THE JESUITS
By the Most Reverend Alban Goodier S.J.
Archbishop of Hierapolis
With an Introduction by Wilfrid Parsons S.J.
New York
The Macmillan Company
1930
Nihil Obstat
Arthur J. Scanlan, S.T.D.,
Censor Librorum
Imprimatur
+Patrick Cardinal Hayes,
Archbishop, New York
New York, October 11, 1929
Copyright, 1930
By The Macmillan Company
Published, January, 1930
Printed in the United States of America
by The Stratford Press, Inc. New York
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I
Introduction
(i) The Opening of the Sixteenth Century
(ii) St. Ignatius Loyola
CHAPTER II. THE SOCIETY OF JESUS FROM WITHIN
(i) Some Popular Notions
(ii) The Greater Glory of God
CHAPTER III THE SOCIETY OF JESUS AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE
(i) The Spiritual Exercises
(ii) The Society of Jesus and Prayer
CHAPTER IV THE SOCIETY OF JESUS AND WORK
CHAPTER V CONCLUSION
INTRODUCTION
The members of the Religious Order who are commonly called Jesuits are
known familiarly to most Catholics, just as are the Dominicans,
Benedictines, Franciscans, in the everyday rounds of parish, classroom or
missionary work. Those who are not Catholics rarely picture the Jesuit as a
mere member of a clerical body in the Church like the others. Many
centuries of propaganda and controversy have engendered two contradictory
ideas, each wide of the facts: either that there are no Jesuits any more,
or that every other Catholic one meets is one in disguise.
The series in which this book appears will by itself have contributed much
to the defense of the Church. It will show how many-sided is that following
of Christ which is actually going on, as it has since the beginning, and
which has been denounced so often as impossible. The Spirit of God working
in His Church has assured that literal living of the Gospel so often
pronounced impossible, or at least non-existent. The life of evangelical
perfection as taught by Benedict, Francis, Dominic, Ignatius, or a hundred
others is one and the same following of Christ through His counsels in the
Sermon on the Mount. The Religious Orders, differing so brilliantly in
"spirit," are led by the same Spirit along the commonplace paths of
asceticism and prayer, their members pledged by profession and vow to such
a life.
Archbishop Goodier has been well advised to begin his exposition of the
Jesuit "spirit" by the well-known phrase, "For the Greater Glory of God."
He knows that all Orders are vowed to this same end, but he knows also that
these Orders differ rather by the individual emphasis they place on one or
other of Christ's teachings than by any exclusive possession of some
special part of His ideals. How great a human and personal divergence this
emphasis may produce is clear. But it is another evidence of the all
embracing human appeal of the Catholic Church, by which it offers the world
a unifying conception of existence.
In his desire to set aside the non-essential concepts of the Jesuit, His
Grace had need of much simplification. While it may be true that St.
Ignatius' first idea had little to do with the Protestant Reformation, it
is just as true that the kind of Order he founded was, in the designs of
Providence, the kind of body to cope most efficiently with it. Similarly,
though education in the classroom was not the primary end of the Society of
Jesus, it is just as true that its whole vocation was educational; the
knowledge of Christ's Revelation and of its place in modern society was its
primary message. Learning was never an ultimate end in life; viewed from
that angle it must ever be only a means to an end. That truth does not,
however, exclude the duty of the individual Jesuit in St. Ignatius' idea
from making himself the most perfect human instrument possible in mind as
well as in heart. The immediate end of the Society's schools is to turn out
the well-rounded Christian citizen of the State.
The whole duty of the Jesuit is to save his own soul and to do so by
laboring for the salvation of others. Archbishop Goodier well says that the
Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius are not a mere manual of prayer, they
are a course in life. It is only in them that the student of Church history
will find the real meaning of the Society of Jesus.
Wilfrid Parsons, S. J.
Editor of America.
THE JESUITS
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
(i) The Opening of the Sixteenth Century
It is a commonplace of history to speak of the opening of the sixteenth
century as the period in which the union of Christendom definitely came to
an end. Apart from the Protestant Reformation, which was immediately to
follow, and which in fact was no more than the resultant of all that had
preceded, the temporal supremacy of the Papacy was doomed, while its
spiritual supremacy was being subjected to a new ordeal. New forces had
sprung up in Europe, creating new and more divided ambitions; new ideas had
begun to prevail, giving the individual a new significance; a new manner of
life had taken hold of civilization itself, separating it from the rougher
ways which had sufficed for the Middle Ages. Though at the time men in
general did not recognize it, least of all, it would seem, the men who
moved in satisfied and careless ease about the papacy, we now looking back
can see the terrible havoc that had been wrought on Christendom by the
German capture of the papal throne, by the Black Death, by the Avignon
Captivity, the Great Schism and the Italian intrigues for the possession of
the tiara that followed. Europe had not lost its faith; nowhere was there a
sign of that. But it had lost confidence and belief in its own ideal; men
no longer looked for political union under the spiritual mantle of the
pope, which had been the dream of statesmen and poets of two centuries
before.
To this general attitude of disillusionment. and yet awakening hope there
was one great exception. Shut off from the rest of Europe by the Pyrenees,
more effectually than Britain by its belt of sea, the peninsula containing
Portugal and Spain had for centuries developed its own life apart, and had
met its own troubles single-handed. Though a kind of feudal system,
inherited from the early conquests, had given the people a unity and
consciousness of themselves as a whole, still even more, the same system
had led to incessant wars and divisions from within, till at length the
lords of the land were virtually, its interdependent kings. The Moors had
entered from the south and still held half the country. The Jews, then
perhaps more than at any other time the financiers of the world, held the
rest of Spain well within their grasp. They were its physicians, they were
the treasures of the State, they were the link between Christians and
Moors; some there were who rose to the rank of royal favorites, and
virtually ruled the nation.
Suddenly all this was changed. The Princess Isabella of Castile had married
the Prince Ferdinand of Aragon; by a providential dispensation, after their
marriage, they found themselves heirs to their respective kingdoms. Thus
were Castile and Aragon effectively and peacefully united, and at once a
new era for Spain began. The power of the nobles was broken, and the nation
became conscious of itself as a single, whole. The Moors of Granada were
crushed and driven out of the country. The war was more than a fight for
re-conquest, it was a crusade; it gave to Spain a yet, greater sense of
unity, founded now on the double basis of nationalism, and faith. Thus
while on these two grounds the rest of Europe was falling asunder, Spain
was using them to make herself all the more one. Isabella died in 1504,
Ferdinand in 1516. The years of their reign are the most glorious, if the
sternest in the history of Spain; they are the years in which the soul of
modern Spain was formed.
On the death of Ferdinand, by another strange providence, the two, northern
Europe and Spain, came into one hand. The right of succession to the
Spanish throne fell, through his mother, to Charles of Burgundy, of the
Hapsburg house. He was only a boy of seventeen years of age, and at first
the pride of Spain was touched by the intrusion of this foreigner. But soon
enough she was reconciled. The energy of the young monarch, his powers of
conciliation, his wisdom in choosing and trusting Spanish ministers, his
very youthfulness, won everything to his side, and only increased the
romance of monarchy, and pride of race, which had grown up round the names
of Ferdinand and Isabella. In 1520, when Charles was still only twenty
years of age, he was duly elected Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and he
passed to Germany to receive his crown. As King of Aragon he was heir to
the Kingdom of Naples; as Emperor he had a sound title to Milan; as
successor to the house of Hapsburg he was master of Austria. From the
Netherlands to Vienna, from the Baltic to Milan and beyond, across the
Spanish Peninsula excepting Portugal, the King was undisputed monarch by
simple right of succession and election. Two little claims alone were
challenged by the King of France, that of Burgundy on one side, and that of
Navarre on the other. But these two in time were fought for and won; and
before 1529 the empire of Charles was acknowledged by king, and pope, and
vassal.
Meanwhile abroad his American possessions continued to grow, and what they
might signify who could say? As they grew, more systematically than
Ferdinand, Charles V took their management in hand, prepared, if need be,
to rule the whole of the New World by the same method as the old. He had
his Bureau of Commerce in Seville, his Council of the Indies in Madrid. He
sent out his viceroys and governors, established archbishoprics and
bishoprics, discussed economic problems which the new conditions raised,
perhaps especially was exercised concerning the condition of the native
peoples overseas, and the right he had to make them obey him. But above
all, as monarch, his chief aim was the establishment of Christianity and
the furtherance of civilization as Spain knew it; on that basis, and on
that alone, did he foresee and hope for permanent future unity. To foster
this, he sent out missionaries in abundance; from these in return he soon
found that the best information could be gained. He encouraged
intermarriage between European settlers and the people of the soil; he
offered to those who would listen to his teachers places in his service; to
be a Christian opened out, to the otherwise down-trodden natives, prospects
of promotion and protection under the mighty and mysterious Catholic King-
Emperor who lived far away.
Meanwhile within the Church herself, the only remaining bond of union,
matters had sunk very low. The weakened papacy had tended to become the
victim of the bishops, the bishops became the victims of their priests, the
priests in their turn were at the mercy of the laity. The temporal
authority more and more claimed the right to rule religion; religion itself
was fast losing its hold, not only on the political world, but on morality
itself. Ignorance of the truths of the faith grew at an appalling rate; in
their place was substituted a love of independence and revolution,
flattered by the new learning, and by the new inventions and discoveries
that turned the minds of men to themselves. Heresy, not of one kind only,
was lifting its head as it had never done before; and under whatever
pretext of reform worked everywhere towards upheaval and destruction. Not
that all this was evil in its origin; it was simply that Europe had long
grown restless, and the guiding powers did not recognize it. Europe was in
search of a new ideal and a new adjustment, and its leaders were standing
still. Response to that craving might have saved and reunited Christendom;
instead the Protestant Reformation came and tore all asunder.
Still it is not to be supposed that nothing at all was being done. There
are good men at all times in the world, who see evil and fight it; and
during all this period of transition there were good men in abundance. But
especially was this manifest in the religious orders; in the reform of
those that existed and in the foundation of more. The Capuchin reform by
Matteo da Bascio (1525); the reform of the Camaldolese by Blessed Paul de
Guistiniani (1520-1522); the new congregation of St. Jerome Aemiliani
(C.1520); the Theatines of St. Cajetan (1524); the Barnabites under St.
Antonio Maria Zaccaria (1520); the Oratorians of St. Philip (1574); and the
Oblates of St. Charles Borromeo (1578); all these, within fifty years, shew
the movement that was going forward. Even among women it was vigorous. In
15 35 St. Angela Merici founded the Ursulines, the first Order of teaching
women in the Church. In Spain and Portugal these reforms found particular
welcome; Spain added to them among others the Brothers of Mercy, founded by
St. John of God (1540), the Piarists, of St. Joseph of Calasanza, most
memorable of all the Carmelite Reform of St. Theresa and St. John of the
Cross.
(ii) St. Ignatius Loyola
In the midst of this age of transition and adventure, in 1491, was born
Inigo Loyola, the youngest son of a noble family of Guipuzcoa, in the
Basque provinces of the kingdom of Castile. His father, Don Bertran Yafiez
de Ofiez y Loyola, was like other nobles of his time, a master in his own
domain; as he was within striking distance of Navarre, the quarrels
connected with that province could not but have affected him. There was a
large family of thirteen children; the brothers of Inigo, eight in number,
all followed the career of arms. At first it seems to have been thought
that the youngest, according to a custom not too uncommon, might find for
himself a career in the Church. But he soon rebelled; and instead was
entrusted to the care of Juan Velasquez de Cuellar, a friend of the Loyola
family, and an official of the Royal Treasury under Ferdinand and Isabella.
This friend had undertaken to make a career for the boy; obviously
therefore it was not for military affairs but affairs of state that from
the first he was destined and trained.
Inigo lived with this patron, partly at Arevalo, partly at court, until he
was twenty-six years of age. During all this time we are expressly told
that there was nothing to distinguish him from other young nobles of his
age; that being so, we may guess, and not without evidence, the kind of
life he lived. There was chivalry in abundance; he seems to have worshipped
at the shrine of a lady far above him, the thought of whom seems to have
had upon him an effect not unlike that of Beatrice on Dante. There was much
talk of the ever-growing splendor of Ferdinand and Isabella, pride in the
conquests of Spain at home and abroad, ambition beyond limit of greatness;
alongside, a moral that hung loose in word and deed, with a literature to
correspond. Such was the fashion of the times, and Inigo was nothing if not
a man of fashion. In the well-known Autobiography the whole of this period
of his life is summed up in the single sentence: "Until he was twenty-six
years of age he was given up to the vanities of his age; he took special
delight in the use of arms, urged on as he was by a great and vain craving
for worldly renown."
In 1518, two years after the death of Ferdinand, when the boy Charles was
now secure on the throne, Inigo's patron died, and the young man was left
to make for himself a career of his own. It would almost seem, from his own
account, that he was nothing loth to be freed from the desk and the
counting-house; now at last he was able to follow his own inclination. He
took service under the viceroy of Navarre, Antonio Manrique de Lara, Duke
of Najera, and remained with him as a soldier for three years. In 1521 a
rebellion in Castile called out all the forces of Navarre, except a few to
guard the fortresses. Francis I of France seized the occasion to attempt a
conquest of the province, to which he had some claim; he knew, besides,
that there were nobles in the country who would welcome and assist him.
Loyola was with the troops in Pampeluna, the capital of Navarre, when the
French army of ten thousand men appeared before its walls. The governor of
the castle, having only a handful of men, saw the futility of attempting to
resist and offered to surrender. Loyola, by what authority is by no means
clear, intervened; persuaded the defenders, it would seem by his mere
personality, to resist; in the resistance he fell, wounded in both legs by
a cannon-ball, and the French took the place. But they honored the bravery
of the man who had resisted them. In accordance with the chivalry of the
time they set him free, and sent him home to Loyola. Here Don Garcia, his
eldest brother, received him; and here, after cruel operations, Inigo
remained during the period of his convalescence. He was thirty years of
age. It will help our historical imagination to remember that it was in the
year that our own Henry VIII appealed to the Emperor and the Elector
Palatine to exterminate Luther, and his doctrines from their dominions,
wrote his Defense of the Seven Sacraments, and earned from the Pope, Leo X,
the title of "Defender of the Faith."
Naturally the weeks passed slowly for the cavalier while his wounds were
healing; the man, no longer young, who had hitherto lived his life much as
he wished, found the time hang heavy on his hands. He asked for books of
romance and adventure; there were none to be found in the house. Instead he
was given what there was at hand; a volume of stories of the saints, and
Ludolph the Carthusian's Life of Christ. The latter, as we may see from his
own later work, Inigo learnt to know well; the former set him thinking,
making him compare his own wasted and aimless life with lives at once of
heroism and profit. He had taken it for granted, because it was the fashion
to do so, that the life he had hitherto led, was the life most worthy of a
nobleman, and therefore of a man; yet how much more noble, and how much
more manly, were the lives he discovered! He had prided himself on his
uprightness of character, his chivalry, his personal bravery; yet what was
this compared with the selfless truth, the romantic innocence, the bravery
of these men! He had been inspired by, and devoted to, the service of a
monarch who had set his country free, of another whose kingdom spread
across the greater part of Europe; yet what was this kingdom compared with
that for which these men had endured so much! As to the good that was to
come of his living, he had scarcely given it a thought; these men, what
untold good they had done! Civilization itself had been made by them;
without them what would Europe have been!
Greatness, genius, and talent do not always go together; but if greatness
is the capacity to see a great goal and to make for it through every
obstacle, and at whatever cost, then whether genius or not, Inigo Loyola
was great. Hitherto he had been devoted to a kingdom that included half
Europe, but even that had not been enough to awaken the whole man within
him. Now he saw a kingdom that embraced all the world, and come what might
he would take service in it. Hitherto he had been content to take life as
he found it, winning reputation when opportunity came in his way, but
making little enough of the fruit of his life on those around him. Now he
saw that there was a greater honor than any he had so far known; not in the
mere ruling of them, but in the making of them according to this new ideal.
Hitherto he had fashioned himself on the standard of men about him; now he
knew that there was a nobler standard than that, in the making himself to
be and to do whatever might best serve the new -ideal. And to see was to
determine. Hitherto he had lived for nothing; now he had something to live
for. Where this determination was to lead him he did not know; but he rose
from his bed another man, with a definite goal before him, to make himself
and to make others like himself champions of the King of the Universal
Kingdom, and he pursued that goal unflinching to the end. The end was the
foundation of the Society of Jesus.
At the beginning of 1522 he set out on his adventure. Two definite plans he
had first in mind; to do penance for the past, and to begin again where his
new Master had begun, even on the very spot in the Holy Land. These two
primary resolutions mark at once two characteristics of the man which are
to be found in everything he did or wrote; an extreme thoroughness of
purpose and an extreme simplicity, the mind of a child with the will of an
unconquerable man. Constantly when one reads the later letters of the saint
one is brought up against illustrations of the former; simple solutions of
all kinds of problems by keeping his eye on the one end in view, simple
repetition of phrases, and even of whole passages, once he has found what
he wished to say; lessons and instructions on better ways of life which
appall one by their simplicity; while for the will to do, his whole life
bears eloquent witness.
He set out in 1522. For a year we find him at Manresa, beating himself into
subjection. In 1523 he is on his way to the Holy Land, in spite of the
danger from the Turks at sea. He is back in Venice in 1524, and thence once
more to Spain. But not to his home at Loyola; since to do the good he would
do he must make up for the time he has lost, we find him pursuing his
studies for four years, a man of from thirty-three to thirty-seven, in the
schools of Barcelona, Alcala and Salamanca. In 1528 he is in the University
of Paris; and he does not leave it till 1535, when he is forty-four years
of age. Fourteen years he had thus filled with these beginnings and
preparations; fourteen years, with nothing external to shew for them, and
those the best years of his life.
During this period, it is true, he had tried to gather men around him who
would accept and follow him in his ideals. Twice he failed; his followers
deserted him and, for the most part, vanished from his sight altogether.
Only at the last he succeeded. In Paris he won to him seven men, all
brilliant students of the University; when these men in the chapel of St.
Denys on Montmartre, on August 15, 1534, vowed with him that they would
lead lives of poverty and chastity, that they would go as pilgrims to the
Holy Land, and that the rest of their days should be spent in apostolic
labor, the Society of Jesus, as yet without a name, was born. To what that
decision might lead none of them clearly knew, but that was of little
moment. They had taken service under the King of kings, and He should use
them as He would; in that whole-hearted, uncalculating surrender we see
again the simplicity of the Founder, caught now and made their own by all
the rest.
CHAPTER II THE SOCIETY OF JESUS FROM WITHIN
(i) Some Popular Notions
It has often been repeated that St. Ignatius Loyola was raised up by God to
counteract the influence of Luther. In some general, accidental way, or
shall we say in the way of Providence, this may be true. Nevertheless, from
what has been already said, it is clear that this was not the first object
in the saint's mind. It may even be questioned whether, until long after he
had founded the Society of Jesus, Ignatius Loyola had ever so much as heard
of Luther's name, at least with all its significance, or knew anything of
the upheaval in Germany. During his years of preparation he never once set
foot in Lutheran territory; once it is said he came to England, but that
was to beg alms from the merchants there to enable him to pursue his
studies.
It is likewise said that the Society of Jesus was the great bulwark of the
Church against the Reformation in the sixteenth century. In the order of
Providence, again, this may have been. Nevertheless, one may doubt whether,
to the end of his life, the German Reformation as such had any predominant
significance to its Founder. Certainly his first aims did not seem to
consider it at all. First of all he had it in his mind to serve his chosen
King and Master, Jesus Christ, wherever that might lead; and to do this, he
would model himself entirely upon Him. Next he would draw others to do
likewise, whoever they might be, whatever might be their station in life.
Lastly he would imitate Him, so far as it was possible, even in the
smallest details. For that purpose, not unlike that kindred and simple
soul, St. Francis of Assisi, before him he proposed to himself and his
first companions that they should go, not into Germany against the
Lutherans, but to live and labor in the East.
Nor, when this first object of his ambition was frustrated, did he turn at
once to protestantising Europe. He offered himself and his followers to the
pope, to do whatever the pope might appoint; when the Holy Father shewed
him the fields nearer home that were in need of laborers he sent out his
men, not to countries fast becoming Protestant, but to the Italian towns
and villages which have always remained, in name at least, Catholic. Of his
first companions, only one worked directly among the Reformers; and he was
sent at the pope's express request, and only for a limited time. It was not
till Canisius appeared on the scene that the counter-reformation began in
real earnest; and that was a decade after the death of St. Ignatius. The
first Jesuits, for the most part, confined themselves to Catholic
countries; there they preached reform of life, and the truths of the faith,
to those who were always proud to call themselves the children of the
Church. When at last Ignatius sent the greatest of them all far afield, he
sent him, not to Lutheran Germany, but to the pagan East.
The same may be said of another estimate, which makes of the Society of
Jesus mainly a body of schoolmasters. That colleges and schools to-day
engage a vast number, perhaps the majority of its members, may be true; if
it is true it is again an historical development and no more. It is a
discovery which time has revealed of the special need of the Church and of
mankind during the last centuries. Of his own accord, St. Ignatius Loyola
never opened a single school, in the common meaning of the word; indeed at
first he seemed to fear them, as he feared chaplaincies to convents, lest
they should confine his men and tie them down. As time went on he accepted
schools that were offered to him, but only on fixed conditions; one of
which was that they should be so endowed as to be free. But even then he
seemed to hesitate. When after years of experience he wrote his
Constitutions, at first he made no mention of schools. Later, when their
need was forced upon him, he added a further chapter concerning them, but
not without an apology for so doing. He felt the need of justifying the
insertion, in his own eyes as well as in the eyes of others; and his
justification was, not the need of education, nor the duty of training
youth, but that vocations might be fostered among young candidates. Not one
of his first followers was engaged in a class-room, nor even, strictly, in
a lecture hall; and that though all, but two in particular, might have been
considered eminently suited and trained for the purpose.
It was not till the Ratio Studiorum was drawn up that the education of
youth was accepted as of equivalently first importance in the Society of
Jesus. That was forty years after the saintly Founder's death; and even
then, during the whole of the century that followed and beyond, it is
striking to notice how, in the spirit of Ignatius, professors and teachers
of the first rank were continually taken from their chairs to spend
themselves on the mission fields. Blessed Charles Spinola, the Provincial
and most conspicuous of the martyrs of Japan, had first distinguished
himself as a mathematical professor in the schools of Italy. Ricci and
others, who opened up China to the faith, were among the first astronomers
of Europe. France and Spain sacrificed many of their best schoolmasters to
send them among the American Indians. Campion was a born teacher and
professor; yet he was sent to die for his faith and his country at Tyburn.
Again much has been made of the military spirit of the "soldier saint" and
his Order; and this is illustrated by the extraordinary place which the
virtue of obedience occupies in his Institute. We do not wish to deny that
there is some resemblance between the Society of Jesus and an army; at the
same time it is well to remember that Ignatius Loyola was strictly a
soldier only during the last three years of the thirty he lived in the
world. That he was a soldier in the spirit of his time and country is true;
it is also true that he was full of the spirit of chivalry; but chivalry is
a very different thing from soldiering, as soldiering is understood to-day.
He may have been an Arthur in the midst of his Knights of the Round Table;
he was certainly not a Napoleon, with his marshals and legions around him.
And as for his obedience, the first companions took no vow of obedience in
the chapel of Montmartre in 1534; not until five years later, when they had
so far grown in numbers as to need better organization, was it agreed to by
an unanimous vote among themselves that they should live under obedience to
one of their own election.
Moreover, their obedience, in practice, was altogether unlike the obedience
of the barracks. For instance, at first, and indeed for many years,
Ignatius when elected General would write no rules or regulations which
should bind all the members of his Order. He said, not that obedience, but
that "the internal law of charity and love," was better than all rules.
When he sent two men together on a journey, he would have them practice
obedience; but it was to be alternate, each in turn acting as superior for
a week at a time. This is anything but army discipline. St. Francis Xavier
went to the East and recruited his men out there, before any rule was
written or any Constitution framed. When he described in a letter the
spirit of his Order, he said not a word about the bond of obedience, much
as he cherished and insisted on the practice of that virtue. He said that
"the Society of Jesus is nothing more than a Society of love"; and he
addressed his master Ignatius not as General, not even as Superior, but as
his "Father in the Heart of Jesus Christ." When we speak of St. Ignatius as
a soldier, and of his Society as an army, we need to keep all this in mind.
(ii) The Greater Glory of God
In matter of fact, in the mind of its Founder, the idea of the Society of
Jesus went far beyond and far deeper down than any or all of these objects;
one may say that it included and went beyond any material object, however
good, or noble, or holy. St. Ignatius was a man of a single ideal; this in
a true sense may be said to mark the limitation of his greatness, if indeed
it be a limitation. To the pursuit of that ideal everything else was bent;
that is the secret of his astonishing simplicity, the simplicity, very
often, of a very little child. So simple in mind was St. Ignatius Loyola
that many have assumed that he could not be sincere, and have accused him
of cunning or duplicity. But if we read his Constitutions, the one book, if
we except the Exercises, that he wrote, and seek in them for the expression
of the man who wrote them, one dominating note we cannot fail to notice. It
is the often repeated "Greater Glory of God."
We do not say this was anything very new. In various forms it has been, of
course, the motto of all the saints; the very form of words that he used,
Ignatius had borrowed from elsewhere. But with him, as a student of the
saint has put it, this one idea had become an obsession. It had taken hold
of him and possessed him, almost blinding him to every other light. To that
single end all else was bent, work, word, prayer, life, even sanctity
itself; by its single standard everything in life was measured, and rigidly
allotted its value and place. For it, and for it alone, this world and man
in it were fashioned; so long as it was promoted, it mattered little what
else was done or how man fared. A student has reckoned the number of times
direct allusion is made to this measure of judgment in the Book of the
Constitutions; he has counted 259 practically one on every page.
In his unflinching and uncompromising application of this motto to whatever
came before him it is not difficult to understand the working of the mind
of St. Ignatius. The enthusiastic convert cavalier--who confessed to a
romantic worship of ideals from his earlier days, and who for the same
would readily risk his life--when once captured by this new loyalty and
love, could only understand it, interpret it, apply it, pursue it, in his
former way. Love to him was a devotion, not a simple joy in which to revel.
As he understood it, even in its most human form, it demanded a total
surrender, a sacrifice of all he had and was, that the object of his love
might prosper. It was not so much a satisfaction as a call to action; it
was an affair of "deeds more than of words," as he himself described it; a
warfare, if warfare were needed, very much more than a crown to be enjoyed.
More than that, for that, after all, is nothing very singular in men who
are born to heroism, with Ignatius love of this kind became an all-
consuming fire. It burnt up everything in his own life; what would not burn
he threw away. Then, having surrendered himself entirely to it, he could
not be content till he had made all who came under his influence do
likewise. He would compass all the world, and all the people in it, and
every occupation and pursuit, that all might be subdued by this devouring
fire. He would use every means that came to his hand, or that was in the
power of man to apply; he would leap every barrier, push aside every
obstacle, that all might serve this one and only end, this only object of
his love, the Greater Glory of God.
Whither this pursuit would lead him, to what it would make him devote
himself and his followers, at first he scarcely knew, nor did he seem
greatly to care. All he sought was "the greater service of God and the
universal good"; so long as these were attained he was prepared for any
labor, any sacrifice. The almost merciless way in which at times he made
his decisions strikingly illustrates this single, independent mind. At a
moment's notice he is called upon to send a pioneer to the East; without
hesitation he sends the man whom naturally he most loved, and whom at the
time he can least spare. Later this same beloved son appeals for others to
be sent out to help him. He is told he cannot have them; that for the
moment God's greater service required their presence elsewhere. Before his
time a religious Order that did not sing the Office was unknown; Ignatius
considered that for the purpose of God's greater service his religious
should be free, and at the risk of the frustration of all his plans he
secured it. In his day the profession of religious life implied the wearing
of a special religious habit; for Ignatius a fixed habit would impede the
greater service which he ambitioned, and it was set aside. Hitherto
religious life had carried with it corporal penance prescribed by rule.
Ignatius would have no such rule; he would have his men adapt their
penance, sometimes more, sometimes less, strictly according to the life
they had to live, and the work they had to do, "for God's greater glory and
the universal good."
As he judged of work to be done, so did he deal with the training of men.
Always he kept before them the ideal, not merely how they might make
themselves more holy,-but how they might become more fitted for the service
of God and the benefit of men; the one was interpreted in terms of the
other. He would put no limit to their possibilities, no boundaries to their
scope; though he would have them subject to obedience, yet that obedience
was only that their energies might be directed better than they themselves
might be able to direct them. At first, as we have seen, he would have no
rules; the individuality of each must be given liberty to make the best use
of itself that it could. For his men, when trained, and rightly orientated,
one only law would suffice; "the internal law of charity and love which the
Holy Spirit is wont to inscribe in the human heart." When later he found it
expedient, or, as he said, necessary to write something, he wrote no Rules
properly so called, but Constitutions; no regulations, but rather
principles and ideals; not so much orders for subjects to obey, as
directions for the guidance of superiors. In a true sense it may be said
that the Society of Jesus has no rule to this day; what stands for its rule
is a "Summary of the Constitutions," sentences chosen here and there from
the book of the Founder.
Even when he spoke of Obedience, and emphasized that virtue as the crowning
characteristic of his whole Society, it was not the obedience of discipline
of which he spoke; it was the obedience, the willingness to serve and to
give, which follows upon mutual love and affection, the obedience of right
order, the outward expression of that love of God and of others which leads
to the sacrifice of self. The word "obey" may come often in his
Constitutions, but the word "love" comes very much more often. When he puts
the last touch to his Spiritual Exercises he gives a "Contemplation to
obtain" not obedience but "love"; and that love he leads to the completest
surrender of self in the service of His Divine Majesty, as he never tires
of calling his God and Lord.
CHAPTER III THE SOCIETY OF JESUS AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE
(i) The Spiritual Exercises
With this definite ideal and goal in view, and laying aside every other,
Ignatius set himself to forge a means by which he might bring men to see as
he saw, and to give themselves to this greatest of all great adventures,
even as he had done himself. Long before the idea of the Society of Jesus
was so much as proposed to any- one, he had drawn up his "Spiritual
Exercises" and put them into practice. In these Spiritual Exercises, whose
title has become permanently fixed to his name, he reveals that attitude
to- wards the spiritual life which may be said to be peculiarly his own, if
indeed there is anything in St. Ignatius which is peculiarly his own. He
will teach men to see as he sees, but that he may do so he must first
unteach them; the hindrance for most men is not lack of understanding, but
a blindness and short-sightedness which limits the horizon, shutting off
the greater goal beyond by the lesser things around them. This must first
be corrected; a man must first be lifted out of his surroundings. He must
be taught to get outside himself, to look upon himself as a thing apart; to
set his life in the perspective of the greater whole, not in that of his
own advantage or concern, so putting a new value on himself and on all that
his life contains. Thus he defines the object of the Exercises. They are
"to conquer oneself and regulate one's life, and to avoid coming to a
determination through any inordinate affection"; or, as he puts it in
another place, they are "any method of preparing and disposing the soul to
free itself from all inordinate affections, and after it has freed itself
from them, to seek and find the will of God concerning the ordering of life
for the salvation of one's soul."
Freedom to act, truth of vision and of action; in these two phrases are
contained the essence of the spiritual life according to the mind of St.
Ignatius. The first implies self-conquest; the freedom of a man from
himself, and the bonds that bind him from within, keeping him from being
and doing that which in his heart he knows to be best. Of ourselves, it is
true, we can do nothing; we can only live and grow by the growing of the
life of God within us. But, with His grace, we can prepare ourselves. We
can do what lies in our sphere, and He will do the rest; we can put away
ourselves that He may be allowed to enter. So far as I yield to myself, so
far for myself I live; and so far, therefore, God cannot come in. This is
the first condition on our part of growth in the spiritual life, and by
constant repetition he reminds us that the effort for freedom from oneself
must never cease.
Thus, before a man begins to go through the Exercises he is asked "to enter
upon them with a large heart and with liberality towards his Creator and
Lord, offering all his desires and liberty to Him, in order that His Divine
Majesty may make use of his person, and of all he possesses, according to
His most holy will." Scarcely has he begun than his first conclusion is:
"It is therefore necessary that we should make ourselves independent of all
created things." When he speaks of the beginning of sin in the world, the
evil of it lies in the heart of those who were "not willing to help
themselves by means of their liberty in the work of paying reverence and
obedience to their Creator and Lord." When he becomes more positive, and
begins to build upon the ground that has been cleared, those who wish "to
signalize themselves in every kind of service of their Eternal King and
Universal Lord," will do so expressly, "by acting against their own
sensuality, and their carnal and worldly love." Aim at the highest freedom;
evil is slavery, the unwillingness to use one's freedom; the greatest
freedom is freedom from oneself, one's own bondage to the meannesses of
life. This is chivalry, not military discipline; it is service looked on as
a glory, not as a burden to be borne; the man who fails to rise to it, in
the mind of St. Ignatius, is not a sinner, he is an "unworthy knight," a
phrase which at once reveals to us the nature of the man.
"The Eternal King and Universal Lord." The foundations laid as we have just
seen, he seems then to make the limit of man's self-surrender the gauge of
all else; a man is worth precisely what he is willing to give in the
service and no more. To stimulate this surrender, to test its value, he
puts Jesus Christ before "His friends and servants," exhorting them not
merely to poverty, but to a "desire" of it; not to endure, but "to a desire
of reproaches and contempt." The ideal is the service of the King; there is
no better service than imitation, following, resemblance; the true knight
will be as like to his Prince as possible. Hence that ideal is described in
these terms:
"The better to imitate Christ, and to become actually more like Him, I
desire and choose rather poverty with Christ poor, than riches; contempt
with Christ contemned, than honors; and I desire to be esteemed as useless
and foolish for Christ's sake, who was first held to be such, than to be
counted wise and prudent in this world."
The prospect is clear; it may give one pause; but precisely on that account
it is a test of the worth of a man's devotion to the cause. So sure is he
of his ground, and so confident in man's ultimate victory if he will try,
that should human nature flinch he encourages it by saying:
"It will help much . . . to ask in our prayer, even though it be against
the flesh, that Our Lord should choose us to actual poverty, protesting
that we desire, petition, and ask for it, provided it be to the service and
praise of His Divine Goodness."
Then, having given the ideal, having given the encouragement, he closes
with the summary warning:
"Wherefore let each be convinced that he will make progress in all
spiritual matters in proportion as he shall have divested himself of his
own self-love, his own will, and self-interest."
Other things may be of service, and in their way may serve as signs--
prayer, penance, mortification, zeal for souls and the rest. But to him
they are mainly external; the only sure sign of real greatness is the
extent to which a man is willing to surrender himself, all he has and all
he is.
Having clearly laid down the method for the making of a "Worthy Knight" in
the service of the "Universal Lord," the second care of the Saint is that
there shall be no self-deception, no substitution of sham for truth, not
even of convention for reality. He has known in his lifetime how much of
this there is, precisely among the knighthood of the world; when on his
sickbed after Pampeluna he had his leg broken that it might be set again,
men admired his bravery, but he himself knew that his motive was pride. In
his new knighthood this self-deception must not be; the man as far as
possible must ring true, above all within his own soul. A favorite word
with St. Ignatius is "internal." It occurs in most unexpected places; and
when we ask ourselves what he means by it we can find no better synonym
than "real," "genuine." At the outset he warns the aspirant to great things
that "it is not abundance of knowledge that satisfies the soul, but to feel
and relish it internally." He bids the sinner pray for "an interior
knowledge of his sins" that he may be shamed into repentance; as a
deterrent from future relapse he would have him acquire "an interior sense
of the pains which the lost suffer" in hell. Should a man "desire to have
an interior sorrow for his sins," one way to gain it is by doing penance.
When he puts up Jesus as the model before him, he bids him pray again and
again for "an interior knowledge of Our Lord," not one only of books and
commentaries; when he speaks of the Passion he asks for "tears and interior
pain, for the great pain that Christ has suffered for me." Lastly, as
though to make quite sure that his knight has not been self-deceived in the
making, and to leave him no loophole of escape, he gives a whole meditation
on three types of men, two of whom are not wholly genuine while the third
spares himself in nothing.
The man, then, utterly genuine and sincere, who is prepared to spare
himself in nothing for "the service of God and the universal good," this is
the perfect man as St. Ignatius understands perfection; on that foundation
he proceeds to build. And like a knight of the days of chivalry, he builds
with one material, love. Constantly he repeats the word "desire"; and what
is desire but the crying out of love, as St. Leo said long before him? "To
pray for that which I desire"; so he opens every meditation. He assumes
every time that it is there. He who has no desire, he says, may be sent
away with just a clean conscience; he is not the kind of man of whom much
can be made. But, on the other hand, with one who has desires, with one who
is keen and generous, let the giver of the Exercises be careful not to
interfere too much. "It is better and more fitting that its Creator and
Lord Himself communicate with such a soul, inflaming it to love and praise
Him, and disposing it for that way of life by which it will best serve Him
in the future."
Already from the beginning this weapon of love has been at work. When he
brings the soul to think of its own evil-doing, he assumes that "desire,"
through love, will overflow "in great and intense grief and tears for my
sins"; the soul will "wonder with intense affection" that it has not long
since been destroyed. When he comes to speak of hell, his motive is, not
fear for its own sake, but lest "through my faults I forget the love of the
Eternal Lord." All the time that he excites contrition and amendment he
dwells upon thanksgiving, that one has not been lost, that one has had a
Redeemer such as Jesus Christ, and Him crucified, that one still has time
in which to make all things new; and thanksgiving, as he teaches us
elsewhere, is the sure stepping-stone to love.
But when he has passed this stage his love is more daring. "That which I
desire" becomes a fixed thing, and never again changes. To know his Leader,
Jesus Christ, to love Jesus Christ, to follow Jesus Christ, to become like
to Jesus Christ, in spirit and even in detail, this is the St. Ignatius we
have already seen, unconsciously revealing himself as he draws an ideal for
others. In this spirit he meditates, "in order to follow and imitate better
Our Lord"; in this spirit he prays- "The colloquy is made properly by
speaking as one friend speaks to another, or as a servant to his master; at
one time asking for some favor, at another blaming oneself for some evil
committed, now informing him of one's affairs, and seeking counsel in
them." When he comes to the crib at Bethlehem he is "tending Our Lady and
St. Joseph and the Infant Jesus in their necessities, as though I were
present there"; St. Bonaventure could not be more simple. When he sets
before himself his Master as a Leader, it is "in a lowly place, in aspect
fair and winning." When he bids a man decide on his state of life: "The
first rule is that the love, which urges and causes me to seek such or such
a thing, descend from on high, from the love of God; so that he who chooses
feel first in himself that the love which he has more or less for the thing
he chooses, is solely for the sake of his Creator and Lord."
Thus from the love of desire St. Ignatius has risen to the love of
friendship. And as love is measured by the capacity of its power to suffer,
as the love of desire is more intense according to the hunger of the
longing, so the love of friendship is gauged by the greatness of its
compassion. When a friend is in sorrow, his friend sorrows with him; and
the closer the friendship the deeper will that sorrow be. So is it in this
case. No sooner has Ignatius established, and brought to the degree of
devoted service the love of friendship between the man and Jesus Christ,
than he tests it by sorrow. Jesus Christ is not only my Leader. He has
suffered; He is my friend; then the sight of His suffering will make me
suffer, too. "To feel sorrow, affliction, and confusion, because for my
sins Our Lord is going to His Passion." "To begin with great effort to
strive to grieve, and bewail, and lament"; "to consider that He suffers all
these things for my sins, and what I ought to do and to suffer for Him";
"sorrow with Christ who is full of sorrow, anguish with Christ in anguish,
tears and interior (i.e. as we have seen, real, genuine,) pain for the
great pain that Christ has suffered for me"; "sorrow, pain and anguish
recalling frequently to mind the troubles, labors and sorrows of Christ Our
Lord, which He has endured from the moment He was born up to the mystery of
the Passion on which I am now engaged"; "the solitude of Our Lady in such
great grief and affliction of spirit";--thus by constant repetition does he
bring home to the mind of his disciple the real thing that love of
friendship means. And during all the time he proposes nothing else.
Then he makes another step. Great as is the love of friendship, there is a
greater love still, and he will not stop till he has opened the way to it.
It is the love of union; when the lover is lost in the beloved, so that the
joys and sorrows of the one, his successes and failures, his very being,
absorb altogether the whole soul of the other. This is the full
consummation of a man, the whole burnt-offering of himself on the fire of
love; and this consummation Ignatius held out as the final height to which
he would draw his disciples. "To be intensely affected and to rejoice in
the exceeding great joy and gladness of Christ Our Lord"; "to be affected
and to rejoice in the exceeding great joy and gladness of Christ Our Lord";
in this he bids a man to reap the fruits of love, and realize the joy of
living. Such a joy, sinking down into the very marrow of his bones, makes
him prepared for anything. Nothing now can separate him from the love of
God, which he has in Christ Jesus Our Lord.
Last of all, as if he would enforce the truth that the one all-absorbing
motive power of his life is love, and absolutely nothing else, he concludes
with an "Exercise" for its acquisition. But first he makes two statements.
"Love," he says, "is an affair of deeds rather than of words." He still has
his eye on the tendency of human nature to deceive itself, to think that it
loves because it can use love's phrases, to think it forgives because it
merely says it. And secondly, "Love consists in mutual interchange on
either side . . . in giving, communicating, sharing . . . so that the one
share all with the other," and vice versa. Given these axioms then he
proves his point. What has God not given to me? What more would He not give
if He could? "Himself so far as He is able." God the Giver; God living in
me, "making me His temple, to the likeness and image of His Divine
Majesty"; God as it were in creation working for me, laboring for me; God
from whom "all good things and all good gifts descend . . . as the rays
descend from the sun, as waters from the spring"; this is the God who loves
me, who wants me, who is my friend, who asks me for my love in return. Then
what can I give Him? Can there be any limit? All my liberty, all that I am,
all that I possess; whatever He may ask He shall have; nothing shall be too
great or too small to give for the greater glory of my God.
This is the secret of the Society of Jesus as St. Ignatius understands and
interprets it; in this way he would lead his followers to see the goal of
life as he sees it, and to bend themselves to its attainment. Has man
discovered anything more inspiring? Has any other ideal produced more
striking results, even in the way of human life? We do not wonder that St.
Francis Xavier, to take but one example, fashioned as he was in this mold,
with no rules to guide him and no constitutions to keep before him his
master's ideal, could call the Society of Jesus "nothing more than a
Society of love," and under that inspiration alone could bring himself,
apparently with such ease, to accomplish all that he accomplished.
(ii) The Society of Jesus and Prayer
The account just given of the Book of the Spiritual Exercises should make
it immediately clear that it is anything but a book on prayer. It is a
course of training, in which prayer must take its part, and as such it is
proposed and used; but to measure its author's mind or the mind of the
Society of Jesus on prayer merely by what the book contains is to
misunderstand St. Ignatius and his "school" altogether. St. Ignatius never
wrote a book on prayer. With regard to his own prayer he was always
reticent; with regard to the experiences of others, there was no subject
about which he spoke with greater caution. We must remember that in his
time the air was full of mysticism, true and false, and especially in his
native country; while it was preparing the way for saints like Theresa and
John of the Cross, it was also producing its Clarissa Magdalena and others.
Clarissa deceived bishops, theologians, and all around her for close on
forty years; and we have already seen how keenly the saint dreaded sham of
any kind, but, far above all, sham love and sham devotion.
Still we are not without means of learning what he really held concerning
prayer; we have at least five sources, of which the Book of the Exercises
is only one. We learn more from the Constitutions, from his spiritual
leaders, from the few notes on his own prayer that have survived, from the
teaching of those who lived with him, and knew him well. From all these we
discover much; especially of that great liberty of soul which in all things
else was so characteristic of the man, and which could look on the practice
of prayer in no other light. In matter of fact prayer to him was at the
root of everything. By means of prayer he solved his own problems, in it he
sought his consolation and strength; so great an attraction had it for him
that he had to use violence to himself to keep himself away when duty
called.
So was it in regard to others. As we have seen it was by means of prayer,
and meditation, and contemplation that he sought to develop in the man he
formed, the three essentials, self-conquest, interior sincerity, love. When
he had completed his formation, and the fully-trained man was sent out to
do his work, it was assumed that the spirit of prayer would be so alive in
him that he would need no further instruction. When he speaks of such as
these in his Constitutions he simply says that "he assumes for certain that
they will be spiritual men, and that they will have made such progress in
the way of Christ Our Lord that they may run along it"; hence that "in what
concerns prayer and meditation . . . no rule need be prescribed to them
except what discretion and charity may prescribe to each."
But even with those who are not yet fully formed, in other words with every
soul that strives after perfection, the saint is wonderfully free. He
insists, it is true, on mortification; without it he makes little of
prayer. He insists on obedience to one who has knowledge of spiritual
things and has the right guide; from the experience of his own soul, and
from the experience of controlling others, he has learnt too much to allow
a beginner too easily to follow his own bent. But after that is liberty;
the liberty of the children of God. Life to him was prayer, and every thing
in life was to be turned into prayer; this attitude of mind was the first
thing he looked for when he turned his young candidates into the channel of
everyday affairs. Thus we read, in a letter of his secretary, Polanco,
answering enquiries on behalf of his master:
"Students cannot give themselves to long meditations. But they can practice
seeking the presence of God in all things, in conversation, walking, sight,
taste, hearing, understanding, in everything they do. And this method of
prayer, which finds God in everything, is easier than that which compels us
to rise to more abstract ideas concerning Him, when we strain to make them