The Death Of Saint Ignatius Of Loyola

Father Oliver Manare has also some striking sentences. "While inculcating obedience, his effort always was to find out first what his subject wanted, before he gave an order. He had a wonderful grace of speech, and was so careful about externals that he would sometimes copy a letter three times in order to avoid corrections. The only books one saw on his table were The New Testament and The Following of Christ."

At last on the thirty-first of July, 1556, the end came, so peacefully, amid circumstances so usual and untheatrical that they seemed almost uncanny to those fervent souls who fancied that a saint like Ignatius ought to have gone to heaven in some solemn, religious ceremony.

There was nothing of the sort. For four or five days he had had a low fever, but no special attention had been paid to this. Indeed, several others, including Father Lainez, were also in the infirmary and worse than Ignatius, who was thought to be over the worst and to be improving. On Tuesday, the 28th, he received Holy Communion with the other sick, and next evening he asked to see the Spanish doctor Torres.

On Thursday he sent for his secretary, Padre Polanco, and begged him to ask the Pope for a last blessing for himself, as he hardly expected to live, and at the same time for Father Lainez, whose case was causing anxiety. "But Padre," answered Polanco, "the doctors don't take so serious a view." "I think the end is not far off," was the answer. Being still full of hope, Polanco asked if Friday would not do as well, as he had some very important letters to send off in the evening. "Rather to-day than to-morrow," was the characteristic answer, "but I leave myself in your hands. Do as you think best."

Polanco asked the doctor that evening as to the degree of danger. "I will tell you about that when I see him to-morrow," was the doctor's reply. Polanco felt relieved, and safer still when he heard that Ignatius had taken a fair supper.

But at sunrise next morning, that is about 4.30, Brother Tomaso the infirmarian came running to say that the Father was in his agony. He had watched with him and had noticed that after midnight his sighs of "Ay Dios" (Ah God) became quieter and quieter.

Polanco hurried straight to the Vatican for the Papal indulgence, while two doctors and other Fathers were at the bed-side in a trice. He was lying so quiet that they at first offered him restoratives, not recognizing in their anxiety how near the end was. Only when it was too late did they perceive that he was actually passing away. The last absolution and blessing was given, and the Proficiscere was said, but there was not enough time left to fetch the holy oils, or the sacred Viaticum.

He had received, as we remember, three days before. And so between five and six, surrounded by his praying sons, and with the utmost peace and tranquillity, he went forth on the heavenward passage, of which he had so often thought with tears of joy.

Thus happily ended the Imitator of Christ. For us, perhaps, it may be less easy to recognize that imitation in some of the closing stages than in the opening scenes.

When we see the young cavalier on his early pilgrimages "taking nothing for the way, no scrip, no bread, nor money in his purse," the copying of Christ, complete, external, triumphant over obstacles, cannot escape our notice. Whereas the night vigil of the old man worn out by fever, and murmuring Ay Dios, Ay Dios, as he lay dying alone, does not make the same quick impression. But if we look back over his life, we shall see that imitation was ever becoming more and more interior, in the head and heart; less obvious, less striking to the outward observer.

Certainly it was none the less real and true For it is not the mechanical repetition of the acts of Christ, that makes the follower, but the copying of His virtues, the obedience to His precepts in our daily life. We must learn from Him, as St. Austin puts it, "not how to create worlds, or to rule things visible and invisible, but how to be meek and humble of heart." Had Ignatius insisted, his death-bed would have been graced by religious consolations, the lack of which he doubtless regretted greatly. But he had rightly left himself in the hands of the doctors and the staff, and in that path of obedience he would rather die than swerve from it. "Obedient unto death," that was to die as should the imitator of Christ.

Link (here) to the book entitled, Saint Ignatius of Loyola - Imitator of Christ written by Fr. John Hungerford Pollen, S.J.