Saint Ignatius of Loyola

Íñigo López de Loyola was born in 1491 in the tower house of Loyola, in the Basque Country, the youngest of thirteen children. He was a courtier and a soldier, and his career as a soldier ended on May 20, 1521: during the siege of Pamplona a cannonball shattered his leg. While he was recovering, he asked for tales of chivalry. There were none in the house: they gave him a life of Christ and a book of saints’ lives. He read them for months, and noticed something that would become the center of all his thinking — that daydreaming about knightly exploits made him feel good in the moment and empty afterward, while thinking about Francis and Dominic left a consolation that stayed. That observation is the origin of the “discernment of spirits.” He became a pilgrim, spent eleven months in a cave at Manresa, and there he began writing the Spiritual Exercises: not a book to read, but instructions for someone guiding another person through a month of silence. They are still in use today, almost unchanged. He studied in Paris, where at forty he sat down among boys to learn Latin, and there he gathered his companions: Francis Xavier, Peter Faber and five others. In 1540 the Society of Jesus was born. He died in Rome on July 31, 1556. Gregory XV proclaimed him a saint in 1622. If your name is Ignatius, today is your name day.