Friday, July 31, 1998
Friday July 31:
Feast of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Priest and Religious Founder White vestments
First Reading: Jeremiah 26: 1-9
Psalms: Psalm 69: 5, 8-10, 14
Gospel Reading: Matthew 13: 54-58
FEAST OF SAINT IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA, PRIEST AND RELIGIOUS FOUNDER
The founder of the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuits, was born in Guipuzcoa, Spain in 1491, the
youngest of eleven children. Saint Ignatius Lopez of Loyola did not realize what great mission God had in store for him until, while recovering from a battle injury at Pamplona in 1521, he began reading "The Life of Christ" by Ludolph of Saxony. It was during this time that two people came into his life that would alter the course of history and his life forever. First, the heresy of the monk Martin Luther who Ignatius realized had to be thwarted; and secondly, through prayer for direction, Our Lady appeared to him in a vision requesting he make a pilgrimage to Montserrat where the famous Madonna statue resided at the Benedictine Abbey. Shortly after she imparted the the idea of his now famous and simple Spiritual Exercises which he made a first draft of in 1522. His life would reflect the course of the Jesuits which he was about to found. After a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, he returned to study Latin at the University of Alcala in Spain but was imprisoned on the false charges of being an illuminist. He fled to Salamanca where again he was prosecuted through a kangaroo court and jailed. Freed seven years later, he journed to Paris where he completed his studies. Then in 1534, four years after the Diet of Augsburg, Ignatius gathered six companions including his friend Saint Francis Xavier in the chapel at Montmartre to form the Society of Jesus, vowing poverty and chastity, and offering themselves to the Holy Father as he wished to use them. Though they had intended to go to the Holy Land to preach the Gospel, political circumstances prevented this journey. It was to be providential as Ignatius was ordained in 1538 and two years later the Jesuits were approved by Pope Paul III in his papal bull Regimini Militantes Ecclesiae. Raised to be a soldier, Ignatius truly became a "soldier of Christ" as did his Order of which he became the first Superior General in 1551, a year after the definitive Constitution of the Jesuits had been approved by Pope Jules III. During a general meeting of the Society in 1556, Ignatius, at the age of 65, passed away peacefully. From the beginning the Jesuits had dedicated their ministry to defending the Pope and fighting the heresies that threatened Holy Mother Church. While Martin Luther was effecting millions of defectors from Holy Mother Church, God raised up a man who would conversely convert millions more through his Society's commitment of imparting thorough knowledge of the One, True Faith.
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