Timeline on St Ignatius of Loyola

 

Compiled by Rev. Dr Ozzie Mascarenhas SJ in 2012 at AIMIT

[See also St. Ignatius Loyola: Letters and Instructions, edited by Palmer, Padberg and McCarthy (2006), pp. xv-xx]

Ignatius was born in Loyola, October 1491, youngest of thirteen children. The same year, Henry VIII of England was born, and Ferdinand and Isabella sieged Granada.

1492: Marks the end of Moorish Kingdom in Spain; Columbus discovers America, and Alexander VI (Borgia) becomes Pope. 

1498: Girolamo Savonarola (born 1452), Italian Monk, religious and political reformer, is burnt at the stake for heresy, at age 46.

1500: Future Holy Roman Emperor (1519-1556) Charles V is born in Spain.

1502: Spanish translations of Ludolph of Saxony’s Life of Christ.

1503: Julius II elected Pope.  Desiderius Erasmus (born 1466?), a humanist, scholar, and theologian, publishes Enchiridion of the Christian Soldier.  His next book Praise of Folly would be published in 1511.  These books might have influenced Ignatius, especially before and during his conversion (1506-1521).

1504: Martin Luther (born in 1483), a German scholar joins the Augustinian Order.

1506: age 15, Ignatius enters service at Arévalo, Spain, as page with Juan Velásquez, treasurer of Ferdinand the Catholic.  Construction of St. Peter’s Basilica begins in Rome.  Michelangelo will be painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling during 1508-1512.

1509: John Calvin, the future Protestant Reformer, is born in France (as Jean Caulvin). Henry VIII becomes King of England.

1513: Leo X (of the House of Medici, the wealthy Florentine Family that dominated Florence during the 15th and 16th century) is elected Pope.

1515: Teresa of Avila and Philip Neri are born.

1516: Charles I becomes King of Spain in 1516, and later on as Holy Emperor is called Charles V.  Erasmus’s Greek and Latin New Testament is out. Thomas More publishes Utopia.  Nicolo di Bernardo Machiavelli (1469-1527), a Florentine Statesman and writer publishes The Prince.

1517: At the age 26, Ignatius enters service with the Duke of Nájera, Viceroy of Navarre. (The same year, Martin Luther defects from the Church after pinning 95 theses on the Cathedral door in Wittenberg).

1518: We have the first extant letter of Ignatius written to Charles I of Spain on December 20.

1520: Luther is excommunicated. Alcalá Polyglot (i.e., multilingual) Bible of Cisneros is out.

1521: At the age 30, Ignatius is wounded in the Siege of Pamplona, and hence, returns to Loyola. Suleiman the Magnificent (1494-1566) becomes the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire; with the Turks he takes Belgrade.

1522: At the age 31, Ignatius is at Aranzazu, Montserrat, and Manresa.  Adrian VI, the reform Pope, is elected, the last non-Italian pope until 1978.  He reigns only one year.

1523: At the age 32, Ignatius is in Barcelona, then in Venice, Rome, and in Cyprus on way to Jerusalem.  Clement VII (Medici) elected Pope.

1524: At the age 33, Ignatius begins to study Latin in Barcelona. The Order of Theatines is founded.

1525: The Order of Capuchins is founded.

1526: At the age 35, he studies at Alcalá and later (1527) is arrested by Inquisition on suspicion of being an Alumbrado. [Alumbrado (Spanish: “Enlightened”) Italian Illuminato, plural Illuminati, is a follower of a mystical Christian movement in Spain during the 16th and 17th centuries].

1527: At the age 36, Ignatius transfers to Salamanca for studies and is arrested there again. 

1528: At the age 37, Ignatius arrives in Paris.  Studies at Collège de Montaigu.

1529: At the age 38, Ignatius meets and rooms with Pierre Favre and Francis Xavier; the latter were studying in Paris since 1525.  Ignatius studies at College Sainte-Barbe, Paris.  Xavier received the Bachelor of Arts degree in 1529. 

1530: Charles V is crowned emperor. Lutheran “Confession of Augsburg.” King Henry VIII breaks away with Rome.

1532: At the age 41, Ignatius receives Bachelors of Arts (philosophy) from the University of Paris. Calvinist reformation begins in France.

1533: At the age 42, Ignatius receives Licentiate degree. Begins study of theology in Venice.

1534: In January and February, Favre makes the Spiritual Exercises.  Xavier finally makes the Exercises too. Favre is ordained priest on May 30, 1534; he celebrates his first Mass on July 22, 1534. Three weeks later, June 1534, Montmartre, Vows of the first companions; Ignatius, Favre, Xavier, Lainez, Salmeron, Bobadilla, and Rodrigues. Favre celebrated Mass for the First Companions. Paul III elected Pope.  Michelangelo begins the Last Judgment (will continue till 1541).

1535: At the Ignatius receives MA diploma in theology; leaves Paris for Spain because of ill health, leaving Favre charge of the group.  In Paris, Favre receives Broët, Codure and Jay among the Companions.  This completes the First Ten Companions who will later constitute the nucleus of the Society of Jesus.  Thomas More and John Fisher martyred.

1536: At the Ignatius studies in Venice, while giving the Exercises.

1537: Ordination of the Companions at Venice. Ignatius has vision at La Storta on way to Rome with Favre and Lainez.

1538: All ten companions are in Rome in ministries. Ignatius celebrates his first Mass. Charles Borromeo is born.

1539: The “Deliberation” by the First Companions on the foundation of SJ.

1540: The Society of Jesus is founded upon approval of Pope Julius III.  Xavier departs for Portugal on way to the Indies. Angela Merici, founder of the Ursulines, dies.

1541: Ignatius is elected superior general.  First solemn professions.  Ignatius begins work on Constitutions. May 1541, Xavier docks at Goa, India.

1542: Three established Jesuit houses: Rome, Paris, Lisbon.

1544: Ignatius is ill.  Begins to write the first part of extant “Spiritual Diary.”

1545: Last part of “Spiritual Dairy” written.  Nadal enters the Society. Isabel Roser and two companions take Jesuit vows in Rome. Council of Trent opens.

1546: Jesuits (Lainez, Favre, Salmeron and Jay) are sent to Trent by Paul III.  Martin Luther dies. Favre dies in Rome before reaching Trent.  Francis Borgia secretly enters the Society while still remaining Duke of Gandia.  Isabel Roser and women companions released from vows. 

1547: Polanco becomes Secretary of SJ.  Peter Canisius enters SJ.  Henry VIII, King of England, dies at age 56. On May 7, 1547, Ignatius addresses the fathers and scholastics of Coimbra, Portugal, the “Letter of Perfection” urging them to advance toward perfection as per the vocation and gifts they have received from the Lord, avoiding undue excesses.

1548: Paul III approves the Spiritual Exercises; they are printed for the first time.  Ignatius is ill again. Suarez is born.

1549: Xavier in Japan.  Ignatius ill.

1550: Julius III elected Pope. The Pope formally confirms the Society of Jesus.  Ignatius is gravely ill.

1551:  Roman College is founded.  Meeting in Rome on first version of Constitutions.  Crisis in Society in Portugal.  Ignatius ill.

1552: Ignatius completes “Autograph” (Text B of Constitutions). Xavier dies off the coast of China. German College founded in Rome.

1553: March 26, Ignatius composes the “Letter of Obedience” to the Members of the Society in Portugal; it was written in the context of crisis and split in the Jesuit Province of Portugal, polarized between supporters and opponents of the former Provincial, Simão Rodrigues, and the tension brought by his successor, Diego Miró. Even an official visitor sent by Ignatius, Miguel de Torres, could not reconcile the groups.  About thirty men left the Jesuits during this restless period.  Ignatius begins to dictate the so-called Autobiography.

1554: Nadal elected Vicar General of SJ. Construction begins on Jesuit Church in Rome, initially entrusted to Michelangelo. Ignatius often ill. Ignatius admits Juan of Austria, daughter of Charles V, secretly as a Jesuit.

1555: Gonçalves de Camara writes his “Memoirs” of Ignatius.  

1556: Ignatius ill much of the first half of the year.  He dies on July 31, 1556. Lainez appointed Vicar General. Charles V abdicates throne as Holy Roman Emperor.  Palestrina composes Missa Papa Marcelli.  Ignatius writes his last letter to the Rectors of Italy.  Between his first and the last letter, during 1518-1556, we have 6,740 extant letters and instructions of Ignatius that provide valuable information regarding him and Jesuit governance.  These are preserved in 12 volumes and published in a series Monumenta Historica Societatis Jesu.  Some 73 others were discovered later.  Others have undoubtedly disappeared. That total of more than 6,800 letters makes it the largest collection of the sixteenth century. It is larger than the collected letters of Erasmus and larger than the combined collected of Martin Luther and John Calvin.

SAINT ISAAC JOGUES

 

Saint Isaac Jogues

Death: 10/18/1646

Nationality (place of birth): France

Isaac Jogues (1607-1646) became well known in France when he returned after escaping from slavery among the Mohawks in Canada with his hands badly mutilated from torture. Despite his sufferings, he returned to the missions where he was eventually martyred. Jogues was born in Orleans, France on Jan. 10, 1607 and entered the Jesuits at Rouen when he was 17 years old. Two months after celebrating his first Mass Feb. 10, 1636, he was on his way to the Jesuit mission in New France. He wrote his mother of his great joy when he landed in Quebec and saw native Americans waiting on shore. After only a month and a half, he set out on his first mission to the Hurons, traveling the 900 miles to Ihonatiria by water. The party spent 19 days paddling and carrying the flotilla of canoes around obstacles. During the voyage, the Hurons gave Jogues the name ""Ondessonk"" (""bird of prey"").

Jogues met his hero, Father John de Brébeuf at Ihonatiria, and began learning the Huron language. The first problem arose when a smallpox epidemic broke out in the settlement and people blamed the missionaries for bringing the disease. When the epidemic passed, the settlement was abandoned and Jogues moved first to Teanaustayé and then on to Sainte-Marie, a thriving enterprise where missionaries had taught people how to cultivate the land and raise cattle, pigs and fowl. A group of Chippewas who had come to Sainte-Marie admired the prosperous settlement and invited the Jesuits to establish a mission among them. Jogues visited them in September 1641 and found them eager to hear about God, but the small number of Jesuits made it impossible to expand to new tribes at that time.

During the winter and spring of 1642, Jogues prepared neophytes at Sainte-Marie for baptism on Holy Saturday; one of the 120 adult converts was Ahtsistari, the tribe's greatest war chief. Although the French missionary felt contented that Christianity was beginning to take root, he wanted to convert the whole Huron nation and offered himself in prayer as a sacrifice to make that happen.

In June Jogues accompanied a group of Hurons back to Three Rivers, near Quebec, for supplies. The voyage was hazardous because the Iroquois were at war with the French. Jogues tried to get more Jesuit priests for the mission, but none were available. The provincial suggested he take René Goupil, a layman who was a surgeon and had promised to work with the Jesuits, remain celibate and obey the Jesuit superior. Jogues, Goupil and the Hurons set out Aug. 1 to return to Sainte-Marie, but were attacked one day into the voyage by a war party of 70 Mohawks who took three Frenchmen and 20 Hurons as prisoners. The Mohawks tortured Jogues by partly mutilating his fingers. Goupil asked Jogues to accept him into the Society of Jesus as a brother, given the peril they faced, and Jogues accepted his vows en route.

The Mohawks headed back to their home village passing through the St. Lawrence, Lake Champlain and into Lake George. Finally on August 14 the flotilla arrived at Ossernenon (which today is Auriesville, New York) on the bank of the Mohawk River. The prisoners endured the torture of running the gauntlet between two lines of warriors who beat the captives as they staggered by. Jogues and Goupil had to endure other torments; a woman cut off Jogues' thumb. Then the two Frenchmen became slaves of the chief who had captured them. Goupil was killed on Sept. 29, 1642 when someone saw him make the sign of the cross over a child, but Jogues remained a slave even while ministering to the Hurons who had been captured with him. When he accompanied several Mohawks on a trading trip to the Dutch settlement of Fort Orange (Albany), the Dutch tried unsuccessfully to ransom him. Finally they suggested he try to escape. After some hesitancy, Jogues hid in one of the Dutch ships where he remained for six weeks until his captors' anger at losing him subsided. Eventually he made his way to New York and then back to Europe.

He landed in Brittany on Christmas morning and made his way to Rennes where his Jesuit brothers received him as a hero. Jogues' only regret was his inability to celebrate Mass because of his mutilated hands: on the left hand the index finger was nothing but a stub and the thumb was missing while the thumb and index finger of the right hand were badly disfigured. He was unable to hold the host correctly, but Pope Urban VIII granted him a dispensation to celebrate Mass. Jogues visited his mother in Orléans but was eager to return to the missions so he set sail in May, arriving at Three Rivers in time to attend the July peace conference between the French and the Indians representing the Iroquois federation. The final treaty needed the approval of the Mohawks; Jogues was chosen as an envoy to obtain their consent. He surprised his former captors by arriving as the ambassador of the powerful French nation and offering them that government's gifts. They accepted the terms of the treaty, and Jogues offered pastoral care to the Christian Huron prisoners remaining there. Then Jogues returned to Three Rivers on July 3 where he was supposed to remain.

In September the Hurons asked the Jesuit missionary to accompany them on an embassy to the Mohawks who had invited their former enemies to arrange details of the treaty. Jogues took along another layman as his assistant, John de La Lande, an experienced woodsman who had settled in New France before offering to help the Jesuits. The small party left Quebec Sept. 24, 1646. A few days into the trip they learned the Mohawks were on the warpath again. Only one Huron volunteered to continue with Jogues and La Lande. Meanwhile, the Mohawks in Ossernenon had suffered a crop failure and an epidemic, blaming it on the chest of vestments and books that the Jesuit had left behind him when he visited them as French ambassador. Warriors set out in search of some Frenchman to kill and were delighted when on October 17 they captured Jogues and his two companions.

The captors were beaten on their way back to Ossernenon where people cut strips of flesh from the neck and arms of the Jesuit. Some of the clans were friendly toward the missionaries and wanted peace with the French, but the war-like Bear Clan wanted to kill Jogues, which they did the next day when he was struck down as he entered a lodge. La Lande was advised not to leave another lodge where he was under protection, but he tried to slip out at night and was immediately killed by some warriors who were waiting to ambush him. The bodies of the two Frenchmen were thrown into the river while their heads were exposed on the palisades protecting the village.

Originally Collected and edited by: Tom Rochford,SJ

SAINT JOHN DE BRÉBEUF

Saint John de Brébeuf

Death: 03/16/1649

Nationality (place of birth): France

John de Brébeuf (Jean de Brébeuf, 1593-1649) was the first Jesuit missionary in Huronia (1626) and a master of the Indian language. He founded mission outposts, converted thousands to the faith and inspired many Jesuits to volunteer for the missions of New France. Massive in body, gentle in character, with the heart of a giant, he was known as the apostle of the Hurons.

Brébeuf was born in Normandy, France and entered the Jesuits after he finished his university studies. In a spirit of humility, he asked to be a brother, but his superior convinced him to study to be a priest. He taught at a secondary school-level college in Rouen and then was ordained a priest on Feb. 19, 1622. That same year he became the treasurer of the college. The tall, rugged Jesuit responded to an appeal made two years later by the Franciscan Recollects who asked other religious orders to help evangelize the native peoples of North America. Along with four other Jesuit companions, Brébeuf arrived in Quebec June 19, 1625. While Brébeuf waited for the Hurons to arrive, he joined a group of Montagnais in a hunting expedition that lasted from that October until the following March. The young French priest learned to accommodate himself to the native way of travel and diet.

When summer came a group of Hurons came to Cap de la Victoire to barter for trade goods. Brébeuf, another Jesuit and a Franciscan went to meet them and asked to accompany them back to their homelands. The Hurons were willing to take the first two, but not Brébeuf who towered over them and was much too big for their canoes; they were afraid he would be too much work to carry. The missionaries offered enough gifts to overcome reluctance, and Brébeuf was permitted into a canoe on the condition he would not move. On July 26, 1626 Brébeuf began his journey to Huronia. When the travelers came to cascades or places where they had to carry the canoes and all the gear overland, Brébeuf's great strength won his hosts' admiration. They named him, ""Echon"" (""the man who carries the load"").

The party arrived in Huronia in late August, and the missionaries settled in Toanché, a village of the Bear Clan of the Huron nation. Brébeuf first had to learn the Huron language, which he devoted two years to studying, along with the people's customs and beliefs. He had a talent for languages and wrote a Huron grammar, translated a catechism and prepared a phrase book. His success with language did not carry over into converting adults; the only converts he made during the winter of 1628 were the dying whom he baptized.

Brébeuf's missionary efforts were cut short when he was sent back to France after the French and English ended their war. An English blockade had kept the French from resupplying the colony, so Brébeuf took 20 canoes loaded with grain to Quebec on July 17, 1629. Two days after he arrived, the French capitulated and he was expatriated with other missionaries to France.

For two years Brébeuf resumed his work at the college in Rouen, but returned as soon as possible to Canada when it was restored to France by a treaty with the English. He arrived in Quebec in May 1633, but could not get back to Huronia until the following summer when the Hurons came with a small flotilla of 11 canoes rather than their normal one of more than a hundred. They had suffered from an epidemic and did not want to be burdened carrying missionaries back with them, but Brébeuf and Father Anthony Daniel prevailed upon them. The two were separated from their hosts during the journey but found the Hurons at a village named Taendeuiata. They welcomed Brébeuf back, delighted that he had kept his word to return. The Jesuits constructed a cabin just outside the village to house the three priests and five lay helpers who made up the missionary community. Brébeuf taught the others the Huron language and customs. Finally in 1635, he and Daniel began their missionary work, working with children during the day and adults at night. After a year of hard work, they had baptized twelve people, four infants and eight adults just as they were dying.

Competition between Christianity and native religion was a constant fact of life. When drought hit the land, native religious leaders blamed it on the crucifix on the priests' cabin; the Jesuits countered with a novena and a procession around the village. When which rain the prayers, the Jesuits interpreted this as an answer to their prayers. When Father Isaac Jogues arrived in 1636, a smallpox epidemic broke out among the Jesuits and their helpers and then spread to the Hurons. The epidemic lasted all winter; during that time the Jesuits baptized more than a thousand people, all at the point of death. Some Hurons accused the Jesuits of causing the epidemic in order to make conversions. When Brébeuf started a mission at Ossossané, the council of village chiefs blamed him for the disease that lingered on there and decided he should die. That same conclusion was reached for all the Jesuit missionaries during a council of the Huron nation which met in March 1640.

Brébeuf then moved to the mission headquarters, Sainte-Marie, and started working with another tribe, the Neutrals, but he had to flee to Quebec after he was accused of plotting with Hurons' enemies, the Seneca Clan of the Iroquois, to betray his hosts. From June 1641 to August 1644 Brébeuf took care of getting supplies for the mission. Finally he was able to return to Sainte-Marie, but the danger from the Iroquois was escalating. Fathers Isaac Jogues and Anthony Daniel had already been martyred. In September 1648 Father Gabriel Lalemant joined the mission. He and Brébeuf left Sainte-Marie for their weekly tour of the missions on March 15, 1649 and spent the night at Saint Louis village. The Iroquois attacked a nearby village during the night, so the Hurons sent their women and children to hide in the forest. The two Jesuits chose to remain with the men, who were mostly Christians. At dawn the next day, Iroquois swarmed over the palisades and took the Hurons who remained as captives. A renegade Huron among the attackers let the Iroquois know that they had captured the mighty Echon, most powerful of the Jesuit medicine men.

After some preliminary torture, the Jesuits and the Huron captives were forced to run naked through the snow to a nearby village where others waited. The captives had to run the gauntlet and then the two Jesuits were led to two posts where they were to be killed. First the captors heated a string of hatchet blades and then placed the red-hot iron on Brébeuf's shoulders. He did not yell for mercy, so his tormentors covered him with resinous bark which they set aflame. He continued encouraging his fellow Christians to remain strong. Then the Jesuit's captors cut off his nose and forced a hot iron down his throat to silence him; they poured boiling water over his head in a mockery of baptism and then successively scalped him, cut off his feet and then tore out his heart. He was 46-years old and had spent 20 years in New France.

Originally Collected and edited by: Tom Rochford,SJ

St. Peter Faber

Saint Peter Faber

Death: 08/01/1546

Nationality (place of birth): France

St. Peter Faber, SJ, a founder of the Society of Jesus, died  in 1546. Faber was a theologian and a gifted preacher who worked tirelessly for the reform of the church in Germany and Portugal. An active participant in the controversies of the Reformation, he counseled Catholics to maintain good relationships with Protestants: If we want to be of help to them we must be careful to regard them with love, to love them in deed and in truth, and to banish from our own souls any thought that might lesson our love and esteem for them. We have to win their good will so that they will love us and readily confide in us. The man who can speak with [Protestants] on a holy life, on virtue and prayer, will do far more good for them than those who, in the name of authority, set out to confound them by sheer weight of theological argument. —In The Quiet Companion , Mary Purcell

 Pray St. Peter Faber’s prayer for detachment: Cast from me every evil that stands in the way of my seeing you, hearing, tasting, savoring, and touching you; fearing and being mindful of you; knowing, trusting, loving, and possessing you; being conscious of your presence and, as far as may be, enjoying you. This is what I ask for myself and earnestly desire from you. Amen.

The text is copied from "An Ignatian book of days" written by Jim Manney

Following is the letter of Fr General Adolfo Nicolas written in 2013

With profound pleasure I am writing to the whole Society on the occasion of Pope Francis’ proclamation that Peter Faber, “the silent companion” of the first generation of Jesuits, is a saint. On day coinciding with his birthday, our Holy Father wanted to present to the universal Church a gift that is very significant and precious to him.

The canonization of Peter Faber happens to coincide with another great event of our time – a Jesuit Kairos: the Bicentenary of the Restoration of the Society (1814). Without any doubt our beloved Savoyard companion can provide us incentive and drive for a dynamic restoration of our lives as Jesuits, personally as well as corporately, lives which are never complete for we are always on pilgrimage. That transparent, spontaneous, and childlike faith that Faber showed can help us persevere as “companions in His Company,” convinced in an Ignatian way that “it is the Lord who does all things in us, and for whom all things operate, and in whom they all exist” (Memorial, 245).

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Peter Faber chose this beginning verse of Psalm 102 to humbly open the door of his heart in his Memorial. It sums up in a few profound words the essential stance of Faber before life and before God: blessing, memory, and gratitude.

Although the human and religious stature as well as the great deeds of some of his Jesuit companions (Ignatius, Xavier, Laínez, Borgia, or Canisius) may have led us to overlook or even ignore the person and accomplishments of Faber, today we recognize in his life and legacy a way of proceeding that is genuinely Ignatian and profoundly rooted in the person of our Lord; Faber was truly a companion of Jesus.

On the first day of August 1546 Faber passed away in Rome, barely forty years of age. He was the second of the First Companions of Paris to die, following Jean Codure who had died in August 1541. Faber had arrived in the Eternal City from Coimbra a few days before, arriving exhausted by the long and hard journey. Although his friends Laínez, Salmerón, and Le Jay were waiting for him in Trent with hopes of seeing him, word began to spread in Europe: “Master Faber is now found at a better Council, because he passed away from this life on the first of August” (Monumenta Lainii I, 52).

What does “Master Faber” continue to teach us almost 470 years after his death in that manner so much his own, a pedagogy in a soft voice? And what can we personally learn if “we open our heart and let Christ occupy its center”? (Memorial, 68)

Providentially, at the end of September 1529 three university students came to live together on the third floor of the Collège Sainte-Barbe as students of the Arts: Peter Faber, Francis Xavier, and Ignatius of Loyola. After five years of course work and shared experiences, at Montmartre on the 15th day of August 1534, Faber presided at a Eucharist at which the first seven “friends in the Lord” fixed their eyes and hearts on the same desire: Jerusalem. It was the beginning of an unanticipated project, the Society of Jesus, which continues with vitality and surprises today.

When Ignatius left for Azpeitia, his birthplace, in March of 1535, “Master Faber” remained “as our elder brother” (Lainez to Polanco, FN I, 104), overseeing the welfare and growth of the group. What type of leadership did Peter Faber exercise at that time? Thanks to his attention and friendship, the “least Society” did not cease to grow in number and virtue. By means of conversation and the Spiritual Exercises he first incorporated Claude le Jay, Jean Codure, and Paschase Broët in the group. In later years Francis Borgia and Peter Canisius joined the Society. The fire that was already burning in his heart began to light other fires. In Faber we recognize the brother who watched over and cared for the “union of souls,” the conservation and the growth of the body, the construction of the building that would be his beloved “company of Jesus,” for which he constantly desired “a birth in good desires of holiness and justice” (Memorial, 196).

In 1577, near the end of his life, Simon Rodriguez remembered Peter Faber who had died thirty one years earlier: “he had the most charming gentleness and grace that I ever saw in my life for dealing and conversing with people…. With his modesty and charm he won for God the hearts of those he dealt with.” Faber is for us a Master of the rhetoric of the divine, someone who “in whatever subject and without disturbing anyone found material for thinking and talking about God” (Monumenta Broetii, 453). At the beginning of 1534, he made the Spiritual Exercises with Ignatius in the neighborhood of Saint Jacques in Paris. From that time on, as no one else, Faber penetrated the inner understanding of this method of conversation between the Creator and the creature, which he so delicately and accurately shared with others. Ignatius said of him that “he had the first place in giving the Exercises” (Luis G. de Câmera, Memorial, FN I, 658). In Faber we recognize a man of the Ignatian charism, molded by the method of the Exercises, disposed to look for and find God in all things, and always creative when the opportunity arose for “providing a method and order” for prayer to quite different people in the most diverse situations.

His conversation bore fruit because it sprang from an inner life inhabited by the presence of God. Getting inside Faber we discover the mystic in history and in the world, rooted in time but living from the gift that always and in all things “descends from above” (Spiritual Exercises, 237). For Faber any circumstance, place, or moment was an occasion for an encounter with God. Master Faber was, above all but without claiming to be so, a Master of prayer. He understood that his friendship with Jesus was based on the mysteries of the Life of Christ, “lessons of the Spirit” for his vocation and his Christification, which he contemplated piously and from which he knew how “to reflect on so as to obtain some benefit.” Faber prayed in constant colloquies with Jesus and Mary, with the angels and the saints, with the martyrs and his “private saints,” among whom he counted his great tutor and master of his youth, Peter Veillardo, whom he considered a saint. He prayed about the elements of nature or the passing of seasons, about obstacles, about infirmity. He prayed for the Church, for the Pope, the Society, for heretics and persecutors. He prayed with his body and his senses. He was a believer in continual prayer, in a life infused by Mystery; he was convinced that God had made him a temple, and he remained in constant dialogue with Him.

Perhaps it is in this spirit, rooted and grounded in Christ, that his apostolic activity, so varied and fruitful, makes sense: teaching catechism to children, preaching in court, giving colloquies in Germany, founding colleges in Spain (Alcalá, Valladolid) and Germany, teaching lessons of theology in Rome. Faber was given the experience and desire for being what another companions would later call a “contemplative in action.”

Among his other activities, Faber stood out as a Master of Reconciliation. Ignatius knew Faber’s extraordinary gifts for conversation and did not hesitate to send him to the very center of a Europe in conflict. His was one of the most significant examples of that ministry to which the first Jesuits gave themselves so generously: “reconciling the estranged” (Formula of the Institute, 1550, 1). Similar to the spirit of our last General Congregation, Faber worked hard to maintain unity and to establish peace in a Europe that was theologically convulsed and challenged by religious questions and political-ecclesial conflicts: Worms (1540) and Ratisbon (1541) were some of the places where Faber sought understanding and harmony, which he saw with sorrow becoming ever more distant. And Faber united piety and erudition so naturally – a wise and discreet spiritual manner of expressing a deep theological foundation– that he was able to make the appropriate gesture or “say the right word.” He carried deep within himself one of the guiding principles of the Exercises: “to try hard to save the proposition of one’s neighbor” (Spiritual Exercises, 22): “whoever would like to help the heretics of this time should have much charity towards them and love them truly,” communicating “with them familiarly” (Monumenta Fabri, 399-402). At the Society’s origin, Faber’s manner expressed our contemporary vocation of being present at the frontiers and being bridges of reconciliation.

Following the footsteps and example of his beloved companion in Paris, Faber was also a Pilgrim who embodied the mysticism of travel so proper to the first Jesuits. “It seems that Faber was born to never remain still in any one place,” wrote the Secretary of the Society (Monumenta Ignatiana, Epistolae I, 362). He traveled thousands of miles throughout the Europe of his time, a sign of his abnegation, availability, and obedience. He was frequently found engaged in “so many travels and exiles” (Monumenta Fabri, 419-420) that as a “perpetual stranger… I will be a pilgrim wherever the will of God leads me as long as I live” (Monumenta Fabri, 255), a will to which Faber spontaneously bound himself with his sense of obedience, making himself an echo of those words of the Centurion to Jesus: “come and he comes, go and he goes” (Mt 8:9). “For Him alone – for Jesus – have I changed houses many times […] not infrequently have I gone to stay in places contaminated and dangerous for my body,” there was cold, fatigue, intemperate weather, and poverty, but Faber always knew how to maintain his contemplative outlook: “may he be blessed forever who protected me and all those who were in the same situation I was” (Memorial, 286).

Today, with serene happiness and “internal joy,” we have reason to continue to see in Peter Faber our “elder brother.” His manner of being present is a blessing for us; he is a reminder to be humble and to constantly return to our “least Society;” staying close to him, we distance ourselves from temptations to empty triumphalism or the powerful forces of arrogance. Faber is a call to a life of “having before our eyes first of all God our Lord,” looking always to do His will in this His Institute (cf. Formula of the Institute, 1). Faber is a call to the care and attention to the Body of the Society, a call to dialogue and unconditional openness, of obedient availability and confident surrender. With Faber nearby, judgment is enlightened; “You have given all to me – to You, Lord, I return it.”

On the occasion of the canonization of this humble “friend in the Lord,” we once again recognize, with “true happiness” (Spiritual Exercises, 329) and grateful wonder, the nearness of God to his Society of Jesus. Today his Infinite Goodness reaches and blesses us with the memory and presence of Peter Faber among us.

The current season of Advent is a call to make level the ways of the Lord and prepare his coming. May the Lord Himself give us light to bring to action the best we are for the generous service of the Church.

Sincerely yours,

Adolfo Nicolás, S.I. Superior General

Rome, 17 December 2013

St Aloysius Gonzaga

 Who was the real St. Aloysius Gonzaga?

James Martin, S.J.

The Vocation of Saint Aloysius (Luigi) Gonzaga,ca. 1650 Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Met Museum

June 21 is the Feast Day of one of the most misunderstood saints in the Catholic church: St. Aloysius Gonzaga.  A little history, then, may be in order to help us begin to understand this complex and holy young man, today one of the patrons of youth.  One must, in a sense, recover the real Aloysius, and the true Luigi.

Aloysius Gonzaga needs rescuing from the hands of overly pious artists. On holy cards and in countless reproductions, the young Jesuit is usually depicted clad in a jet black cassock and snowy white surplice, gazing beatifically at an elegant crucifix he holds in his slim, delicately manicured hands. For good measure, he is sometimes portrayed gently grasping a lily, the symbol of his religious chastity.

There is nothing wrong with any of those images per se, except when they obscure what was anything but a delicate life and prevent young Christians (and older ones, for that matter) from identifying with someone who was, in fact, something of a rebel.

On March 9, 1568, in the castle of Castiglione delle Stivieri, in Lombardy, Luigi Gonzaga was born into a branch of one of the most powerful families in Renaissance Italy. His father, Ferrante, was the marquis of Castiglione. Luigi’s mother was lady-in-waiting to the wife of Philip II of Spain, in whose court the marquis also enjoyed a high position.

As the eldest son, Luigi was the repository of his father’s hopes for the family’s future. As early as age four, Luigi was given a set of miniature guns and accompanied his father on training expeditions so that the boy might learn, as Joseph Tylenda, SJ, writes in his book Jesuit Saints and Martyrs, “the art of arms.” He also learned, to the consternation of his noble family and without realizing their meaning, some salty words from the soldiers. So anxious was Ferrante to prepare his son for the world of political intrigue and military exploit that he dressed the boy in a child-sized suit of armor and brought him along to review the soldiers in his employ. By the age of seven, however, Luigi had other ideas. He decided that he was less interested in his father’s world and more attracted to a very different kind of life.

Aloysius Gonzaga needs rescuing from the hands of overly pious artists.

Nevertheless, Ferrante, mindful of Luigi’s potential, remained enthusiastic about passing on to his son the marquisate. In 1577, he sent Luigi and his brother Ridolfo to the court of a family friend, the grand duke Francesco de’Medici of Tuscany, where the two were to gain the polish needed to succeed in court. But again, rather than being fascinated with the intrigue and (literal) backstabbing in the decadent world of the Medicis, Luigi withdrew into himself, refusing to participate in what he saw as an essentially corrupt environment. At ten, disgusted by his situation, he made a private vow never to offend God by sinning.

It was around this time that Luigi began the serious and often severe religious practices that strike contemporary observers as prudish at best and bizarre at worst, especially for a child. It is certainly the main reason that the life of St. Aloysius Gonzaga sometimes repels even devout Catholics today. He fasted three days a week on bread and water. He rose at midnight to pray on the stone floor of his room. He refused to let a fire be lit in his bedchamber even in the bitterest weather. And he was famously concerned with keeping his chastity and safeguarding his modesty. Butler’s Lives of the Saints notes that from as early as age nine, Luigi maintained “custody of the eyes,” as spiritual writers say. “We are told, for instance, that he kept his eyes persistently downcast in the presence of women, and that neither his valet nor anyone else was allowed to see his foot uncovered.”

These practices, so admired by earlier generations, are what turn some contemporary believers away from Gonzaga and what appears to be his almost inhuman piety.

There is nothing wrong with any of those images of St. Aloysius, except when they obscure what was anything but a delicate life and prevent young Christians (and older ones, for that matter) from identifying with someone who was, in fact, something of a rebel.

But when considering these aspects of his life, one must remember three things. First, the prevailing Catholic piety at the time, which warmly commended such practices, obviously exerted a strong influence on Luigi. The young nobleman was, like all of us, a person of his times. Second, Luigi adopted these practices while still a boy. Like some children even today, Luigi was given less to mature moderation and more to adolescent enthusiasm. Third, and perhaps most important, without any religious role models in his life, Luigi was forced, in a sense, to create his own spirituality. (There were no adults to say, “That’s enough, Luigi.”) Desperate to escape the world of corruption and licentiousness in which he found himself, Luigi, headstrong and lacking any adult guidance, went overboard in his quest to be holy.

Yet, in later years, even he recognized his excesses. When he entered the Society of Jesus, he admitted as much about his way of life. “I am a piece of twisted iron,” he said. “I entered religious life to get twisted straight.” (This famous saying of his, according to the Jesuit scholar John Padberg, may also have referred to the twisted character of the Gonzaga family.)

In 1579, after two years in Florence, the marquis sent his two sons to Mantua, where they were boarded with relatives. But unfortunately for Ferrante’s plans, the house of one host boasted a fine private chapel, where Luigi spent much time reading the lives of the saints and meditating on the psalms. It was here that the thought came to the marquis’ son that he might like to become a priest. Upon returning to Castiglione, Luigi continued his readings and meditations, and when Charles Cardinal Borromeo visited the family, the twelve-year-old Luigi’s seriousness and learning impressed him greatly. Borromeo discovered that Luigi had not yet made his first communion and so prepared him for it. (In this way a future saint received his first communion from another.)

Yet these honors only strengthened Luigi’s resolve not to lead such a life. While in Madrid, he found a Jesuit confessor and eventually decided to become a Jesuit himself. His confessor, however, told him that before entering the novitiate, Luigi needed first to obtain his father’s permission.In 1581, still intending to pass on to Luigi his title and property, Ferrante decided that the family would travel with Maria of Austria, of the Spanish royal house, who was passing through Italy on her return to Spain. Maria was the widow of the emperor Maximilian II, and Ferrante saw an excellent opportunity for his son’s courtly education. Luigi became a page attending the Spanish heir apparent, the duke of Asturias, and was also made a knight of the Order of St. James.

When Luigi approached his father, Ferrante flew into a rage and threatened to have Luigi flogged. There followed a battle of wills between the fierce and intransigent marquis of Castiglione and his equally determined sixteen-year-old son. Hoping to change his son’s mind, the marquis brought him back to the castle at Castiglione and promptly sent Luigi and his brother on an eighteen-month tour around the courts of Italy. But when Luigi returned, he had not changed his mind.

Worn out by his son’s persistence, Ferrante finally gave his permission. That November, Luigi, at age seventeen, renounced his inheritance, which passed to his brother Ridolfo, a typical Gonzaga with all the bad habits thereof. His old life over, Luigi left for Rome.

Aloysius’s determination to enter religious life, even in the face of his father’s fierce opposition, filled me with admiration when I was a Jesuit novice.

On his way to the novitiate, Aloysius (as he is most often called today) carried a remarkable letter from his father to the Jesuit superior general, which read, in part, “I merely say that I am giving into your Reverence’s hands the most precious thing I possess in all the world.”

There is a colossal painting by Guercino hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (pictured above) that shows, in allegory, the moment of Luigi’s decision. From contemporary portraits we know a little of what Luigi looked like, and the painting depicts him with the long nose and slim face of the Gonzaga family. Covered by a marble arch and standing under a canopy of lute-playing cherubim and seraphim, Aloysius, in a black Jesuit cassock and white surplice, looks intently at an angel, who stands in front of an altar and points to a crucifix. Far in the distance under a blue Italian sky is his father’s castle. At Aloysius’s feet lies the symbol of chastity, a lily. Behind him, on the ground, is the crown of the marquis, which Aloysius has relinquished. A cherub hovers in the sky, holding above the young man’s head a crown of another kind, the crown of sanctity.

Aloysius’s determination to enter religious life, even in the face of his father’s fierce opposition, filled me with admiration when I was a Jesuit novice. When I first announced to my parents my own intention to leave the corporate world and enter the novitiate, they too were, at least for a time, upset, and they hoped that I would not join the Jesuits. (They did not, however, threaten to have me flogged.) After a few years, they came to accept my decision and cheerfully support my vocation. But in that interim period, when I was determined and so were they, Aloysius became my patron.

In his single-minded pursuit of God, and especially his willingness to give up literal riches, Aloysius perfectly emblemizes a key meditation of the Spiritual Exercises called the “Two Standards.” In that meditation, St. Ignatius asks the retreatant to imagine being asked to serve under the banner, or “standard,” of one of two leaders—Christ the King or Satan. If one does choose to serve Christ, it must necessarily be by imitating the life of Jesus, choosing “poverty as opposed to riches; . . . insults or contempt as opposed to the honor of the world; . . . humility as opposed to pride.” There are few who have exemplified this as well as Aloysius. So to me he has been a great hero.

Because of the severe religious practices that Aloysius had already adopted, the Jesuit novitiate proved surprisingly easy. As Fr. Tylenda writes, “He actually found novitiate life less demanding than the life he had imposed upon himself at home.” (The disappearance of the constant battles with his father must have given him some relief as well.) Fortunately, his superiors encouraged him to eat more regularly, pray less, engage in more relaxing activities, and in general reduce his penances. Aloysius accepted these curbs. In an essay entitled “On Understanding the Saints,” Richard Hermes, SJ, noted that though Aloysius’s single-minded pursuit of God’s will had led him to embrace some of these extreme penances, “it was the same single-minded obedience which led him to moderate these practices as a Jesuit.”

“There is little to be said about St. Aloysius during the next two years,” says Butler's Lives, “except that he proved to be an ideal novice.” He pronounced his vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in 1587 and the next year received minor orders and began his theology studies.

At the beginning of 1591, a plague broke out in Rome. After begging alms for the victims, Aloysius began working with the sick, carrying the dying from the streets into a hospital founded by the Jesuits. There he washed and fed the plague victims, preparing them as best he could to receive the sacraments. But though he threw himself into his tasks, he privately confessed to his spiritual director, Fr. Robert Bellarmine, that his constitution was revolted by the sights and smells of the work; he had to work hard to overcome his physical repulsion.

At the time, many of the younger Jesuits had become infected with the disease, and so Aloysius’s superiors forbade him from returning to the hospital. But Aloysius—long accustomed to refusals from his father—persisted and requested permission to return, which was granted. Eventually he was allowed to care for the sick, but only at another hospital, called Our Lady of Consolation, where those with contagious diseases were not admitted. While there, Aloysius lifted a man out of his sickbed, tended to him, and brought him back to his bed. But the man was infected with the plague: Aloysius grew ill and was bedridden by March 3, 1591.

Aloysius rallied for a time, but as fever and a cough set in, he declined for many weeks. He had an intimation in prayer that he might die on the Feast of Corpus Christi, and when that day arrived he appeared to his friends better than on the previous day. Two priests came in the evening to bring him communion. As Fr. Tylenda tells the story, “When the two Jesuits came to his side, they noticed a change in his face and realized that their young Aloysius was dying. His eyes were fixed on the crucifix he held in his hands, and as he tried to pronounce the name of Jesus he died.” Like Joan of Arc and the Ugandan martyrs, Aloysius Gonzaga died with the name of Jesus on his lips.

He was twenty-three years old.

His unique sanctity was recognized, especially by his Jesuit confrères, even during his life. After his death, when Robert Cardinal Bellarmine would lead the young Jesuit scholastics through the Spiritual Exercises in Rome, he would say about a particular type of meditation, “I learned that from Aloysius.”

Aloysius Gonzaga was beatified only fourteen years after his death, in 1605, and canonized in 1726.

It was in the novitiate that I was introduced to Aloysius Gonzaga. Actually, it would have been impossible to miss him there: he is one of the patron saints of young Jesuits and is, along with St. Stanislaus Kostka and St. John Berchmans, part of a trio of early Jesuit saints who died at a young age. Frequently they appear together as marble statues in Jesuit churches: Aloysius carrying his lily, John holding a rosary, and Stanislaus clasping his hands and looking piously heavenward.

As a novice, I found it natural to pray to the three—since I figured all of them understood the travails of the novitiate, of Jesuit formation, and of religious life. St. John Berchmans, in fact, was quoted as saying, “Vita communis est mea maxima penitentia”: Life in community is my greatest penance. Now there was someone to whom a novice could pray.

On the other hand, as Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ, once commented, “Well, I wonder what the community thought of him!”

But it wasn’t until two years after the novitiate, when I started working with refugees in East Africa, that I began to pray seriously to Aloysius. Even at the time I wondered why: my sudden devotion came as a surprise. Sometimes I think that one reason we begin praying to a saint is that the saint has already been praying for us.

In any event, I found myself thinking about Aloysius whenever life became difficult in Nairobi—which was frequently. When I was frustrated by a sudden lack of water in the morning, I would silently say a little prayer to St. Aloysius for his intercession. When the beat-up jeep I drove failed to start (once again), I would ask St. Aloysius for a bit of help. When burglars broke into our community and stole my shoes, my camera, and the little cash I had saved up, I asked St. Aloysius to help me hold on to the slender reed of my patience. And when I was stuck in bed for two months with mononucleosis and wondered what I was doing in Kenya, I sought his intercession and encouragement. I figured he knew something about being sick. During my two years in East Africa, I had a feeling that St. Aloysius was in his place in heaven looking out for me as best he could. At the very least, I was keeping him busy.

Courtesy: From My Life with the Saints of Fr Jim Martin SJ

PETER CANISIUS 1521-2021 – A GIANT

 27 April is the feast of St Peter Canisius, one of the first Jesuits, who is especially remembered this year on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of his birth. Because of this, 27 April is the date chosen by the Society of Jesus for the creation of the new Jesuit Province of Central Europe. Canisius worked mainly in the regions that are part of this new Province. In Nijmegen, where he was born, pilgrimages are being organized from 2021 to 2023.

The town of Nijmegen, founded by the Romans, was the capital of the duchy of Gelderland at the end of the Middle Ages. On 8 May 1521, Jelis van Houweningen and her husband Jakop Kanis had their first child, Peter. Two sisters would follow but their mother died. Jakop would marry again and add eight or nine siblings to the household. One of Peter’s half-brothers eventually would become a Jesuit too. Peter went to the Latin school, lived for some time at the boarding school of the Brothers of the Common Life, and went abroad, when he was fifteen, for higher studies in Cologne and Louvain. As a student he loved to visit the Carthusians, to talk with the prior and pray in their silent church. He pursued studies in theology and worked on a German edition of the sermons of Tauler. In 1543, he travelled to Mainz and did the Spiritual Exercises under Peter Faber. At the end of the Fourth Week he followed the Call of the King and entered the Society of Jesus.

During his novitiate, he continued his studies in theology. At the end of 1544, he was called back to Nijmegen where his father lay dying. With his inheritance, Peter assisted poor students and rented a house in Cologne where he started a formation community with two Spanish priests, a Belgian student and a nephew of Ignatius, Aemilian Loyola. This type of ‘college’ for lodging scholastics without formal relationship to the university already existed in Paris, Louvain, Coimbra, Valencia, and Alcalá. Later that year, 1545, Peter was summoned by two fellow Jesuits, LeJay and Bobadilla, to the Diet of Worms, where the voice of the Lutheran princes and representatives was louder than the Catholic voice. Back in Cologne, Peter was busy with his studies in theology, the editorial work on patristic texts, writing letters to family and friends, and the preparation of an informative book for the Emperor, who would visit the city in August.

Formally a novice, Peter maintained contacts with key people in politics and the Church. At home, he would live the simple life of a community man. He would pray every day, spend some time on research and writing, would find ways to finance his community and its apostolic work. In June 1546, he was ordained a priest. Afterwards he travelled south: Ulm, Trent, Rome, where Ignatius took care of the final stages of his formation. He was assigned to Sicily where he was involved in the founding of the first college for boys run by the Society. Back in Rome, on 4 September 1549, in the church of Santa Maria della Strada, he pronounced his final vows before St Ignatius. Just seven years a companion, he found himself fully admitted to the core of the Society. He next obtained his doctoral degree in theology at the University of Bologna and set out for Bavaria. He arrived before Christmas and started to work with two fellow Jesuits at Ingolstadt University.

At the age of 28, having had a strong spiritual and academic formation, he would become university professor, university rector, provincial superior, cathedral preacher, and, most of all, founder of schools (“colleges”). He would greatly influence the development of the Jesuit Order in Northern Europe.

A characteristic of Peter was his keen appreciation of the efforts of other people. With fellow Jesuits, city councillors, and parents he started colleges for boys in Ingolstadt, Vienna, Prague, Strasbourg, Trier, Freiburg-en-Brisgau, Zabern, Dillingen, Munich, Wurzburg, Innsbruck, Molsheim (Alsace,) and Fribourg (Switzerland). The list might not be complete! His design was to offer free education for Lutherans, Catholics, and Jews. He was born in a world of religious strife. He grew up in an atmosphere of animosity and Protestant rebellion. But, young and dashing, Peter won the hearts, minds, and spirits of all. He interacted with Melanchton and other leaders of the Reformation. He never preached against them. He wrote bestselling books such as the Catholic Catechism with editions for children, for adolescents, and for adults. He was 77 when he died. His Jesuit life had been entirely devoted to the Lord, offering all his teaching, entrepreneurial activities, and theological abilities to His Holy Name.

Source courtesy: https://www.jesuits.global/

ON THE HOLY NAME OF JESUS

Originally published here: 

On 3 January, the Society of Jesus celebrates the titular feast of the "Holy Name of Jesus". We have asked Fr. Jean-Paul Hernández SJ, theologian, to explain the biblical roots of this feast and its importance for the Jesuits.

In the Jewish tradition, the name of God cannot be pronounced because to say the name of someone is already to make him present, to define him, in some way to possess him; and God can neither be defined nor possessed. Even today the four letters that make up the Holy Name (יְהוָֽה) are not pronounced according to their phonetic form ("Yahweh") but are replaced while reading by the words "Adonai" ("Lord"). In this way the in-finite identity of God is preserved.

But precisely because this Name cannot be pronounced, it has, like a sort of "obsessive taboo", given rise to an endless series of attempts to express it without ever pronouncing it. The Psalms are a significant example, but we can say that the whole of Holy Scripture is a "circumlocution of the Name of God". The "Name" is like the eye of a "cyclone of creativity" that also gave birth to Israel's feasts, its customs, and ultimately its very history. The very word "Judea" comes from the root "jada" which means to invoke, proclaim, confess. The implicit object is evidently the Name of God. Israel is the people whose identity consists precisely in proclaiming the Holy Name. That is why God often calls Israel in the Hebrew Bible "people marked with my Name". We could say: Israel exists to proclaim the unutterable Name of God.

Chapter 3 of Exodus relates how God reveals his name to Moses: "I am He who is". (Hebrew: "Hehye asher hehye"). This expression sounds like a kind of "non-name" or even a refusal to be named. It is as if God had said: I am "totally Other" and therefore do not have a name like other names; my identity is not "circumscribable" in a sound, describable by a name, but is identical only to itself.

At the same time, the Hebrew root that we translate as "I am" is the root that indicates "fidelity". It is not an "I am" of a "philosophical" type, as it has sometimes been interpreted in the Christian West. It is not "I am being" or "I am the metaphysical root of existence". But rather: "I am there", or "I am the one who is always with you", who "is there". The Name of God, his most intimate identity, is the capacity to make himself present, to be with. So the self-delivery of the Name coincides with its very meaning. We could say: God hands over his own identity which consists in handing over his own identity.

It is again on Sinai that God makes his Name more explicit to Moses, who now leads all the people: "Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood by him and proclaimed the Name of the Lord. The Lord passed by him proclaiming: "The Lord (יְהוָֽה), the Lord (יְהוָֽה), the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in love and faithfulness" (Ex 34:5f.). These last "affixes" to the Tetragrammaton form like a first circle around the inaccessible eye of the "creative cyclone" of the Name of God. They are attempts to "say who God is", but already only partial attempts. The Hebrew words are, "rhm" which we translate as "compassionate" but which refers to the "maternal bowels", "hen" which describes the gesture of looking out and which we can translate as "benevolent" or "pitiful", "hesed" which we translate as "grace" and which is also compassion and goodness in a relationship, and "emet" which means "fidelity", "truth", "honesty".

But this Name cannot be pronounced "in vain", that is, it can only be pronounced with one's life. In the struggle with God described in Gen 32, Jacob had asked the mysterious presence: "Tell me your name!" (Gen 32:30). The divine answer was, "And here he blessed him". Jacob emerges radically changed from this encounter with God from whom he had wanted to "snatch" the "Name". In fact, Jacob came out with a new name: "Israel". We can say: the Name of God is the only name that changes the identity of those who pronounce it.

In the history of Israel, this name may be pronounced once a year by the high priest who enters during "Yom Kippur" (the liturgical day of "expiation", that is of "forgiveness") into the "Debir" ("holy of holies") of the Temple. In front of the ark he pronounces the Tetragrammaton, the letters of which are preserved inside the ark. And from the empty space between the two cherubim above the ark, God, made present by the pronounced Name, answers. Thus the entire temple is repeatedly described in the Bible as "the place He chose for His Name to dwell". God somehow "dwells" in the Temple through his Name which is a kind of "hypostatic presence" of God. But this same name is also for Israel the "figure" of all creation: "O Lord, our God, how great is your name in all the earth" (Ps 8:2:10). Therefore, the Temple represents "the whole world", ordered around the Name.

If the Name of God is the faithful presence of God, the revelation of God's very identity, and at the same time the figure of the whole of creation, we should not be surprised that early Christianity attributed to Jesus Christ all that Israel had attributed to the "Name". In an anonymous homily of the second century we read: "Now the Name of the Father is the Son". And already in the Gospel of John, all the words of Jesus that begin with "I am" are an allusion to the Name of God, revealed by Jesus in his different actions as in the different facets of a prism.

In the Letter to the Philippians we have a fundamental passage that will mark Christian spirituality forever. Paul in chapter 2 is quoting a Christological hymn that recalls the Resurrection of Christ with the metaphor "give him the name that is above every other name" (Phil 2:9), which means "give him the name of God", that is, the identity of God. It is a way of saying: in the Resurrection the divine identity of Jesus is revealed. But the text continues (v. 10): "because in the name of...". And here the reader expects to find the word "God", or "Lord" (which is precisely the "name above every other name"). Instead, the surprise is that here we read "...Jesus" (and then the text continues with "let every knee bend, in heaven, on earth and under the earth"). The text thus operates a surprising translation of meaning from the name "Adonai" to the name "Jesus". Everything that the name of God has always meant and provoked, the name "Jesus" now does.

This name given to Mary's son was already a common name among the people of Israel. Biblical tradition recalls in particular Jesus Ben Sirach (the "Sirach"), emblem of Wisdom, and Joshua, successor of Moses. The two figures converge in Jesus of Nazareth, who for the New Testament is Wisdom incarnate and the fulfilment of the work of Moses.

It is easy to understand then how in the Acts of the Apostles, Peter says, "for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we may be saved" (Acts 4:12). In the use of the verb "to save" there is an explicit reference to the Hebrew meaning of the name of Jesus (Jeshua) which means precisely "God-saves". Therefore, the name of Jesus is already in itself a prayer of invocation and/or thanksgiving. The tradition of the "Name Prayer", that is, the constant repetition of the name of Jesus, or of an invocation formula containing it, dates back to the earliest centuries. The invocation "Lord Jesus, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner", and its variants, are called the "prayer of the esichia", i.e. of "peace of heart".

Also in the liturgical tradition of the first centuries, it is "in the Name of Jesus" that catechumens are "baptised" and the mysteries are celebrated. When the book of Revelation points out that the saved wear "the name of their God" on their foreheads (cf. Rev 14:1 and 22:4), it is probably already referring to the liturgical custom of "marking" the baptised with an "X", the first Greek letter of "Christos". Straightened out, it also draws a cross. This led to the frequent identification of the name and the cross, which allowed the liturgical and artistic tradition (e.g. with the "staurogram") to say that the true place where Christ reveals his name, i.e. his identity, is the cross.

It was in the late Middle Ages that the spirituality of the Name of Jesus developed in the West. First of all in the Franciscan sphere, thanks to the preaching of St Bernardine. The saint from Siena chose the three first Greek letters of the name of Jesus, IHS, to develop devotional objects that were to replace the heraldic controversy of families. This 'trigram' was already the abbreviation of 'IHSOUS' in the manuscripts of the New Testament, where the copier superimposed a tilde or a wavy hyphen, precisely to indicate that 'IHS' was an abbreviation. When, from the 10th century onwards, Greek manuscripts became lower case, the hyphen above the ihs intersected the vertical shaft of the "h", forming a cross. The interlacing of Name and cross is thus recovered.

It is this type of "trigram-cross", often surrounded by sunrays, that arrives from central Italy to other parts of Western Europe. And it was in Paris that Calvin and St Ignatius encountered it. The former made it the coat of arms of "his" city of Geneva. The latter began to use it to sign his letters. Later on, the IHS will become the symbol of the Society of Jesus. In addition to its Greek meaning, it can also be understood as the Latin abbreviation for "Iesus Hominum Salvator" (Jesus Saviour of Men). In a single symbol, therefore, a Greek, Latin and Jewish perspective converges (cf. "Salvator"). The cross on the "H", now also in capitals, always links Name and Cross, and the three nails often represented below recall the passion of Christ, but also the three religious vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.

If Ignatius and the early Jesuits were able to identify with this symbol it is because they had chosen to call themselves companions 'of Jesus' and not 'Ignighists' (after Ignatius) or something else. It is the very person of Jesus, His "Name," that is, His "communicated identity," that inflamed Ignatius' heart, that is the focus of the Exercises, that unites the first companions, and that is meant to be the only "word" of the Society. It is, as the Formula of the Institute says, "designated by the Name of Jesus". Hence the IHS is ubiquitous in Jesuit art, in official documents and still today in many of the "logos" used by the Society. As the early Jesuits repeated, this Name "is more beautiful than dawn and light" and "we Jesuits must be ready to give our blood for this name".

Saint Francis Xavier 1506-1552)

 Francis Xavier (Francisco de Jassu y Javier, 1506-1552), was the first Jesuit missionary and the prototype who inspired many men to enter the Society of Jesus and evangelize far off nations. One of the original group of seven men who founded the Jesuits, he was sent to India before the new religious order received formal approval from the Church.

Xavier was born in his family's small castle in Navarre, in the north of Spain, and there received his early education. In September 1525 he went to Paris to begin university studies at the College of Sainte-Barbe where his roommate was Peter Faber (Pierre Favre) from the Savoy region of France. Four years later everything changed when an older student moved in, Ignatius Loyola (Iñigo Lopez de Loyola), a failed Basque courtier given to prayer. Loyola soon won Faber over to wanting to become a priest and work for the salvation of souls, but Xavier aspired to a worldly career and was not at all interested in being a priest. He earned his licentiate degree in the spring of 1530 and began teaching Aristotle at the College of Dormans-Beauvais; he remained living in the room with Favre and Loyola. When Faber went to visit his family in 1533, Ignatius finally broke through to Xavier who yielded to the grace God was offering him. Four other students also became close friends through their conversations with Ignatius who was became a spiritual guide and inspired the whole group with his desire to go to the Holy Land. Xavier joined his friends Aug. 15, 1534 in the chapel of Saint-Denis in Montmartre as they all pronounced private vows of poverty, chastity and going to the Holy Land to convert infidels.

Xavier and Loyola began studying theology in 1534. Two years later Xavier set out for Venice with the rest of the group except for Loyola who had returned to Spain earlier. Venice was the point of departure for ships going to the Holy Land. The companions spent two months waiting for a ship and working in hospitals, then went to Rome to ask papal permission for their pilgrimage and ordination of the non-priests among them. Xavier, Loyola and four others were ordained by the papal delegate in his private chapel on June 24, 1537. And they continued to wait for a ship, but because of Venice's impending war with the Turks none sailed for a whole year, something quite extraordinary. The companions then decided that Ignatius should go to Rome and place the group at the disposal of the pope. Meanwhile, they would go to various university centers and start preaching. Xavier and Nicholas Bobadilla went to Bologna.

Xavier went to Rome in April 1538 and began preaching in the French church of St. Louis. He also took part in the famous deliberations during Lent 1539 in which the companions agreed to form a new religious order. Before Pope Paul III granted his approval of the plan, he asked Ignatius to accede to King John III of Portugal's request to send two of the companions to the new colony in India. Ignatius chose Simon Rodrigues and Nicholas Bobadilla, but the latter got sick and could not go. Francis Xavier was the only one of the companions not already committed to a work so Ignatius asked him to go, even though they were the closest friends and the departure meant that they would never see each other again.

Xavier and Rodrigues left Rome March 15, 1540 and arrived in Lisbon by the end of June. The fleet had already left so the two priests had to remain in Lisbon until the following spring. They devoted themselves to preaching and caring for prisoners. The king was so taken by their work that he asked one of them to stay and start a school; Rodrigues was chosen, leaving Xavier to head off alone as the first Jesuit missionary. As Xavier boarded the ship Santiagio, the king's messenger gave him a letter in which the pope named him apostolic nuncio, which meant that he had authority over all Portuguese clergy in Goa. The ship set sail April 7, 1541, on Xavier's thirty-fifth birthday.

It took 13 months for Xavier to arrive in Goa, including a long wait in Mozambique for favorable winds. As soon as he arrived, the energetic Spaniard set about preaching to the Portuguese, visiting prisons and ministering to lepers. He also tried to learn Tamil, but had to rely on interpreters for his first mission to the Paravas, pearl fishers who lived on India's southeastern shore above Cape Comorin. They had converted to Christianity but been without a pastor, so Xavier reinstructed them in the faith, baptized those who were ready and prepared catechists to remain with them as he moved on from one village to the next. By the end of 1544 he reached the western shore of India at Travancore; in November and December of that year he is reported to have baptized 10,000 persons. He moved northward to Cochin, and then sailed to the Portuguese city of Malacca in Malaya; from there he headed for his goal, the Moluccas, or the Spice Islands where he landed on Feb. 14, 1546. He visited the Christian villages and baptized over 1,000 persons at nearby Seran. Then he did a reconnaissance trip to the islands Ternate and Moro, known for its headhunters. He returned to Malacca in July 1547 and arranged for two Jesuits to take his place.

When Xavier returned to Malacca, he learned about Japan from a Japanese nobleman named Anjiro who was interested in becoming a Christian. This revelation of a culturally advanced nation that had not yet heard of Christ captured the Spanish Jesuit's imagination. Before he could do anything about Japan, Xavier had to return to Goa to fulfill his responsibilities as mission superior and assign newly arrived Jesuits to their posts. He was not able to set sail for Japan with Anjiro and several Jesuits until April 1549. The party got back to Malacca easily enough but could find no ship's captain willing to take the risk of sailing into unknown waters. So Xavier hired a pirate to take them. They left June 24, 1549 and landed on August 15 at Kagoshima in southern Japan, Anjiro's home city.

At first the mission went very smoothly. The local prince gave permission to the foreigners to preach Christianity, but he himself would not convert. Xavier decided that the way to convert Japan was to begin with the emperor, but no one would tell him how to get to the Imperial City, Miyako (today's Tokyo). They spent a year in Kagoshima but only made 100 converts, so the Jesuits left for Hirado, a port used by the Portuguese on the upper coast of Kyushu. Another 100 Japanese became Christians but Xavier remained eager to see the emperor, so he moved to the country's second largest city, Yamaguchi. He preached in the streets but suffered a very unsuccessful meeting with the daimyo, so he left that city in December 1550 for Sakai.

Their fortune turned and they finally found a prince willing to take them to the Imperial City. Xavier and Brother John Fernandez were hired as domestic servants and arrived in January 1551, the first Catholic missionaries to see Asia's largest and most beautiful city. For 11 days they tried without success to secure an audience with the emperor, so they returned to Hirado. They went back, though, with the knowledge that the most powerful lord in Japan was not the emperor, but the daimyo of Yamaguchi, whom they had failed to convince in their first meeting. Xavier resolved to try again, appearing not as a poorly-clad European but as an individual worthy of the daimyo's attention.

The two Jesuits rented horses and a litter and dressed themselves in colorful silken robes. When they ceremoniously arrived in Yamaguchi, they were received at the daimyo's palace without any suspicion that they were the same barbarians who had been brushed away only months earlier. Xavier presented the daimyo with expensive gifts of clocks, music boxes, mirrors, crystals, cloth and wine as signs of friendship; and he presented impressive credentials: letters from King John III of Portugal and Pope Paul III. The daimyo granted the Jesuit's request to preach the Christian religion in the empire, and gave people the freedom to become Christians if they wanted to. He also gave the Jesuits a residence in the city, where many people visited. Within six months they had gained 500 converts.

Xavier thought it was time for him to move on so he brought Father Cosmas de Torres to replace him in Yamaguchi so he could return to India. Xavier set out in September 1551, and found a ship for Malacca. He hoped to return to Japan the following year, but the ship got caught in a typhoon that drove it 1,000 miles off course. On December 17, the vessel entered the Bay of Canton and anchored off Sancian Island. As Xavier looked towards nearby China, he felt that country calling him. The two Jesuits were able to board a ship that happened to be bound for Singapore, which they reached at the end of the month. There Xavier found a letter from Ignatius appointing him provincial of the ""Indies and the countries beyond.

He was back in India in January 1552 and found another letter telling him to return to Rome to report on the mission; he decided that visit could wait until he had first gone to China. In April 1552 Xavier set out from India and entered the Bay of Canton in September. He landed on Sancian Island which was both a hideout for Chinese smugglers and a base for Portuguese traders. None of the smugglers was willing to risk taking the Jesuit missionary over to China; one who said he was, took Xavier's money and then disappeared. On November 21 he came down with a fever and could not leave his leafy hut on the island's shore. Seven days later he fell into a coma, but on December 1 regained consciousness and devoted himself to prayer during his waking hours. He died on the morning of December 3 and was buried on the island, but his remains were later taken to Malacca and then to Goa where they were interred in the church Bom Jesus.

He was canonized in 1622 and made patron of the Propagation of the Faith in 1910 and in 1927 was named patron of the missions.

Originally Collected and edited by: Tom Rochford, SJ