For the Greater Glory of God

Ignatius of Loyola - Project Gutenburg

​On July 31, we celebrate the memorial of St. Ignatius of Loyola, soldier turned convert, priest, theologian, founder of the Jesuit order, and great influence in the Church and religious life. 

St. Ignatius’ dreams of glory in battle took a different turn when a cannon ball fractured his leg in 1521 requiring the 30-year-old soldier to spend several months in bed. Bored, he asked for books, but instead of popular tales of knights and chivalry, he received the Life of Christ and the Lives of the Saints. Reflecting on these books led Ignatius to a profound conversion. Rising from his bed, he went on to fight in Christ’s army not against men, but against “principalities… powers… [and] evil spirits in the heavens” (Eph 6:12) and not for his own glory, but the “greater glory of God”. He spent a year in solitude and intense prayer where he composed his seminal work, the Spiritual Exercises before embarking on his new mission to found a new religious community, the Society of Jesus with six others. This community would in time number in the tens of thousands across the world. St. Ignatius died in Rome on July 31, 1556.  

​The Sisters have benefited from Ignatian Spirituality through studying Ignatius’ rules for discernment of spirits, the exam prayer, and his Spiritual Exercises. In these exercises, we see Ignatius’s “First Principal” or thesis which unifies all his other works. It too can be a unifying  and driving factor in our lives. May St. Ignatius pray for us that we may become saints! 

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St Ignatius of Loyola

​Spiritual Exercises: "First Principle and Foundation"

​Man was created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord and in this way to save his soul.

​The other things on earth were created for man's use, to help him reach the end for which he was created.
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Thus, it follows, that he must use these means, insofar as they help him to reach his goal, and to refrain from using them insofar as they keep him from that goal.
 
We should make ourselves indifferent to all creatures inasmuch as it is left to our individual freedom and not forbidden us; in this way we do not, on our part, prefer health to sickness, wealth to poverty, honors to dishonor, a long life to a short one, and so in all other things.
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We should only desire and choose those things that most lead us to the goal for which we were created.