St Ignatius’ Feast Day: Fr Richard’s Homily.
In 1998 when I was teaching at St Ignatius College, Riverview, I was preparing my Year 11 RE class to celebrate today’s Feastday. As I began to open up the topic, I saw one of my best students roll his eyes. He been at the school since Year 5. “What’s the eye roll about?” I asked. “Oh, not the canon ball again, Sir” he replied.
Not the canon ball.
Understandably, as both the turning point in Ignatius’ life and as metaphor in our own lives, we Jesuits like the canon ball. Ignatius joined the army at seventeen but, 13 years later, aged 30, he was gravely injured when that famous canon ball shattered his right leg. But, I want to move on from the canon ball in time and focus.
After the canon ball Inigo returned to the family castle in Loyola, where, in an era before anaesthetics he underwent several surgical operations to repair his leg, with his bones having to be re-broken and re-set.
He tells us that he was so vain that when one of these operations left a bone protruding from his leg, he sent for the surgeon again to saw it off. In the end, the operations left his right leg shorter than the left. He would limp for the rest of his life and his military career was over.
While recuperating he dreamt about doing great things for God and so in 1522 he became a pilgrim to Montserrat, to the famous Black Madonna where he honoured himself in service to Christ. During his brief staff there he was overcome with remorse and shame at the “wicked sins I have committed” and so he travelled 24kms south on to cave alongside the River Cardonner at Manresa in Spain where became a penitent.
From his autobiography, as well as several of his letters, we know that this cave was the scene of some of his best and worst days.
I may be the only Jesuit who will tell you this, but at this stage in his life we could diagnose Inigo as an obsessive, compulsive, neurotic nut. That’s not fair, of course, because he was also holy, mystical, and brilliant, but some of his early behaviour in that cave reveals that my first comment is neither facetious nor unwarranted, and why it became a pivotal chapter in his life. It also gives the key to why Ignatian Spirituality has been so enduring and adaptable. That cave saw the genesis of what would later become spiritual masterpieces: the Rules for the Discernment of Spirits; the Examen; and the Spiritual Exercises. However, that cave was also the scene of some very dangerous behaviour.
We know because he tells us that during the first four months of his 11 month stay in the cave, Inigo-the-penitent whipped himself three times a day, wore an iron girdle which he kept retracting until it broke his flesh, fasted on bread and water which he begged, slept very little and then on the ground, spent up to seven hours on his knees at prayer, covered his face with dirt, rarely bathed, grew his hair and beard rough, and allowed his dirty nails to grow to a grotesque length.
Ignatius suffered from scruples so badly that he considered committing suicide by throwing himself into the River Cardoner.
These days, the 1522 Inigo might be diagnosed as an at-risk self-harmer, suffering from a chronic depressive episode with a suicidal ideation. In the contemporary vernacular, he could be called a ‘cutter.’ I bet you’ve never heard that before.
Thank God, two things saved him. His confessor at Manresa eventually ordered him to eat food, wash, cut his hair and nails, stop all the penances, and look after himself. Inigo had to obey. From there on in, he turned a corner and emerged from that cave in 1523 he was wiser and holier man.
Secondly, Ignatius reflected carefully on how even good things, done in the name of God, like prayer, penance and fasting can quickly became instruments of self-destruction. Ignatius believed that those brutal penances would lead him to God, whereas they led him to isolation, despair and destruction.
The life experiences and spiritual insights of St Ignatius can still appeal to any of us who has glimpsed a very dark place and needed to find a way back from the abyss. From 1521 until he died in 1556, Ignatius Loyola went from soldier to saint, philanderer to founder and masochist to mystic.
The discernment of spirits is sometimes won by staring down some very destructive demons and asking, “What do I really want in my life?”, my desires. Like Inigo, we often look for all the right things in all the wrong places, and sometimes pay a price for it. Ignatian Spirituality might be demanding, but it’s also very practical. In modern parlance, we would now say Ignatius encourages us to “keep it real.”
For the last 34 years of his life, Ignatius moved away from trying to find the easy side of easy to embodying Jesus’ call to love God, our neighbour and ourself. He also knew that we should never embark on the spiritual journey on our own, that we needed each other, ‘friends in the Lord’, and that God was found in the midst of such companionship.
May this Feastday see us;
prepare for moments when life takes unexpected turns so that we can reset our goals with passion;
that when the going gets tough we get all the help we need to hold on hope, to know that we matter, and that we’re loved;
that we have make lifelong friends who will always encourage us to make the best choices we can - for ourself and others;
And, finally, that even though we are all sinners we are truly LOVED sinners whose greatest joy in life will be found in putting our gifts and talents, whatever they may be, at the service of Christ and others, and making our world a better and richer place for having been here.
St Ignatius, pray for us.