Thoughts on Saint Ignatius

To understand St. Ignatius, it’s helpful to begin with his core attitude, his way of looking at the world, his “spirituality.” Fortunately, since he wrote so much about this, we don’t have to work hard to know it.  Looking around the world, Ignatius perceived the footprints and handprints of God everywhere.  To his eyes the world was one big sign of God’s love, a huge love letter to humankind.  First there is creation in all its glory – yes, trees and seasons, but even more so humanity in its own splendor.  More personally, Ignatius looked at his life and was deeply thankful that God had given him so many gifts and talents, and so many loved ones.  All of these he accepted as signs of God’s glorious creative love.

 

But for Ignatius God is not only the giver of earthly life, God is also the giver of eternal life: redemption.  As splendid as this world is, relationships and personal gifts are nothing compared to the eternal gifts that God has already crafted for us.  Despite the fact that we are owed nothing, despite the fact that we could never merit all that has been given, God gives them to us anyway…  just because he loves us.

 

But there’s more: Ignatius saw God not only as the source of all that is – both earthly and eternal – but he experienced God as the constant sustainer of life. He imagined God as a happy, attentive, faithful laborer, who never calls in sick, who never takes a break, but who toils night and day, day and night, so that we and the world can flourish. It is God who sustains every living thing, and in the case of human beings, not only physically or biologically, but also spiritually.  At every moment of our lives, from conception to death, God is hard at work filling us with his light and love and urging us to grow in wisdom, in holiness, and in love… All of this, so that one day we will be ready to receive the eternal gifts that await us.

 

In short, Ignatius knew that he and his life were gift – pure gift.  For this reason he cultivated in his heart a constant attitude of thanksgiving.  He was a deeply grateful man.  As he wrote in the Spiritual Exercises: we gaze upon the generosity of God and one question should arise in our hearts:  What ought I do to in order to say thank you to God?  The response, of course, is to love back, to love God with a love that is itself marked with profound and eager generosity.

 

Wanting deeply to please God, Ignatius strove to make his entire life a huge thank-you back to God. He did so by becoming a freer, more loving person, not fixated on his own perspective and desires, but sincerely committed to what he perceived to be God’s desires and hopes for humankind. Pleasing God by living according to God’s plans is what motivated Ignatius.  And this is what allowed him to accept so many unexpected, and probably also undesired, twists and turns in his life.  

 

Today, Ignatius invites us to join him in being generous lovers of the One who first loves us.

 

Fr. Frank Reale, S.J.