Saint Ignatius of Loyola

Ignatius was born in 1491 at the castle of Loyola, above Azpeitia in Guipuzcoa. ¹ He was a soldier, and at the siege of Pamplona in 1521 "a cannon ball, passing between Ignatius' legs, tore open the left calf and broke the right shin." ¹ The military career was finished in an instant, and the long convalescence that followed is where everything else begins.

Recovering, he asked for tales of chivalry to pass the time. There were none in the house, so he was given lives of the saints and a life of Christ instead. ¹ He read them the way he had read the romances, comparing what the saints had done with what knights did.

Then he noticed something that became the foundation of everything he later taught: daydreams of worldly glory left him dry afterwards, while thoughts of following Christ left him with a lasting contentment. Paying attention to that difference - not to the feelings themselves but to what they left behind - is the seed of the discernment of spirits.

After vowing to make a pilgrimage, he withdrew to a cave near Manresa, where he developed the meditative practices later set down as the Spiritual Exercises. ¹ The Exercises are not a book to read so much as a program to be taken through, usually over thirty days, and they remain the structure behind most Catholic retreats. It is why Franciscan Media names him patron of retreats. ²

He went back to school as an adult, studying in Paris from 1528 and taking his master's degree on 14 March 1535. ¹ On 15 August 1534, at Montmartre, he and his companions took vows of poverty and chastity and bound themselves to a journey to the Holy Land once their studies were done. ¹

The Holy Land plan failed. What came of the group instead was the Society of Jesus, approved by Pope Paul III in the bull Regimini militantis Ecclesiae on 27 September 1540, with Ignatius elected superior the following April. ¹ He died in Rome on 31 July 1556 and was canonized by Gregory XV on 22 May 1622. ¹

Saint Ignatius of Loyola is the patron saint of retreats. ² Given that the Spiritual Exercises are the source of the retreat as most Catholics experience it, the patronage is less a devotional label than a statement of fact.

The feast of Saint Ignatius of Loyola is celebrated on July 31. ²

A cannonball ended the only career Ignatius wanted, and the house he convalesced in had no adventure stories left, only lives of the saints. ¹ He read them the way he had read the romances and noticed something: daydreams of glory left him flat afterward, and thoughts of following Christ did not.

That noticing is his whole contribution. Not the intensity of a feeling but what it leaves behind once it passes. Anyone sitting with a decision they cannot settle is working with the tool he made.

The Spiritual Exercises came out of a cave near Manresa and became the shape of the Catholic retreat. ¹ He did not think people should have to improvise their interior lives, which is why Franciscan Media calls him the patron of retreats. ²

He went back to school in his late thirties and sat with boys to learn the Latin he lacked. ¹ Beginning again in public, at the wrong age, is a thing he actually did rather than a thing he recommended.