My friend Michael who was present for the papal Mass on the feast of Saint Ignatius on July 31st and posted this recap video. It’s nicely done and it captures a beautiful sensitivity between the the Jesuit bishop of Rome and his brothers who live and work in Rome. A blog post on the papal Mass can be read here.
I posted His Holiness’ homily here so that you can pray with it.
Saint Ignatius of Loyola pray for the Pope, the Church and all of us.
The faithfulness to the spiritual patrimony one is raised on is an essential piece of understanding one’s own history and the grace that you’ve been given. That doesn’t mean, in my mind, that you can’t augment the first inspiration with another so you can round-out your life in a new way. Perhaps making the connection between Ignatian spirituality with that of the Benedictine charism. Pope Francis has done that in my mind. He’s faithful to Loyola’s Exercises and yet has an appreciation for many of the Carmelites. Here is the papal homily given earlier in Rome for the liturgical memorial of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, a man who’s path to be a soldier for Christ and His Church was started by a cannonball injury. Later, Ignatius set his eyes on the Lord by doing an extended retreat at the Benedictine Abbey of Montserrat. Recall, it is Ignatius experience with the monks that his conversion takes shape and does the Spiritual Exercises. You would do well to be attentive to the Pope’s quoting of the Spiritual Exercises. AMDG
In this Eucharist in which we celebrate our Father Ignatius of Loyola, in light of the Readings we have heard, I would like to propose three simple thoughts guided by three expressions: to put Christ and the Church in the centre; to allow ourselves to be conquered by Him in order to serve; to feel the shame of our limitations and our sins, in order to be humble before Him and before the brothers.
1. The emblem of us Jesuits is a monogram, the acronym of “Jesus, the Saviour of Mankind” (IHS). Every one of you can tell me: we know that very well! But this crest continually reminds us of a reality that we must never forget: the centrality of Christ for each one of us and for the whole Company, the Company that Saint Ignatius wanted to name “of Jesus” to indicate the point of reference. Moreover, even at the beginning of the Spiritual Exercises he places our Lord Jesus Christ, our Creator and Saviour (Spiritual Exercises, 6) in front of us. And this leads all of us Jesuits, and the whole Company, to be “decentred,” to have “Christ more and more” before us, the “Deus semper maior”, the “intimior intimo meo”, that leads us continually outside ourselves, that brings us to a certain kenosis, a “going beyond our own loves, desires, and interests” (Sp. Ex., 189). Isn’t it obvious, the question for us? For all of us? “Is Christ the centre of my life? Do I really put Christ at the centre of my life?” Because there is always the temptation to want to put ourselves in the centre. And when a Jesuit puts himself and not Christ in the centre, he goes astray. In the first Reading, Moses forcefully calls upon the people to love the Lord, to walk in His ways, “because He is your life” (cf. Deut. 30, 16-20). Christ is our life! The centrality of Christ corresponds also to the centrality of the Church: they are two flames that cannot be separated: I cannot follow Christ except in and with the Church. And even in this case we Jesuits and the whole Company, are not at the centre, we are, so to speak, “displaced”, we are at the service of Christ and of the Church, the Bride of Christ our Lord, who is our Holy Mother Hierarchical Church (cf. Sp. Ex. 353). To be men routed and grounded in the Church: that is what Jesus desires of us. There cannot be parallel or isolated paths for us. Yes, paths of searching, creative paths, yes, this is important: to go to the peripheries, so many peripheries. This takes creativity, but always in community, in the Church, with this membership that give us the courage to go forward. To serve Christ is to love this concrete Church, and to serve her with generosity and with the spirit of obedience.
2. What is the way to live this double centrality? Let us look at the experience of Saint Paul, which was also the experience of Saint Ignatius. The Apostle, in the Second Reading that we heard, writes: I press on towards the perfection of Christ, “because I have indeed been conquered by Jesus Christ” (Phil. 3:12). For Paul it came along the road to Damascus, for Ignatius in his house at Loyola, but the fundamental point is the same: to allow oneself to be conquered by Christ. I seek Jesus, I serve Jesus, because He sought me first, because I was conquered by Him: and this is the heart of our experience. But He is first, always. In Spanish there is a word that is very graphic, that explains this well: He “primerea” first ahead of us, “El nos primerea”. He is always first. When we arrive, He has already arrived and is expecting us. And here I want to recall the meditation on the Kingdom in the Second Week. Christ our Lord, the eternal King, calls each one of us, saying to us: “He who wants to come with Me must work with Me, because following Me in suffering, he will follow after Me likewise in glory” (Sp. Ex. 95): Being conquered by Christ in order to offer to this King our whole person and all our hard work (cf. Sp. Ex. 96); to say to the Lord that he would do anything for His greater service and praise, to imitate Him in bearing even injury, contempt, poverty (Sp. Ex. 98). But I think of our brother in Syria in this moment. To allow ourselves to be conquered by Christ means to be always directed towards what is in front of me, toward the goal of Christ (cf. Phil. 3:14), and to ask oneself with truth and sincerity: “What have I done for Christ? What am doing for Christ? What must I do for Christ?” (cf. Sp. Ex. 53).
3. And I come to the final point. In the Gospel, Jesus says to us: “Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it . . . If anyone is ashamed of me . . .” (Lk 9:23). And so on. The shame of the Jesuit. The invitation that Jesus makes is for us to never be ashamed of Him, but to always follow Him with total dedication, trusting Him and entrusting ourselves to Him. But looking at Jesus, as Saint Ignatius teaches us in the First Week, above all looking at Christ crucified, we have that very human and noble feeling that is the shame of not reaching the highest point; we look at the wisdom of Christ and at our ignorance; at His omnipotence and our weakness; at His justice and our iniquity; at His goodness and our wickedness (cf. Sp. Ex. 59). Ask for the grace of shame; the shame that comes from the constant dialogue of mercy with Him; the shame that makes us blush before Jesus Christ; the shame that puts us in tune with the heart of Christ who is made sin for me; the shame that harmonises our heart in tears and accompanies us in the daily following of “my Lord”. And this always brings us, as individuals and as a Company, to humility, to living this great virtue. Humility that makes us understand, each day, that it is not for us to build the Kingdom of God, but it is always the grace of God working within us; humility that pushes us to put our whole being not at the service of ourselves and our own ideas, but at the service of Christ and of the Church, like clay pots, fragile, inadequate, insufficient, but having within them an immense treasure that we carry and that we communicate (2 Cor. 4:7). It is always pleasant for me to think of the sunset of the Jesuit, when a Jesuit finishes his life, when the sun goes down. And two icons of the sunset of the Jesuit always come to me: one classical, that of Saint Francis Xavier, looking at China. Art has painted this sunset so many times, this ‘end’ of Xavier. Even in literature, in that beautiful peace by Pemàn. At the end, having nothing, but in the sight of the Lord; it does me good to thing about this. The other sunset, the other icon that comes to me as an example, is that of Padre Arrupe in the last interview in the refugee camp, when he told us – something he himself said – “I say this as if it were my swan song: pray.” Prayer, the union with Jesus. And, after having said this, he caught the plane, and arrived at Rome with the stroke that was the beginning of so long and so exemplary a sunset. Two sunsets, two icons that all of us would do well to look at, and to go back to these two. And to ask for the grace that our sunset will be like theirs.
Dear brothers, let us turn again to Our Lady, to her who bore Christ in her womb and accompanied the first steps of the Church. May she help us to always put Christ and His Church at the centre of our lives and of our ministry. May she, who was the first and most perfect disciple of her Son help us to allow ourselves to be conquered by Christ in order to follow Him and to serve Him in every situation. May she that answered the announcement of the Angel with the most profound humility: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to thy word” (Lk 1:38), make us feel the shame for our inadequacy before the treasure that has been entrusted to us, in order to live the virtue of humility before God. May our journey be accompanied by the paternal intercession of Saint Ignatius and of all the Jesuit saints, who continue to teach us to do all things “ad majorem Dei gloriam.”
As the universal Church remembers Saint Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits in Rome the history’s first Jesuit pope offered Mass today at the Gesù, consecrated in 1584, known as the mother church of the Society.
In his homily Pope Francis said, “We serve Christ and His Church…. [with] no parallel or isolated paths.” He’s true to Loyola’s heart and mind.
About 270 Jesuits were present. At the conclusion of Mass, the Holy Father prayed at the tomb of the Servant of God Father Pedro Arrupe, Basque Jesuit and Superior General of the Society, 1965-83; he died in 1991.
As my friend Michael Brelsford observed, “Its cool when, during the intercessions when the church prays for the pope, you can look up and see him standing no more than 15 yards away. Thank you one last seat left in the third row! After Mass he came around the side to pray at a tabernacle next to me. At one point, I think I was the closest to him in the room!” Michael is entering the least Society in August; he’s been in Rome on pilgrimage.
Jesuit Father Norman Tanner and Veronica Scarisbrick of Vatican Radio spoke today about the Jesuit vocation. The conversation is here.
AMDG
The photo is courtesy of Antonio Spadaro, SJ.
Let us pray with the Church.
O God, giver of heavenly gifts, who in Saint Aloysius Gonzaga joined penitence to a wonderful innocence of life, grant through his merits and intercession, that, though we have failed to follow him in innocence, we may imitate him in penitence.
From the Office of Readings:
The divine goodness, most honored lady [Gonzaga’s Mother], is a fathomless and shoreless ocean, and I confess that when I plunge my mind into thought of this it is carried away by the immensity and feels quite lost and bewildered there. In return for my short and feeble labors, God is calling me to eternal rest; his voice from heaven invites me to the infinite bliss I have sought so languidly, and promises me this reward for the tears I have so seldom shed.
His biographers note: Saint Aloysius Gonzaga (March 9, 1568 – June 21, 1591) an Italian aristocrat, who entered the Society of Jesus. As a student at the Roman College, Gonzaga died as a result of caring for the victims of an epidemic. He was beatified in 1605, and canonized in 1726. Gonzaga is the patron saint for those living with chronic illnesses, particularly those living with HIV-AIDS.
I read this narrative in one of the newsletters I receive. Very curious on these things work out, no?
When the parish priest of a beautiful village of Provence, South of France, asked in January for a new work of art for his parish, he couldn’t imagine that his command would meet the joyful events of the whole church, and of the Society. As this diocesan priest was very close to the Franciscans, and to the Jesuits, he asked a parishioner to create a drawing of St Ignatius and St Francis, and another to transform it in a wood bas relief for his parish. The project was going on, when the new pope, a Jesuit, decided to call himself Francis. This drawing had suddenly a more universal signification, and the artist transformed it also into an icon. Every Jesuit will be able to read it and to appreciate its symbols.
A pivotal saint for our time is the Jesuit Father Saint Claude la Colombière (1641-82) known mostly for being spiritual director of Saint Margaret Mary. He died on the First Sunday of Lent.
Saint Claude was a great believer in Divine Providence, Love and Mercy as revealed by Christ Himself and pledged himself to this mission. Both of these saints were instrumental in the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Father Claude was devoted to working with the poor.
It is said that the day after his death, Saint Margaret Mary received supernatural assurance that Father Claude needed no prayers, as he was in already heaven.
Pope John Paul II, during the canonization of Saint Claude said,
The past three centuries allow us to evaluate the importance of the message which was entrusted to Claude. In a period of contrasts between the fervor of some and the indifference or impiety of many, here is a devotion centered on the humility of Christ, on his presence, on his love of mercy and on forgiveness. Devotion to the Heart of Christ would be a source of balance and spiritual strengthening for Christian communities so often faced with increasing unbelief over the coming centuries.
O God, who through the preaching of Saint Francis
Xavier won many peoples to yourself, grant that the hearts of the faithful may
burn with the same zeal for the faith and that Holy Church may everywhere
rejoice in an abundance of offspring.
The Church is not liturgically monolithic: let’s consider the various observances of feasts of All Saints and the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed (All Souls) in various religious orders:
Nothing is more practical than finding God, than falling in Love in a quite absolute, final way.
What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in Love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.”
Father Pedro Arrupe , SJ (1907-91)
O God, strength of all the Saints, who through the Cross were pleased to call the Martyrs Saint Paul Miki and companions to life, grant, we pray, that by their intercession we may hold with courage even until death to the faith that we profess.
The question of who was Saint Paul Miki is dealt with on Rome Reports today. The video gives a brief intro the life of the martyr and his companions.
From the cross, Paul said: “The sentence of judgment says these men came to Japan from
the Philippines, but I did not come from any other country. I am a true
Japanese. The only reason for my being killed is that I have taught the
doctrine of Christ. I certainly did teach the doctrine of Christ. I thank God
it is for this reason I die. I believe that I am telling only the truth before
I die. I know you believe me and I want to say to you all once again: Ask
Christ to help you to become happy. I obey Christ. After Christ’s example I
forgive my persecutors. I do not hate them. I ask God to have pity on all, and
I hope my blood will fall on my fellow men as a fruitful rain.”
The 2011 post on Saint Paul Miki and his companions
The 2010 post on Nagasaki martyrs Paul Mike, et al.
