Jul
31
St. Ignatius of Loyola
July 31, 2008 |
I think many of us wonder whether we’ve just blown it. Whether God has just given up on us and declared us a lost cause. Yes, he may grant us mercy and redemption, but he has nevertheless decided that we have screwed up his plan for us so badly that he has us just playing out the string.
And then we read about St. Ignatius. He was a soldier and a man worthy of his secular world. He knew not Christ nor the God that protected him in battle. His sole faith was in his sword and his only love was for the pleasures offered him throughout his world.
And then he was severely wounded and Christ started to act. By the end of his long and lengthy rehabilitation, St. Ignatius was transformed into a zealous soldier of the Lord. His battle transformed to one for souls; his passion switched to one for eternal life.
It is the conversion stories of the saints that most strike me. Most saints appear to be the type who were pious from the womb; those whose destiny was sainthood. And then there are those like St. Paul, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Augustine, and St. Ignatius, who got to sainthood through a passage through the secular world and all of the temptations it has to offer.
They came late to piety, holiness and sanctification; but they got there nonetheless. Christ took his good sweet time with these souls, but he got them in the end.
And that is what gives hope to all of us. No matter where we find ourselves in our lives; no matter what choices we have made; no matter how desperate our situation may be, Christ is calling each of us - and I do mean each of us - to sainthood.
Each and every one of our saints share common qualities - trust, faith, hope, love, service, joy, contrition, and an overwhelming and all-consuming belief that they were doing God’s will; that they were helping build Christ’s kingdom in this temporal world. They believed that they were following Christ’s path for them without reservation, without deviation. They knew they were sinners but they also knew that they could accomplish anything as long as it was rooted in the will of God.
St. Ignatius slowly but definitively grew to understand all that it took to become a saint; and he put everything he had into doing God’s will. As a result, millions throughout the world have been taught, converted, exhorted to change in the name of Christ, by the Jesuits, his children.
I came across this passage from Francis Fernandez last night that I think puts a great summation on St. Ignatius’ legacy for each of us -
“The greatest event of our life is our receiving the calling from our Lord, just as it was for those he called on the shores of the lake. Yet to follow Christ wholeheartedly is never easy. The person who enjoys a more or less steady job, who thinks that the pattern of his life is ’set’, should recognize the danger lurking in this false tranquillity, which may even be considered one’s rightful due. Christ asks us to break with routine, to cast aside the mediocre, to go beyond a life of compromise. With the divine vocation Christ challenges us to undergo a profound change in our daily conduct. God asks for everything, including whatever we may have been reserving for ourselves. He gives us light to see our failing, which we may have up till now looked upon as beyond reforming, but which turn out to be the price for securing the pearl of great value. It is Christ himself who seeks us out, saying, You did not choose me, but I chose you. And when Christ calls, He gives at the same time the graces we will need to follow him, from the beginning of the way and throughout the rest of our life.”
From the above passage, the line I love the most is - “He gives us light to see our failing, which we may have up till now looked upon as beyond reforming, but which turn out to be the price for securing the pearl of great value.”
St. Ignatius at some point had to see the light of his “failing” and he may have thought himself “beyond reforming,” but in the end, he found it was all ”the price for securing the pearl of great value.”
Let us look for our pearl, and let us rely on Christ to help us find it, regardless of our failings and where we are at in our lives.
