{"id":1152,"date":"2010-07-31T07:58:00","date_gmt":"2010-07-31T07:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/yimcatholic\/2010\/07\/for-all-the-saints-ignatius-of-loyola\/"},"modified":"2017-01-24T18:59:26","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T23:59:26","slug":"for-all-the-saints-ignatius-of-loyola","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/yimcatholic\/2010\/07\/for-all-the-saints-ignatius-of-loyola.html","title":{"rendered":"For All the Saints: Ignatius of Loyola"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

<\/a>In Congregational Sunday School as a child, I used to sing, \u201cJesus loves me, yes I know, for the Bible tells me so.\u201d Today, I have a dear friend who signs his e-mails, \u201cIf the Catholic Church teaches it, it must be true.\u201d This moves the argument from Protestant to Catholic terms: I know what I know, not because the Bible tells me but because the Church does.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s really only one thing that can convince me of the Truth, or of Jesus\u2019s love. If I am going to be a free and reasoning human being, the only thing that tells is my experience. I want to experience Jesus as intimately as that little child in the picture.
<\/a>
This is what touches me in today\u2019s reading from the Office about St. Ignatius of Loyola. The excerpt is an anecdote from the life of the founder of the Jesuits that is recycled in Fr. James Martin\u2019s book My Life with the Saints, <\/i>which was so instrumental in my conversion. I know next to nothing about St. Ignatius or the Jesuits\u2014I think of him as a sort of Don Quixote who woke up; I think of the Jesuits as really smart guys in black who, like me, may sometimes be too smart for their own good\u2014but I think I understand the anecdote.<\/p>\n

Bedridden and in search of something to read, Ignatius asked for tales of knight-errantry, but none were available. So, in spite of himself, he read \u201ca life of Christ and a collection of the lives of saints written in Spanish.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Ignatius reflected on worldly thoughts, he felt intense pleasure; but when he gave them up out of weariness, he felt dry and depressed. Yet when he thought of living the rigorous sort of life he knew the saints had lived, he not only experienced pleasure when he actually thought about it, but even after he dismissed these thoughts, he still experienced great joy.<\/i>

<\/i>
<\/a>Yet he did not pay attention to this, nor did he appreciate it until one day, in a moment of insight, he began to marvel at the difference. Then he understood his experience: thoughts of one kind left him sad, the others full of joy. And this was the first time he applied a process of reasoning to his religious experience. Later on, when he began to formulate his spiritual exercies, he used this experience as an illustration to explain the doctrine he taught his disciples on the discernment of spirits.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cHe understood his experience.\u201d One of our great saints converted <\/i>because of experience. <\/i>Ignatius\u2019s spiritual readings, unlike tales of knights and romance, corresponded to the deepest needs of his heart, leaving him not dry but joyful. <\/p>\n

I am undertaking a book purge in my house. Now that I\u2019ve entered my 60th year, I realize that I will never read all of the books I have accumulated around me, like boxes of Topps baseball cards from my youth. So I am giving them away, or selling them for pennies to the dollar where I can. Slowly the pile is dwindling down to a couple hundred or so, and maybe finally it will come down to a few dozen. I\u2019m pretty sure that when the dwindling is done, the flashy Folio Society editions that I collected during a misspent youth will all have vanished. Popular novels by Cormac McCarthy and Tony Hillerman will be gone too. I\u2019m not sure what will be left exactly, but I\u2019m sure the saints will figure highly on the remaining list, as well as a few secular works that have always moved me, including Norman MacLean\u2019s Young Men and Fire.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

If I remain true to the impulse that\u2019s working now, I will hold on to those few books that correspond most deeply to the needs of my heart, the books that leave me anything but dry. I will do my best to be guided by experience.<\/p>\n

There is a paradox waiting here, however, as our dear guest priest, Fr. Dan Hennessey suggested this morning. In his homily, he read us a prayer of St. Ignatius that I had never heard. (Repeat: I know very little about the guy.) The prayer is as follows:<\/p>\n

Take, O Lord, and receive my entire liberty, my memory, my understanding and my whole will. All that I am and all that I possess You have given me: I surrender it all to You to be disposed of according to Your will. Give me only Your love and Your grace; with these I will be rich enough, and will desire nothing more.<\/i><\/p>\n

As a human being, I want to\u2014I must\u2014preserve and enhance my freedom and reason. I want my faith to remain solidly founded on experience. But St. Ignatius invites me to give up \u201cmy entire liberty . . . my whole will.\u201d It\u2019s no contradiction. When I have met Jesus as surely as that child in the picture, I will\u2014from freedom as from reason\u2014give him my whole will too. Or so I can pray. \u00a0 <\/i><\/p>\n

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In Congregational Sunday School as a child, I used to sing, \u201cJesus loves me, yes I know, for the Bible tells me so.\u201d Today, I have a dear friend who signs his e-mails, \u201cIf the Catholic Church teaches it, it must be true.\u201d This moves the argument from Protestant to Catholic terms: I know what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":143,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nFor All the Saints: Ignatius of Loyola<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In Congregational Sunday School as a child, I used to sing, \u201cJesus loves me, yes I know, for the Bible tells me so.\u201d Today, I have a dear friend who signs\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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