Who was Ignatius of Loyola?
Ignatius was born in 1491 and became a mercenary. He was not, in his early life, a particularly holy guy. In the first lines of his autobiography, he described himself in this way: “Up to his twenty-sixth year the heart of Ignatius was enthralled by the vanities of the world. His special delight was in the military life, and he seemed led by a strong and empty desire of gaining for himself a great name.”1 In May of 1521 he was struck by a cannonball which broke one leg and wounded the other. Since he wanted to continue to be a soldier to engage in “his special delight” he opted for additional surgeries and a longer time recuperating so he could regain full function in both legs. He recuperated at his family’s home, which was a small castle in northern Spain, and had few books to read, all religious texts.
He started to consider a life devoted to God. He was trying to decide what to do once he was healed. Priest or soldier? Holy man or mercenary? He noticed that when he thought about devoting his life to God, he felt good. When he daydreamed about returning to the battlefield, or “what he should do in honor of an illustrious lady, how he should journey to the city where she was, in what words he would address her, and what bright and pleasant sayings he would make use of, what manner of warlike exploits he should perform to please her.”2 he felt good about that as well. Thinking about serving God made him feel good in a specific way. It was sustaining and sustained. It lasted in a steady flow. “When he thought of worldly things it gave him great pleasure, but afterward he found himself dry and sad.”3
This was to become the foundation for the Spiritual Exercises. Ignatius thought of the Exercises as similar to physical exercise. “For just as taking a walk, journeying on foot, and running are bodily exercises, so we call Spiritual Exercises every way of preparing and disposing the soul to rid itself of all inordinate attachments, and after their removal, seeking and finding the will of God in the disposition of our life …” (SE #1) He gave very specific directions for how to do these exercises, the way a trainer might outline a set of physical exercises to increase flexibility. The result is a process for listening and observing the internal movements of one’s imagination, mind and spirit developed by a soldier with a broken leg who was stuck in a drafty castle.
The concept of “inordinate attachments” is central to Ignatian thought. The Buddhist tradition also attends to the spiritual challenges of attachment. Clinging to people, situations, narratives or material goods causes suffering. Ignatius also explored the need to get rid of all our inordinate attachments in order to be able to clearly see what we are to do.
Ignatius decided to devote himself to God, and leave behind his life as a mercenary. But Ignatius went about it with a misguided fervor for a solitary spiritual life. For almost a year, he spent much of his time in prayer in a cave, living as a beggar and eating little.
“Ignatius, after coming close to suicide because of his ferocious spiritual regimen, consulted a spiritual director, who brought him back down to earth and helped him to rejoin the human race.” (Harbaugh p. xiv) Ignatius decided to return to school and study, which he did for another twelve years, an older soldier studying with young men. But the young men were intrigued with his Spiritual Exercises, the instructions he had written to help others replicate the process he himself had undergone. He founded the Jesuits, or the Order of the Society of Jesus. They e
