"Ignatius, for understandable reasons, is
the saint I know better than any other. He founded our Order. I'd like
to remind you that Carlo Maria Martini also came from that order,
someone who is very dear to me and also to you. Jesuits were and still
are the leavening - not the only one but perhaps the most effective
- of Catholicism: culture, teaching, missionary work, loyalty to the
Pope. But Ignatius who founded the Society, was also a reformer and a
mystic. Especially a mystic."
2 comments:
Ignatius is described as having a "love of penance" in "The Life of St. Ingatius of Loyola". But that is a misleading description. Rather, that attitude reflects a judgement about alternatives. Do you want to suffer for what might be described as eternity, or do you want to undergo pain now in order to eliminate that suffering? Such choices are real - although very few are aware of them. That is one role of a Saint -- to let people know that their actions in this lifetime are judged. Does that mean that we should advise people to inflict pain on themselves? No. For most people it will do little good, since they have so many aspects which are being judged (randomly inflicting pain is not applicable to their particular shortcomings). A Saint is a special case. God hears Saints and makes special "trades" because of who a Saint is. But these "trades" are more complicated that it might seem, and they are beyond my ability to describe.
St Ignatius could be seen as a reformer in the sense that he rallied the troops AGAINST the Protestant heresies and brought a guerilla-style spiritual warfare to nations like England that had succumbed. It's too bad that the vast majority of today's Jesuits have not only swallowed the modernism/new-agism/protestantism of our age, but have neither the moral fortitude nor the desire to battle against it.
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