St. Ignatius, Spiritual Exercises of

Ignatius was born at the castle of Loyola in Spain in 1491. He founded the Society of Jesus, one of the largest religious orders in the Catholic Church in 1540. Ignatius of Loyola has had a lasting influence on Christian spirituality and was canonized a saint by Pope Gregory XV in 1662. Members of the Society of Jesus are commonly known as the Jesuits. Today there are more than 20,000 Jesuits ministering in 112 countries. Their formation as Jesuit priests and brothers, as well as their distinctive spiritual ministry is rooted in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.

Ignatius had little spiritual inclination in his early life. He was raised a nobleman and warrior and enjoyed a rather self-indulgent life of an aristocrat of his time. When he was 30 years old and engaged in a battle defending the fortress of his town of Pamplona, Spain, against the French, he was seriously wounded by a cannonball. Both his legs were injured in the assault and surgeries without the benefit of anesthesia did not produce a complete healing. He was forced into a long recovery in the castle of Loyola where his only activity was reading. The only books available to him in the castle were a four-volume life of Christ and the lives of the saints. Serious reading was new to Ignatius and with it he experienced a journey into previously unexplored regions of his imagination. In place of his former dreams of being a victorious warrior and courtier of princesses, he found himself identifying with the stories of Holy Scripture and imaging himself in the gospel stories or taking on the spiritual quests of one of the saints, which he was reading about during his long convalescence. This was the beginning of his religious conversion, initial experiences of contemplation, and his discovery of spiritual discernment, or discernment of spirits, which is at the heart of his Spiritual Exercises.

Gradually Ignatius felt called to abandon his former ways and old desires for fame and fortune. When he was sufficiently recovered from his wounds, though limping, Ignatius decided to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to walk the way that Jesus walked. His journey took him toward Barcelona, the point of embarkation for Rome, where pilgrims sought permission to visit the Holy Land. Ignatius stopped first, however, in Manressa where he stayed in a cave outside of town. While intending to stay only a short time, Ignatius was drawn into the deeper caverns of his own interior life. He experienced an encounter with God—a vision—that would direct him to embrace the truth that life is the journey of “finding God in all things.” This grace, finding God in all things, has remained a core virtue in Jesuit spirituality for 450 years. [Page 431]It was in the literal and metaphorical cave at Manressa that Ignatius began to detail his own experience of spiritual awakening and conversion. The little notebook that he carried from his healing time in the castle of Loyola began to expand to become a book, Spiritual Exercises, which is the heart of Ignatian spirituality.

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