s living in this kind of world as a soldier you know, involved in politics and of course, in Europe in those days, there’s a lot of politics so he’s very knowledgeable about what is going on. And so, his life proceeds and he has the ambition to become, you know, a higher ranking official as a soldier in the army.
But then we [00:21:00] move into perhaps the next part of his life, from cannonball to convert. Ignatius lands up in a conflict between the throne of Navarra and the French king, Francis I. And despite requests from the viceroy of Navarra for backup troops ,they don’t send any. The Spanish don’t send any backup troops and the French have a formidable army and they encamped and were about to seize the city of Pamplona and they realized, the Spanish, that they were completely outnumbered by these, the French army and so they want to walk away. They want to say, okay, look, this is not going to end well. We can see just by numbers; this is not going to end well. Let’s just call it a day. Let’s quit. Let’s move off. Let’s just say [00:22:00] to the French you know, we surrender.
Well, Ignatius was not going to hear any of this because he was not going to give up. And he insists that the battle with the French goes on. And events of that day are probably the most well known in Ignatius’s life.
A cannonball passes between his legs, it shatters his right leg, it damages the other one. He’s given some medical attention on the spot, but later on the doctors realize that this is quite serious, and doctors are summoned from various places, and they try as best they can to do something about his serious injury—this shattered leg.
And so, they have to try and reset the leg and they do that. And Ignatius doesn’t really get any better. He runs into all sorts of other medical problems as well. I mean, you can imagine we are talking about, you know, the 1550s, they [00:23:00] don’t have the medicine that we have today, et cetera, et cetera.
So, they tell Ignatius, look, we’ve tried the best to set things. You don’t seem to be getting better. You better call for a priest. You better make a confession. You better get anointed because the chance is that you may not live to see the next few days. Well, they do that, and slowly Ignatius begins to heal. He’s not fully recovered when he notices that the knee bone on the right leg has superimposed itself on another bone. And so, the right leg Is slightly shorter than the left leg and there’s also a lump that’s protruding on the outside and this is going to prevent him from wearing his “smart”—as he puts it and close-fitting boots. So, he calls in the surgeons and he says to them, “Look, I can’t go [00:24:00] about my life like this; what are people going to think?
You know, I’m never going to get a wife with this kind of leg. So, what I want you to do is to sort it out.” So, the doctor says to him, this is going to be more painful than the initial operation. It’s going to be much more suffering to try and sort this out. But Ignatius insists that this gets done. So out comes the sword.
Remember, there’s no anesthetics and things like we have today, and they cut it away, and then they put his leg into kind of weights to stretch it, so that it can hopefully grow and become the same length as the left leg. They use all sorts of stretching devices. Well, Ignatius walks with a limp for the rest of his life.
It doesn’t really stretch the leg as they thought it might. But as you can imagine, while he’s undergoing all this, he’s crazy stupidity at trying now to get this leg reset and this bone cut off, he can’t move around. He’s long [00:25:00] days and months into forced inactivity.
And so, from that initial cannonball debacle, we have this leg sawing debacle and Ignatius is completely out of action. He can’t do anything. So, if you were under any illusions that he was not a vein man, I hope that story proves to you that he was a pretty vain kind of fellow.
Well, while he’s stuck in his inactivity, he resorts to reading books, and he wants books about chivalry that can inspire him to get well so that he can go out and be the soldier again. But unfortunately, in the house, or fortunately maybe, as we see in the story, in the house in Loyola, in the castle in Loyola, there are no such books. There are only four books. that are available and [00:26:00] one of them was a number of volumes of Ludolf of Saxony’s Vita Christi, the Life of Christ, and another book on the Lives of the Saints by a Cistercian monk. And so, because he has no choice, Ignatius begins to read these spiritual books—not his first choice whatsoever—and it’s unknown to him how these books would eventually change his life.
So, what he does is, he reads these books, and between reading these books, he has these daydreams of these worldly things that he’s going to do—the woman that he’s going to court, the soldier that he’s going to be. And he turns these thoughts over, he says, in his mind for three or four hours at a time. And then he would read a little bit about the lives of the saints. And after a while and reflecting on his alternate dreams [00:27:00] and reading, he starts to notice something going on inside of him, in his interior.
And he says this, While he was thinking about what pertained to the world, he had great pleasure. But when later from fatigue he dropped it, he found himself dry and discontented, and that while he was thinking of going unshod, and eating nothing but herbs, and performing all the other rigors which he saw the saints had practiced, he not only kept on finding consolation while he had such thoughts in his mind, but he also remained contented and joyful after he let them pass from his mind.
So, Ignatius notices this qualitative difference between his daydreaming and the books that he’s reading. Now, he does not reflect on the difference and see everything all at once, but he tells us little by little, [00:28:00] his eyes were opened and he realized after a while, there is a struggle going on between two contrary spirits within him—the good one, he says, and the bad one—and this marks the beginning of his conversion—that reflection on what is going on inside of him. Those things that leave him empty and discontented, and the other things that leave him feeling inspired, or as he says, consoled, consoled. So, Ignatius notices that qualitative difference.
So, Ignatius decides when he’s well enough, when he’s mobile, that he would go on his way and he enters then into a third period of his life, which I call Spiritual Olympics. Ignatius says he’s going to do two things when he leaves Loyola. He says he’s going to go to the Holy Land to be close to Christ, to be close to [00:29:00] Jesus, and he’s going to live a life like the saints. He was especially inspired by Sant Francis and Saint Dominic, and he wants to do rigorous penance.
Now, many converts in that time measured their sanctity by these kind of corporal austerities that they would perform. I don’t think there’s too much danger of that in our culture today, but that’s how they measured the quality of their conversion.
And it’s also said by people around Ignatius that they noticed something had changed within him. His eldest brother and everyone in the household said they noticed that suddenly this man was changing.
So, Ignatius plots his way forward and he decides, okay, I am to visit the Holy Land and so he sets off to the Holy Land. But like any pilgrim in Europe in those days, he stops on the way in a few places.
And first he goes to Montserrat. There is a [00:30:00] beautiful mountain and on the top there’s a Benedictine monastery called Monserrat—the Shrine of Our Lady of Monserrat.
And in his autobiography, he tells the story of what happens on the road, which is intriguing, I think when he meets up with Muir, a Muslim and they begin, he says, to discuss Mary’s virginity. And so, as Ignatius goes on, and the Muir leaves him and goes off on another path, Ignatius gets scruples within him that he didn’t do enough to defend Mary’s virginity. And so, he thinks to himself, I need to find that Muir and I need to stab him to death because of the way he talks about Mary, but he’s conflicted about what to do.
So eventually he sees a fork in the road, and he says, okay, I know what to do. The donkey that I’ve got, the mule that I’ve got, I’ll leave it to the mule. If the mule goes [00:31:00] in the one direction, then that’s fine. I’ll find that Muir and I’m going to stab him with my dagger. or my sword. If the mule goes in the other direction, I’ll know this is not what God wants me to do.
Well, the mule goes in the opposite direction, and so the Muir’s life is spared. Talk about rudimentary discernment. It’s not the kind of discernment we encourage these days. Don’t leave your discernment up to a mule, but that’s what Ignatius did.
So, Ignatius goes on, he arrives at Montserrat, and he begins by placing, as he says, his uncertain future into the hands of Our Lady at Montserrat, and he also intends to re clothe himself. So he goes, he makes a confession, He seeks out a beggar—a person living on the streets—he divests himself of his garments, his noble garments, and [00:32:00] he gives them to the beggar. And he takes on the clothes of the beggar, and he puts this tunic on. He spends the whole night in prayer in Montserrat, in front of the famous Lady of Montserrat, the Black Madonna, which is still in that Benedictine monastery today. And also, he lays down his sword. So, the very sword, the dagger that he was going to use, he now lays it down there as well.
After he’s finished in Montserrat, he heads for Barcelona via Manresa. He’s quite fearful that people will recognize him, so he journeys very cautiously—he plans very cautiously. He was someone that was known in Spain. He wants to stay in Manresa for a few days, he says, and so he stops off in Manresa, which is not far from Montserrat, to note down a few things in his notebook. And no doubt, the insights that he had in Montserrat were [00:33:00] very important, were key too, for Ignatius. And he lands up staying in Montserrat for 11 months, not just for a few days.
Now there were many practical reasons for this. The outbreak of the plague, the fact that he could not get permission to go to the Holy Land, because in those days you needed to get permission from Rome to go to the Holy Land. Pilgrims had to ask permission from Rome. And also, perhaps that Ignatius found the conditions in Manresa favorable to his life of penance and his life of prayer.
And so, his stay in Manresa is providential. It is there that he goes through a spiritual transformation, which culminates in the practice of what we call today, the spiritual exercises. So, he lives the life of the Puerh. He dresses as the Puerh dress; he begs for his own survival; he seeks out people in Manresa and has spiritual conversations with them. He goes to [00:34:00] confession regularly, and he describes this period in his life as one in which God dealt with him as a schoolmaster deals with a child whom he is instructing.
And I think it’s important to notice three key moments or periods of interior development in Ignatius in his time in Manresa. The first one is there, I’ve got a time of tranquility.
So, during this period, Ignatius lives on charity. He doesn’t eat meat. He drinks no wine, he says, except on Sundays when he broke his fast. He doesn’t comb his hair. Now this is big because he was always very fashionable, you know. Hairstyles were important for Ignatius. Now he doesn’t do anything; he just leaves his hair. We’re told as well that he doesn’t cut his fingernails. He doesn’t cut his toenails. You don’t have to copy him to be a director of the spiritual exercises, I promise you but that’s important because he was [00:35:00] pretty fastidious in these matters we are told, before his conversion. He goes to Holy Mass every day; he prays for seven hours a day and sometimes at night.
But slowly, this evolves into a second period, which can be described as a time of inner struggle. He questions his life and the life he’s now pursuing. Does it have any meaning? How could he live this life for another 70 years? And he suffers terribly of what we call scruples during this time. Although Ignatius had made many confessions in the Catholic tradition, in Montserrat and Manresa, he was terribly worried that he’d left out a past sin. And so, he kept going back to confession and trying to confess these things. But, the scruples persist, [00:36:00] and he writes things down, but he’s still assailed by these scruples.
And eventually, the confessor, who’s hearing his confession, a priest in Manresa, forbids him to bring sins he’s confessed already into the confessional, but Ignatius still struggles with this.
So, Ignatius gets even more desperate, we are told. And eventually he prays asking God to help him and that he says he would even follow like a puppy dog. He would even follow a guard around like a puppy dog if he could get some answer. And so he goes through this torturing inner anxiety, and it’s at Manresa as well, that he even has suicidal thoughts. He thinks of throwing himself out of the window of his room where he’s living. And then he decides maybe to begin fasting. And so, he fasts for a whole week [00:37:00] until his confessor tells him he must break the fast because he’s so desperate for an answer and he doesn’t get an answer.
And then suddenly when all his human efforts fail, when they simply don’t work, when he’s at his wits end, grace kicks in and he says he was delivered from these agonies of his conscience. And he notices these two different spirits that are at work, the fruits of which we could say of his reflection in Loyola on that sick bed when he was convalescing—one that disturbs him and doesn’t go away.There’s no end. and others which move him forward, the good spirit which moves him forward, and the bad spirit that disturbs him and doesn’t allow him to see at all that there is a future, there is a way forward. And so, he says in his autobiography from that day forward, he never makes a general [00:38:00] confession again of his past life, that suddenly after this torturous period, he comes or makes peace with himself.
And then the third period there is a time of consolation, and it can be described perhaps as a time of spiritual consolations and divine illuminations. These vary, but he reports praying daily to the Most Holy Trinity, through which he received, he says, great consolation and even tears. Another of his learnings was just how Jesus is truly present for him in the Blessed Sacrament, the Eucharist for Catholics.
We’re told that on many occasions he would see with his interior eye the humanity of Jesus. But there’s one particular experience that Ignatius talks about, and that was an illumination beside the river Cardona. This is interesting, and [00:39:00] it’ll come up again and again in his life. So, one day, while in Manresa, he takes a walk along this river, and at a certain point, he sits down facing the river, and he sits there in prayer, and he says, There, suddenly, the eyes of his understanding began to open.
He doesn’t see a vision but says that he began to understand many things—things about faith and spiritual things. This, he says, was accompanied by an enlightenment so great that he began to see things like new and he begins to see God in all things. And Goncalves writing down this record in his autobiography would note this experience was so profound that his understanding remained illuminated so that he seemed to himself to be another person and had an intellect other than he had before, so something happened there at that [00:40:00] Cardona River, which is quite funny because I went to Manresa and I thought, okay, this is going to be this beautiful river with trees, where, you know, Ignatius had this vision and I was shocked to see it wasn’t really a river the time I was there. It was more like a sewage pipe running down past the cave and so forth. It was a big concrete thing, and I didn’t see too many trees and so forth, but I’m told from time to time, it does also fill up, but it was no glorious place to sit, in my humble opinion. But this experience gives Ignatius insight into the new course, which his life is taking.
If you want a more modern-day example, for those of you familiar with Thomas Merton, that vision that he has of the unity of humanity and the unity of creation on Fourth and Walnut, you know is, I think, a kind of experience that we’re talking about here.
So, Ignatius [00:41:00] discovers that he’s no longer a solitary pilgrim in a life of prayer and penance, but from this moment, he also begins to work and to labor, as he says, in the service of others. And so, he begins to do various other things in Manresa. He visits the sick. He talks to people who are living on the streets, and so forth.
He moves from that isolated place of worrying about him and his relationship with God into a life of service. A life of service becomes an important part of his conversion experience after he has this illumination at the Cardona. And eventually, this will lead him to seeking companions and the founding of the Society of Jesus.
But it’s in Manresa, it’s in this experience in Manresa—these 11 months that the spiritual exercises are born. They are rarely his notes of the things he noticed in himself and the fruit [00:42:00] of his prolonged period of prayer, et cetera, et cetera, at Manresa. So, the things that he practiced, he wrote down, and he would go back, and he would scratch things out and he would edit things and so forth, but it’s really there that the spiritual exercises are born at his time in Manresa.
And then he moves into a kind of fourth period in his life, which I’ve called Back to Basics. Ignatius leaves Manresa, and he travels via Barcelona to Rome. He gets permission from the Pope at the time—Adrian VI to go to the Holy Land. He wants to go and walk in the footsteps of Jesus, but this isn’t either without its problems. I mean, once he arrives in the Holy Land, he wants to remain there, but he was told by the Franciscan superiors, because the Franciscan friars look after the holy places in the Holy land; they have already for centuries. He was told that he couldn’t stay there. The Franciscan provincial has a kind of authority over all the Catholics in that day [00:43:00] who were visiting the Holy land. And he says it was too dangerous because remember at that time the Turks were the rulers of the Holy Land and there was a lot of instability and there was also a lot of fighting.
So, the Franciscans order Ignatius to leave the Holy Land, and Ignatius refuses but then they threaten him with excommunication from the Church, so he obediently says he will depart. However, before Ignatius departs, he desires to visit the Mount of Olives one more time, and so he wants to go and to put his foot in the place where it’s believed that Jesus stood on the Mount of Olives.
So, he sneaks out and he bribes the guards at the gate with a pocketknife to let him in and he then goes off to the Mount of Olives to do this. Well, he goes back and then he decides that he wants to go another time to check which direction the foot of Jesus was facing on the Mount of Olives.
And so, he bribes the guards a second [00:44:00] time with the scissors. Seems like those, those guards could be bribed with anything sharp and then the Franciscans realize that he’s missing, and so they send a servant to go and find him. They’re very angry with him. They grab him, they march him back, and they send him back to Venice, and then to Barcelona.
And so now Ignatius faces another decision. He realizes that God perhaps doesn’t want him to remain in the Holy Land. And so, he travels to Barcelona because he has to decide what to do, what’s the way forward now. But he feels within himself a deep desire to help souls. And in the context of his world at that time, you couldn’t help souls unless you had some studies behind you.
So, he decides at the age of 33 that he needs to study for the priesthood. However, he’s completely ignorant of Latin, and this is a necessary preliminary [00:45:00] course language to have for university in those days. So, he goes back to school to study Latin grammar with young boys in Barcelona, and while he’s doing that, he also begs for food and for, for shelter. He still lives as a pilgrim.
When he’s finished there, he moves on to the University of Alcalá, and there his zeal gets him into trouble, a problem that will continue throughout his life. He would gather students and adults, and he would explain the Gospels to them, and teach them how to pray. But he’s living in that time of the Reformation, and so his efforts attract the attention of the inquisitors, and he’s thrown into jail for 42 days.
When he’s released, he was told to avoid teaching others, and the Spanish inquisition was paranoid about anyone who was not ordained teaching anybody, and they were very suspect of anybody who tried to teach anything [00:46:00] in the line of religion. But Ignatius cannot help himself. He wants to help souls. So, he moves to the University of Salamanca, and there within two weeks, the Dominicans have him thrown back into prison. They do it in a very sneaky way. They invite Ignatius for dinner. They ask him all sorts of questions. They decide they don’t like the doctrine that he’s teaching. So, just before dessert, they lock him up in the prison that they have in their monastery, and he spends another few days there.
But eventually they, they say they can’t find any heresy in what he was teaching. So, they told him that he can go, but he’s only allowed to teach children the very simple, basic truths of the faith. And once more, Ignatius hits the road, and he goes to Paris. And at the University of Paris, he begins to study again.
He studies Latin grammar and literature, philosophy, and theology, and he spends a couple of months each year in the summer begging in Flanders for the money that he would need [00:47:00] to support himself in these studies for the rest of the year. And it’s also in Paris that he shares a room with two other students, one by the name of Peter Favre, and another one Francis Xavier.
And he begins to influence these fellow students as he lives with them. But he also, for the first time, gives these so-called spiritual exercises—what we call now the spiritual exercises—to one of these fellow students. He starts with Peter Favre, and he gives these spiritual exercises to him.
And then after that, he also offers these spiritual exercises to Francis Xavier. And so, this little group begins to grow. These companions begin to form. And eventually, there are six of them and Ignatius, and they decide [00:48:00] that they are going to visit the Holy Land. They are going to try this whole thing again, that this little group would visit the Holy Land, and they want to live there close to the Lord. They’ll be priests, and they want to live there close to the Lord. But they are denied passage to the Holy Land. They can’t get to the Holy Land at all; so, eventually the six of them plus Ignatius to think, well, you know, let’s come together as a group and we’ll take vows of chastity and poverty and if, going to the Holy Land at any time is impossible and we don’t know what to do, we can’t work out what to do, we’re going to take ourselves to Rome and we’re going to place ourselves at the disposal of the Pope. In other words, we’ll go to the Pope and say, here are the six of us. We’ve studied for the priesthood; you tell us what you want us to do, and we will do it.
They don’t think—they’re not [00:49:00] thinking about forming a religious order or religious congregation, but simply as companions together, they want to minister as priests and so they’re going to go to the pope and offer their services to the pope. But also, they run into a few problems—him and his companions were often put before the inquisitors.
It’s the time of the Reformation. Things are heating up in Europe. The Reformation is taking its grip. Everyone’s under scrutiny, and no less Ignatius and his companions as well. And then Ignatius—something else happens, which is problematic for him. He suffers from great stomach pains and the doctors can’t help him, so they say to him, we want you to go back to your native country—to Spain—to the Basque area, because we believe that the air in your country, your native air, will be a remedy. This seems to help a little bit. We don’t really have much detail, but [00:50:00] Ignatius returns to Spain, and we are told that he did a lot in his hometown for moral and social improvements during his stay there.
It’s reported that he refused at that time to live in that castle at Loyola, despite a huge pressure on him to do so from his family. He insists that he needs to continue living the life that him and his companions were living, begging from door to door and distributing among the poor the abundance they receive from their begging.
So, he carries on living this austere life, even when he’s away from this group of companions. He sleeps on the floor; he wears a hair shirt; he teaches the basics of the Christian faith to children; he has spiritual conversations with people; he preaches; he lands up settling a couple of disputes among villagers and so forth.
And so, he then goes back after his health improves a little bit [00:51:00] and he joins the rest of his companions on the journey that they’re making. They’ are reunited again in Venice, so they can decide on their way forward. And little by little, this group begins to grow. Others are attracted to Ignatius and to his reputation, and to the companions that he already has.
One of the first companions writes that they, through prayer and resolve to serve our Lord, chose to leave worldly things behind, and follow in the way of Ignatius. And they called this group that began to follow him a group of friends in the Lord. Anyway, they then decide that they need to go to Rome—these companions and put themselves at the disposal of the Pope.
And as they’re going to Rome, just outside of Rome, there is a place called La Storta, and there’s a chapel there, and they stop at the chapel to pray. And something [00:52:00] significant happens there for Ignatius as well, because he feels that God the Father tells him, I will be favorable to you in Rome, and that I will place you, Ignatius, with my son.
Ignatius doesn’t know what this means. He doesn’t know what this experience could mean. He thinks maybe it could be about persecution. He thinks maybe it could be about you know, being a successful missionary. He doesn’t really know, but he says he was very comforted since St. Paul wrote “to be with Jesus even in persecution was a success.”
So, they go off and they meet with the Pope, and he very happily puts them to work teaching scripture and theology and preaching and the group also continues to grow.
So, in 1539, Ignatius asks all these companions to come to Rome to discuss their future. As I said, they never thought of founding a [00:53:00] religious order, but now that going to Jerusalem was out of the question, and they’d been given a job to do by the Pope, how would they go about doing this?
And so, after many weeks of prayer and discussion, they decide to form a religious community with the Pope’s approval, in which they would vow obedience to a superior who would hold office for life. And they would place themselves at the disposal of the Pope—this new group to travel wherever he would wish to send them for whatever duties he has for them.
And a vow to this effect was added to the ordinary vows later on of the Jesuits. We take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, but there was also now a fourth vow, which we take obedience to the missions that the Pope gives anybody in the Society of Jesus. So formal approval was given to this group by Pope Paul III on the 27th of September 1540.
And because they’ve [00:54:00] been referred to as friends in the Lord or the company of Jesus, they became known in the English-speaking world as the Society of Jesus, although in most of Europe we are still called the Companions of Jesus, not the Society of Jesus.
And Ignatius is elected as the first general of this group. He’s elected on the first ballot. He begs them to reconsider. They pray and they vote again a few days later. His name comes up again. He doesn’t want to accept it. He goes off to see a confessor. The confessor says to him, this must be God’s will. So eventually Ignatius accepts this role as the general of the Society of Jesus. And so, on Friday of Easter week in 1541 at the Church of St. Paul outside the walls in Rome, these friends in the Lord pronounce their vows in this newly formed Society of Jesus or Companions of Jesus.
And that moves, I think, into the final period [00:55:00] of Ignatius’s life, which I’ve called From Soldier to Father. He makes this remarkable journey from being a reckless young man to a spiritual father of this group of men that will go out on missions all over the world. His companions are asked to minister all over Italy, and they go wherever they are sent. And Ignatius was very clear for this group of companions that what they were sent out to do was really to teach the basics of the Christian faith and to direct people in the spiritual exercises so that they could have a living relationship with the Lord.
They would also do work among the poor and in hospitals because for him, it was very important that there was always a connection with those who lived on the margins of society to keep these missionaries grounded. Ignatius spends most of the [00:56:00] last 15 years of his life until his death, really doing an administrative job, which he didn’t want to do. He wanted to be a pastor, but he realized that he would do this administrative job. It was on his shoulders to do that. And so, he spends many years. writing or composing the constitutions of the Society of Jesus, and he would also write thousands of letters all around the globe. There’s over 22, 000 letters that he writes to fellow Jesuits wherever they are directing the affairs of this newly found order, but also, he would write to many men and women who are seeking direction in the spiritual life from him. And so, from these tiny quarters in Rome, he lives to see in his lifetime the society of Jesus grow from eight to a thousand members with colleges and houses all over Europe and as far away as well as Brazil and Japan.
So, he becomes this [00:57:00] administrator but really, he’s looking after this mission that he believes has been entrusted to this. He has to learn, and that’s why I say this, to become a father to this society that he has formed. And this fatherly side of Ignatius comes out. It’s recognized by many of his companions because they say things like—he brings peace to disturbed and afflicted souls. He’s flexible and looks after each individual and doesn’t treat people like they’re in a sausage machine.
We are told that he had great love for his fellow companions, and he knew how to blend strictness with gentleness in dealing with them. He was especially concerned for sick brothers, and we are told that he took care of many of the sick brothers personally.
And apparently, we are also told—he listened well and never interrupted anybody, and that he learned how to be patient and took great [00:58:00] care at preserving people’s reputations.
And so, he continues in his final years to follow a daily order, to watch his dress, but he’s afflicted. He’s really afflicted by bad health, which goes back to that injury at Pamplona. He never really gets over that. The rest of his life is tainted by that injury and the excessive penance and mortification of himself that he did and fasting that he did in Manresa seem to have left a lot of damage in Ignatius’s health.
And so, Ignatius dies in Rome on the 31st of July 1556. He’s desperately sick for a while before he dies, and we are told that when the people of Rome heard that he had died, there was a lot of people living in Rome who unanimously went about in the streets saying, the saint has died. So, people [00:59:00] recognized in him a quality, perhaps that they admired, something that inspired them.
As way of conclusion, I think it’s important that Ignatius’s autobiography was written for a specific audience. Ignatius understood that the point of his memoirs or this autobiography was not really to satisfy sort of idle curiosity about his life, but rather to edify Jesuits and to form them in his values, in his way of life.
It was to help them on their spiritual journey. I think he wants us to read his autobiography and look at the moments in his life compared to the moments in our own lives where God may be acting. In the, in the early 16th century, the conventional wisdom was that long hours of prayer and mortification were required to attain holiness, and we see a lot of that in Ignatius’s [01:00:00] autobiography.
But I think Ignatius also learns that, you know, as he grows into this, to challenge that mindset by trying to create through his story people who are dedicated to apostolic work; in other words, to pastoral ministry, and more specifically, to being mobile and flexible so they could go and offer the spiritual exercises.
Because for Ignatius, the spiritual exercises are the tool to achieve the end and the end is that everybody would be in a deep and ever-growing relationship with Christ. The spiritual exercises for Ignatius are a very important tool. They’re not the end, but rather the end is this ever deepening and growing relationship with Christ.
Now, I’ve really sketched a very bird’s eye view of Ignatius’s life. I’ve given you a little bit [01:01:00] more than what you’ll find simply in the autobiography. There, are lots of sources that you can read in Ignatius’s life if you want to or if you’re interested. That’s not a requirement for this course, but it’s a good idea just to have some idea of what led to the text that we are going to be studying in the next in the year or so ahead because this is the advent of that text.
I want to invite you now to take a little while for your own reflection—maybe with those two questions that were on the bottom of the sheet that you were sent.
In the life of Ignatius, you see how God works on his adventurous journey, because that definitely was—there are many moments like the Pamplona moment, the Loyola moment when he’s lying in bed, the Manresa moment, et cetera, et cetera.
Do you see any of those kind of moments in your own life? How might you see some connection with your own life? What have the moments been, your own steps [01:02:00] on your own journey?
Sorry, I’ve just lost power, yeah, because the power is just cut.
And the second question—you can see how Ignatius journey, his experience, gave birth to the spiritual exercises. What connection, perhaps, do you see between Ignatius faith and life journey? And the spiritual exercises as you experienced and know them?
So just those two questions to go and sit with for 15 minutes or so and Annemarie will give you the timing and then we will come back. So, Anne Marie, if you could just tell us how long we’ve got.
Annemarie: If you can all be back, please, by 20 minutes past the hour and then we’ll go into our small groups. So, see you in a bit.[01:03:00]
Russell: So welcome back everybody. As we explained last week, we have a time now where we come in plenary. If there’s any reflection you’d like to share, or if there’s any questions, something you noticed. Or something even that you wondered about. this is the time for us to spend a little while doing that and the rest of the team will also be able to offer their thoughts, especially when I don’t know what to say, [01:04:00] so I’ll just pass it on to somebody else.
Question: Which books should we start reading now?
Liz: Okay, so let me just say something about books. I’m going to talk about books at the end, so don’t worry about books for now.
So, any reflections, thoughts on those two questions? The moments in Ignatius’s life and maybe the moments in your own life that could be similar? How Ignatius’s journey formed the spiritual exercises and the connections you made perhaps in your own experience of the exercises. Okay, Jaco and then Liz.
Jaco: Can I just mention it was so refreshing to read his vulnerability and siting his own growth [01:05:00] right from the start as he developed. So, no saint is just born like a saint. It was a process. It was a way; it was a journey with the Lord and there’s hope for that, for me in that, to know that that’s the way the Lord works with people, even the great ones.
Russell: Thank you, Jaco. I think that’s really true. I mean, you know, and Ignatius admits that himself right from the beginning. it happens little bit by little bit. I think it was St. Augustine who said, “a saint is a sinner who kept on trying.” It’s really, so therefore, for all of us, you know, there’s hope, as you say Jaco.
Russell: Thank you. Liz. You need to unmute yourself.
Liz: When I did the exercises first, I was 29 years old and Father Jim led me through the first [01:06:00] week and I was so captivated on my shame and guilt, when I met with him again, I said, “I just want to stay here. I just want to keep focused on my shame and guilt.”
And he said, “Get out of there—on to the next week, no more of that.” And I found myself like Ignatius being overwhelmed by scrupulousness and the burden of guilt and I just wanted to stay in there and keep itching at that sore, and I was encouraged not to do it, but to go on to the second week—Jesus’s life.
Russell: Thank you, Liz. Yeah, and I think that’s a human tendency, you know, to maybe be drawn to looking at those things in our lives, which you know perhaps didn’t go well or went the way that we wanted them. We’re also going to deal a [01:07:00] little bit with scruples as we move along so this is not the last thing you’ll hear about scruples. But I’m often amazed at how many of us—I mean, it’s kind of, it takes me back to something that Henry Nouwen said, you know, that these things that are very personal and, and yet are so universal, and how many of us, you know, we don’t talk about things like scruples, because it’s so personal, and yet it’s such a universal experience, and the lessons that Ignatius teaches us about through his own struggles with scruples.
So, thank you for that. If any of the others—Trevor, Brenda, Audrey, Annemarie wants to add anything, just feel to feel free to jump in.
Shirley: I think for me his connection to remaining in the begging and the connection with the rawness of human life was attractive to [01:08:00] me. So many spiritual teachers that I’ve had are above that and it was refreshing to see someone who had intense struggles and intense pain and kept on. But, at the same time, never left the people that he loved behind in whatever format. That was really refreshing.
Russell: Thank you. Now that idea of, and I think, you know, it comes up over and over again, even in the constitutions for the Society of Jesus. Ignatius is really big on this thing of sort of keeping your foot on the ground, being where, what one would say, you know, where marginalized people are, where the real vulnerability of humanity is, that somehow, that does something to us.
It does something that perhaps we’re afraid of in one way, but in another [01:09:00] way, it changes us and know that the words that often echo, and I just read something the other day again, because Pope Francis talks about this. He talks about, I want the church to be a church of the poor, you know, and people say, Oh, well, you know, the Vatican’s got all these riches, blah, blah, blah, blah, but what Francis is really saying is, I want us to be in touch with those who find themselves on the margins in their vulnerability, because that does something to us spiritually, and Ignatius learns that very much in his experience there in Manresa. So, yeah, thank you for that. I think that’s important; you know.
And I think that’s important for us to remember who are engaged in the ministry of giving the exercises as well, that we also have to have a place in our lives where we also touch human vulnerability, where we are poor, that we experience that poverty.
AnneMarie: And [01:10:00] maybe if I can just say there that I think there’s also something about the human connection around friendship. That was so key—that as much as he stayed in touch with the marginalized and with people who were in the greatest need, there was also the sense that he didn’t leave behind his companions. He journeyed with people and built relationships and supported even in the letter writing at the end of his life, that there was something about relationship that I think is important around the way that Ignatius connected with the people, whether in ministry or as colleagues or as friends—that friends in the Lord thing.
Elizabeth: I have just a quick question. You referenced a moment in Thomas Merton’s life, which, [01:11:00] in a sense, mirrored Ignatius’s experience of the unity of humanity, and I’m not familiar enough with Thomas Merton’s life and writings to know, and I’m wondering if you could tell us where that is.
Russell: Sure. So, Merton writes about this in one of his diaries and I should know which one, but I can’t remember now because I did something on it recently. But Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk who lived in Kentucky. The monks didn’t really leave the monastery very often. Merton had to go and get medical attention in Louisville.
So, he goes to Louisville and he’s standing on the on the corner of two streets, 4th and Walnut, and he just gets the sense of the unity of all humanity. He says he looks out and he sees He sees people, men and women, and the sense of how we are all connected and we’re all part of [01:12:00] creation.
It’s not a vision, but it’s kind of the spiritual illumination that Merton has, and I think, his perspective on things change—his writings on racial issues, his writings on justice, on peace and war is changed by that sense of what he’s what he sees—that spiritual experience that he has in this busy city standing on the street corner, just looking at the faces of people.
And that’s I think what happens to Ignatius of the Cardona. It’s not a vision, but there’s just this deep sense of something spiritual has happened. I mean, Ignatius would say; he says very clearly, “I didn’t have a vision, but I suddenly saw all things new. I saw God in all things. I, I saw this connection with the whole of creation.” It’s a similar sort of experience, I think.
Again, for Merton, this was in the 1960s; I think the mid 1960s. I’ll look up the [01:13:00] reference for that. Ah, there we are, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander Anne Marie says in the chat. But he also talks about it….okay….there’s also one volume of his diary where he talks about that, but yeah. So, does that help Elizabeth?
Anybody else? [01:14:00]
Were people able to make connections between your own journey and those moments in Ignatius’s life? I mean, have you had a Pamplona moment or Manresa moment, or do you see maybe a parallel between your own experience and Ignatius’s experience?
Trevor: I think one of the threads that as I listened to you again, Russell, what meant a lot to me was the thread of conversation, you know, that there was this whole matrix of conversations—the conversation [01:15:00] of Ignatius with his friends, a conversation with Ignatius and the Lord, his spontaneous kind of quote unquote, spiritual conversations with people on the streets, and then the exercises themselves having this quality of conversation about them.
And for me, as I listened to you again, I think that whole world of the significance of conversation came alive for me again. And the place of conversation in my own life every day with people, with God, with companions. Yeah! So, I just want to say thank you for that. It just came alive for me in a very fresh way.
Russell: Thanks, Trevor. And [01:16:00] while you were talking, right at the beginning, there’s obviously this conversation happening with himself when he’s in Loyola, you know, so it kind of starts there and moves out.
Trevor: May I ask a question, Russell? I’m just intrigued about the woman in Ignatius’s life.
Russell: That’s a whole story as well. If Annemarie had given me two hours, I could have given you much more. So, Ignatius did have a relation, and a lot of the letters that he writes that we’ve got on record, I mean, it wasn’t just to Jesuits. It was also to some woman that he was accompanying.
There was one famous woman, Isabel Rosa who Ignatius was very close to. She was a benefactor of his. At one point, there was even this kind of period of having [01:17:00] woman Jesuits and then there was a kind of conflict between the two of them and he decided this is the end of that; that’s not going to happen.
You know, I think, and it’s very interesting because Ignatius also loses his mother at a very young age and then he clearly has—we don’t quite know exactly what happened, but he has these relationships with women and his time as a courtier and he’s a soldier and so forth.
And then when he’s this kind of spiritual guide, there are also women that he’s writing to and women that he is involved with in relationship. So, yeah, interesting, Isabel Rosa thing is always interesting. Anne Marie might want to say something more about that, but you know, It seemed like, and I don’t think we’ve ever got to the bottom of exactly what happened there, but there was some disagreement [01:18:00] and they split ways and later on, they kind of remain friends, but clearly the direction of having a woman’s branch of the Jesuits kind of ends when that disagreement happens between the two of them.
Annemarie: It’s not until Mary Ward comes along sometime later—a number of—a couple of hundred years later, that the woman’s thing takes off in terms of an order that has the same constitutions as the Society of Jesus.
But I think it’s quite interesting just the kind of correspondence that he has with Teresa Regidel, who was a religious sister and a lot of his writings around discernment and discernment of spirits are actually illuminated by the way that he writes her letters around her experience and helping her to discern concretely in her own life. So, he seems to take on a role [01:19:00] of spiritual accompaniment with some of these women that he does by correspondence primarily, which is really powerful.
But I think in terms of a kind of everyday working relationship with women, he had a lot of ambivalence about it. And yes, certainly his relationship with Isabel Rosé was very fraught. He didn’t like having her as part of the Jesuit order, because I think she was maybe stirring things up a bit and he wasn’t too comfortable with that, and then later on, you have this kind of reconciliation between the two of them. But somehow there’s always this sort of ambivalence when it’s organizational. But when he’s on the spiritual thing with directing or giving spiritual guidance, there seems to be a much easier relationship with women.
Russell: Those [01:20:00] letters that he wrote with them to Teresa as well; I mean, I think that goes back almost to the point that you’re making as well, Jaco. It’s like, this thing was never fixed for Ignatius, right? He was always willing to review things, reflect on things, develop his understanding through the relationships that he had that there was never a moment where suddenly said, okay, well, this is now fixed, and this is the way it’s always going to be. There was always an openness there to some sort of development.
And I think the other thing to mention as well is, if you look at the life of Ignatius, I mean, the genius of Ignatius is really how he brings things together from a number of different traditions. I mean, a lot of the stuff he does is not stuff that he simply kind of dreamt up himself, but he would have read about these things.
So, for example, in the life of Francis, and you see this stuff also seeping through in the way he puts things together. So, the genius really is how Ignatius takes things from all over the Christian tradition, and [01:21:00] puts them together in the spiritual exercises and from his experience of living with some of those things that he’s learned from others.
He could also be quite difficult with some of the early Jesuits. I mean, there’s a story told about two of them who showed up one night late for dinner and he sent them to bed without any dinner. I mean, it’s recorded, and he had some conflictual relationships with men as well.
There was an early Jesuit by the name of Bobadilla. I think his first name was Robert Bobadilla, but Ignatius and Bobadilla fought from the beginning, you know, and, and at one point it’s all about throwing Bobadilla out [01:22:00] and Bobadilla was sent off to Portugal, I think it was, and it caused a lot of problems there.
And Ignatius wrote him letters saying, “If you don’t behave, I’ll throw you out.” And Bobadilla wrote back. This is quite interesting to see. He’s still that stubbornness that you see at Pamplona—that stubbornness was still there at the end as well when he dealt with some of some of these people. So poor Bobadilla gets bad rep every time we talk about Ignatius and the early Jesuits, but yep—[fists bumping]—the two of them.
Annemarie: Yeah, it’s a strong personality, I think.
Russell: They say Ignatius was a ONE on the Enneagram.
Maria: I took comfort that we’re all on the way, that he never really quite arrived at some [01:23:00] place. The story just seems to unfold that he was always wrestling with parts of himself and that as I wrestle with parts of myself that it’s—it is the journey. It’s not the arriving; it’s the process and I felt comforted by that.
Russell: Thank you, Maria. And that’s such an important point and you know, like, it goes back to—he refers to—I mean, it’s weird in that autobiography that he talks about “the pilgrim this, the pilgrim that,” when he refers to himself. But I think it so nicely fits into what you’ve just said.
Ignatius, you know, I’m not sure. I’ve had this conversation with a few people. I’m not sure Ignatius was heading to a destination. I think Ignatius, for him, it’s the quality of the journey, like he’s making the journey, and it’s the quality with which we try and make the journey. And that’s the sense I get with him; that [01:24:00] he was really trying to make the journey. I mean, he kind of maybe had a goal in mind, but he realized that it’s the way that I choose to live the journey.
And if at times I have to recalculate the journey, he was willing to do that, you know, because of his own fragility, because of the fragility of the world around him or the tilted structures of life or whatever. When he was imprisoned, he just moves off to the next city after he gets out and so forth, It’s the quality with which I try and live that or live the journey that for him was so important.
So that image of the mule, for example, and saying, “well, then if the mule goes this way, the guy’s dead; if it goes this way, well, move on.” I mean, in a way he was recalculating like that all the time when he kind of felt that he had to, you know?
Liz: He didn’t let discouragement overwhelm him, [01:25:00] even though he was arrested by the Inquisition and persecuted by the Dominicans and, starved and refused passage by many people and thrown out of Jerusalem. He just, “well onto the next.”
Russell: Yep! He had this tremendous kind of perseverance—like if you read stuff around the Inquisition and what they did to people who they found guilty or whatever, you know, some of it’s quite terrible what they did and yet, yeah, Ignatius wasn’t deterred by that. He carried on. He persevered, you know, and he persevered because he had the same, I mean, that phrase of his about saving souls, you know, working for souls was kind of this deep motivation, you know, and part of that perseverance as well. So, I think that’s so true, you know, that if there was [01:26:00] anyone who should have been discouraged.
I mean, can you imagine being 33 and being sent back to study Latin with 12-year old’s and the way that they may have—in the context I live here, the thoughts of being in a class of 12 year old’s and learning the language with them, and they got this old man sitting there, or they would consider old, yet he perseveres through that. I mean, it’s quite incredible. Yeah. By the way, we have forgiven the Dominicans thousands, so you know, whatever.
Liz: Well, just slightly. Yeah. But as for the Spanish inquisition, no! [Laughter]
Russell: We often say in the Catholic church, you know, the greatest ecumenical dialogue has been the Jesuits and the Dominicans, you know? [Laughter]
Anne: if I may just say something. And, you know, Ignatius, we think [01:27:00] oh, he was, he’s a saint and his life seems extraordinary, but I guess when he was living his life, it didn’t seem all that extraordinary to him. And that’s an assumption I’m making, but I think in my life, certainly I have plans and I have these ideas about my life, and we have the advantage of, you know, looking back at Ignatius’s life and thinking, wow, that was an amazing life. But had he had his way with the plans that he had, we wouldn’t have the spiritual exercises probably, you know? Well, definitely. So, God had another plan and that’s encouraging to me as well.
When God takes my little plans and scatters them, I should take encouragement from the lives of the saints, and Ignatius in particular, because he’s a big part of my life. I just wanted to say that. [01:28:00]
Russell: No, thanks Anne, and I think that’s so true. You know, I mean, we all have plans. Ignatius had plans. He planned to go to the Holy Land. You know, he planned to do this. He planned, you know, but life kind of threw those plans a little bit awry and he didn’t give up, but he persevered and he had this kind of sense that, well, you know, I adapt to—and, that’s a big theme—which we’ll talk about in the spiritual exercised—this thing of adapting—and if you think of his thing of adapting in the exercises, you see how he recalculated and adapted in his life. You know, so there was a wisdom that came from his lived experience. It wasn’t just, well, you know, maybe we should adapt these things. There was a real wisdom from his own lived experience.
So, I think that’s absolutely true. And to take courage so that when God does maybe have different ideas for us, well, that’s okay, our plans are good, but sometimes there’s better ones. I think Ignatius learned that. [01:29:00] Liz: There’s that old saying, if you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plans. [Laughter]
Russell: Yeah, exactly.
So, I don’t want to cut anybody off, but I want to just say something about books and reading and so forth. So maybe if there is anybody else who would like to say something, we’ll just give you a few more seconds and then ….
Bob: The question that I have is—I just wonder if he had the experience of modern-day psychology, how that would have affected his journey? Interesting, knowing that when he went to Paris to study, I don’t think psychology was on the curriculum.
Russell: No, I don’t. Yes, definitely not, Bob and that’s a good question. And [01:30:00] also, there are some people that have done—who’s that guy, Annemarie—there was a book written about . . .
Annemarie: . . . Ignatius and psychology. Yeah, it was a huge German thick book.
Russell: Yeah, it was a German . . .
Annemarie: . . . psychoanalytic study of Ignatius, basically.
Russell: No, he didn’t have the advantages that we have today of modern psychology, and yet he had insights into the human psychology, you know, that, I mean, people are still looking towards for wisdom today, And once again, I think that’s a gift that Ignatius certainly brings us and gives to us and therefore, even when one is doing or guiding or accompanying someone through the exercises, I mean, just the wisdom there, the understanding of humanity, this understanding of the human psyche that Ignatius does have and the doors that he opens up. I think it is remarkable. And I think that’s grace as well, that he was able to [01:31:00] have that.
Annemarie: It’s Meissner. The Psychology of the Saint: Ignatius of Loyola.
Russell: Ah, Meissner. That’s it. Yeah. Meissner. Psychology of the Saint. I think a lot of these things Ignatius would be—I mean, the fact that we call him a saint, I suspect Ignatius wouldn’t be too happy with that today, but the church does that. You know the fact that we’re talking about his psychology, I don’t think that would make him very happy either, but Annemarie’s put it in the chat—Meissner, The Psychology of a Saint.
Annemarie: It’s a very heavy read, so I don’t recommend you necessarily go for that as your first port of call.
Russell: Okay, friends, our time is almost up, and I just want to say something about reading. Many of you have emailed us and asked questions around reading. You’re all very good students. You want as much to read as possible that’s become [01:32:00] clear to us in the last couple of days or so, so let me just explain.
So, there is one book that we ask that you all have, and that’s a copy of the Spiritual Exercises. We’re going to send you an email. It will be tomorrow. Pam will send it out to all of you, and you’ll see right at the top, there’s the required book to have, and that’s a copy of the Spiritual Exercises, and we tell you which ones, by David Fleming, by George Gantz, or by Louis Poole; those are the three.
Annemarie: Or Michael Ivens.
Russell: Or Michael Ivens, sorry, yes, Michael Ivens as well. Then there are some books you will notice underneath that, that we say, if you, want to read them, these are excellent for this course, but you don’t have to have all of them. So, it’s David Fleming Like the Lightning, you’ll see the list.
George Aschenbrenner—Annemarie, help me with the title there. . .
Annemarie: George Aschenbrenner’s Stretch for Greater Glory
Russell: Glory . . . then there’s also Michael Ivens’ book [01:33:00] Understanding the Spiritual Exercises, really a commentary on the text, which is an excellent book as well. Some books like that one by Michael Ivens are not always that easy to come across, but sometimes libraries have them and places like that.
And then underneath that, there’s other texts that you may want to engage, and we’re encouraging you maybe to engage with one or two of those texts, but not to try and do everything there, and we say right at the beginning of that, that the work by Veltri, which is available for free online, you can download it, I think, as an ebook. I looked today. That is—its orientations, I think it’s one, two, and three; there’s three volumes there . . .
Annemarie: No, two…..
Russell: Those would be the best things to look at.
So, the way that we work is, we send articles. Okay? As we’re dealing with certain topics before or after we’ve dealt with the topic, we send you; we use a lot of journal articles.
So, the question is, which books to read or what you have to be doing. [01:34:00] Don’t get too worried about. texts and, and books; there are some that we recommend if you’d like to, and then there is the articles. We’re really hoping that you will engage with the articles that we send. We think that those are very important, and the reason that we do it like this is A. we are always looking for things that are going to be helpful. You know, writing about the exercises and so forth is developing all the time. There’s stuff coming out; there’s a lot of good journal articles coming out.
We do adapt things as we move with a group. We sometimes, once we’ve heard the questions or discussions, we think maybe this article might be better than that article, and then we send it. So, we also, as you heard Anne Marie say, we prefer to give you something that’s freshly baked than to take something—a frozen meal; Trevor’s image out of the freezer—and give that to you.
So, we also adapting things, and that’s why we send the articles as we do and [01:35:00] when we do.
So, you will get that list. You can take a look at that list. A lot of those books are available on Amazon, but also, you know, I would say the other part of this is engaging with text is important and thinking things through, et cetera, et cetera. But we also we don’t want to lose the experiential part of this because I think that’s also very important. So, it’s not just a question of getting the head knowledge when it comes to what we’re trying to do here, but it’s also trying to reflect on things and, and take things from that deeper level as well.
So don’t be too concerned about text. We’ll give you stuff as and when we think is the right time. And if you want books, those are the ones that we recommend. Now there’s hundreds of other books and things. But for the purposes of this course, at the moment, we think that those would serve you well.
From time to [01:36:00] time, we may mention another book that is available on a certain part or certain topic around the exercises. So, for example Timothy Gallagher has written a number of books on things like the discernment of spirits, et cetera, et cetera. When we think it might be good to mention that we will, but you don’t have to go and get that book and read it straight away either.
We really want to engage with the text of the exercises. Annemarie, do you want to add anything?
Annemarie: No, I think that’s great. I mean, you’ll see under the one part, there’s some resources for giving the exercises. We’re going to have a whole session on that. And we’re going to talk through all of those resources, so you might want to wait a little bit before you go and buy a whole lot of different things and invest money. We really, as Russell said, want to kind of guide you to find what you will find most helpful. So yeah. Thanks Russell. And we’re going to hand over to [01:37:00] Trevor to close in prayer with us. Thanks Trevor.
Trevor: Friends as we come to the end, the image that I just want to hold before you and wonder a little bit about with you for a minute or two is that throughout Ignatius’s life from Pamplona onwards, he walked with the limp and I’m just wondering now, as we are quiet, whether we perhaps could reflect on our limp at the moment—a way that we are limping.
Perhaps you can ask, I can, we can ask God to draw our attention to our limp [01:38:00] at the moment—our Achilles heel.
You may just want that to become quite real in your awareness right now . . .
And perhaps I can end with that wonderful mystery of our faith, that it is in our weakness that God meets us most gracefully and deeply.
Somehow through Ignatius’s limp, God’s grace[01:39:00] was profoundly active.
And so, we end this morning or midday, wherever we are this evening, we end by offering our limp to God with the deep longing of our heart that in our limping, we may know God’s grace, God’s healing grace. God’s empowering grace, God’s transforming grace.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. [01:40:00] Amen.