When we think of great women and men, prime ministers and saints, we usually have in mind the finished product. Even if single events changed their lives, we identify them with the qualities they displayed in their prime. The processes of trial and failure, of certainties arrived at and surrendered, which are part of all human lives are easily forgotten. For that reason it is helpful to focus on a stage of their lives when they were still seeking their way and when the qualities we identify with them were still being formed. That is certainly true of Ignatius Loyola who is central in the tradition that Jesuit Social Services has inherited.
In 1526, 500 years ago, Ignatius was 35 years old and was studying in Alcala in Spain. He already had half a lifetime’s experience. Until he was thirty, he had lived in an area marked by constant warfare, had spent boyhood and youth with minor nobility, had been trained as courtier for war and diplomacy, and dreamed of conquest in war and love. The crucial event in his life was in 1521. Injury in battle left him with a shattered leg, a lifetime limp and the end of the knightly dreams central to his identity.
In convalescence he experienced an extraordinary religious conversion that took him to the edge of despair and to a desire to help people. He had also discovered a gift for reflecting on the movements of his heart and where they led. He lived as a beggar and an itinerant spiritual guide, travelled dangerously across Europe and to Jerusalem, where the authorities saw him as trouble and send him home. In his work with people he faced suspicion and arrest as a likely heretic.
He came to Alcala for further study that would better equip him for his work with people. For his future he was still travelling blind. In the previous years, however, he had learned much about himself and his gifts, about the conflicted world in which he lived, and about how to respond to people rich and poor. In Alcala he again found himself caught in the anxieties of rulers and Church leaders about the implications of movements for reform. He had also attracted many followers who came and went. Throughout this time he prayed, observed, engaged with people, learned from them, dealt with crises as they came, and found a way.
After leaving Alcala he travelled to study in Paris. There he met and helped shape the lives of gifted companions who wanted to return with him on mission to Jerusalem. If that failed, as it did, Plan B involved putting themselves at the disposition of the Pope.
Seen from this perspective, Ignatius was not the finished deal. He still hoped to return to Palestine. Like ours, his world was still being moulded, with wars, a Church in apparent decline, and with constant challenges to live generously and effectively.
Nevertheless, he brought distinctive gifts and ways of proceeding to the coming years. His resources were a strong faith based on a personal relationship in prayer, and his attention to the movements of the heart and the needs of the world when weighing the decisions he would take. His sense of those needs was sharpened by accompaniment with the sick and others at the bottom of society. His colleague Diego Lainez described him as walking with one foot off the ground. The image catches both his focus on service and his attentiveness to where he was being called.
Ignatius may also speak to us in our world which is similarly a period of great change that will touch us and our institutions in ways that we cannot predict. His way of travelling light and attending both to the movements of the heart and the needs of the world seen from its margins is demanding. But it was his calling and is his gift to us at Jesuit Social Services.
