Ahead of the Feast Day of St. Ignatius Loyola (July 31), ANDY HAMILTON SJ writes that the image of St Ignatius with one foot raised sums up the challenge and his way to meet it. The raised foot is always discerning, always ready to go where needed. The grounded foot is firmly planted in friendship

The feast of St Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, comes the day after World Friendship Day. In our divided and fractious world, friendship that is strong enough to be undisturbed by differences of gender, race, nationality, politics, religion, and wealth, is never more threatened and needed. It is particularly important among people who are committed to change society. That is where Ignatius’ life may have something to say to us at Jesuit Social Services.

In any society we put pressure on friendship when we cross boundaries. If our nations are at war or our ethnic groups within them are at odds, that makes it more difficult. Ignatius’ life was full of crossing boundaries and of parting with friends. His life changed after being wounded in one of the constant wars of the period.  As he went as a solitary preacher through Spain and travelled to the Holy Land, he seemed to have related easily, especially to women, but not to have made lasting friendships. His attention was wholly on his mission to change lives for the better. That narrow focus perhaps hindered his first attempt to form a group to work with him. The people he invited drifted away.

Only when he studied at the University of Paris did he make friends among students, who came from different regions and kingdoms. Their friendship was defined by their faith, sense of calling, and shared service of the poor.

When the companions decided to go together to the Holy Land, and later to offer themselves as to the Pope as a group of Religious available for different missions, they saw themselves as friends in the Lord, whose friendship would not be broken by difference of nationality, distance and circumstance. The tears Ignatius shed when a letter which one of his companions had posted a year before, arrived, shows the depth of the friendship and the pressures that availability for such missions put on it.

The image of St Ignatius with one foot raised sums up the challenge and his way to meet it. The raised foot is always discerning, always ready to go where needed. The grounded foot is firmly planted in friendship.

In his early letters to his companions Ignatius referred to them as friends in the Lord. As the companions grew into a diverse religious order his letters necessarily became more formal. Even so, the men and women who met him spoke of the invitation to friendship that shone in even a brief encounter.

Ignatius belonged to the modern world in having to hold together friendship and public commitments to a life of service. People and organisations inspired by Ignatius like Jesuit Social Services face the same challenge. The phrase ‘friends in the Lord’ stressed their commitment to give themselves fully to one another and to the people whom they served. To Ignatius and his friends that was a challenge to be met. As for us it still is.