This extract by Brian Grogan SJ tells of Ignatius’s experience of life change when he made his general confession at Montserrat and how he set out on the adventure of being a poor Christian.
Before making his vigil of arms ‘he made a general confession in writing which lasted three days.’ The confessor with whom he shared his jealously guarded intentions was Jean Chanon, a saintly French monk who also knew a thing or two about what it meant to give away wealth generously, for he had himself renounced the revenues from a benefice. He was a competent man for understanding and guiding this newly arrived, intensely zealous pilgrim whose confession was far from being trivial or routine.
The prudent confessor realized that he was dealing with a penitent who was accustomed to acting out the books he had read and who was now disposed to re-evaluating his life. He may have given him either a book containing a compilation of sins that he often gave to pilgrims who knew how to read, or the monastery’s treasured work, Exercises of the Spiritual Life, by Abbot Cisneros. This book emphasized the importance of methodical steps in the spiritual process, and was especially strong in the way in which the practice of prayer should be treated.
Ignatius knew well that he had to have a method when it came to breaking a horse, learning to play music, firing a crossbow, and producing artistic penmanship. He was now about to learn that the road he had undertaken was not about extraordinary and disconnected exploits, but was made up of interior stages – purification, illumination, and union – and that a general confession was not an end of the process but a beginning.
He would learn that there were rules and precautions for how to examine one’s conscience and control one’s thoughts; that there were helps for learning how to pray, such as the invocation at the beginning of the prayer, the control of the imagination, and an ordered reflection by means of points for parts of the prayer; and that the colloquy or conversation with God develops spontaneously.
It was not enough that he learn or know all about these things; it was necessary that he patiently exercise himself in them. This was a revelation, an authentic discovery that made a profound impression on him. The results of this insight made themselves evident in the notes he began to jot down, which he would afterwards call Spiritual Exercises.
Dressed in sackcloth, his new badge of knighthood, Ignatius had spent the night of 24 March 1522 in prayer before Our Lady’s altar. Lost within the crowds of pilgrims and hidden by the friendly shadows of the Church, he received Holy Communion. Then, ‘at daybreak he left to avoid being recognized.’ He did not take the road to Barcelona, ‘where he would meet many who would recognize and honour him.’
Instead, he made a detour to a town that turned out to be Manresa, and there he decided to spend a few days in a hospice ‘and to make a few notes in his book that he carried very carefully with him and that was a source of great consolation for him.’ He had experienced too many things in too short a time and therefore he had a need to stop and pour out his emotions in writing on the pages of the only treasure he kept in his knapsack: his notebook.
Without realizing it, he had left a storm behind. All of his disguises and precautions were of no avail. Someone had followed him, caught up with him, recognized him as the owner of the clothes, and anxiously asked him if he had indeed given them to a poor man, as the beggar had asserted. The beggar had been in as much a hurry to pass himself off as a rich man as Ignatius had been to pass himself off as a poor man!
Ignatius told the plain truth. He did not feel he had to say who he really was, where he had come from, nor what his family name was – not even to free the innocent beggar.
‘I gave him the clothes,’ Ignatius answered tersely while ‘tears of compassion started from his eyes.’ He recorded in his Autobiography that ‘he felt compassion for the poor man to whom he had given his clothing because he realized that the poor man was being harassed since they had presumed that he had stolen the clothes.’
Thus in the first hour of his lonely anonymity and profound meditation, he had discovered a nameless neighbour caught up in the most grotesque and deplorable helplessness. He, who was able to have his own bones sawed off without uttering a whimper, doing nothing more than tightening his fists, now wept with compassion. Although his weeping was most probably at variance with the tenets of orthodox chivalry, it is nevertheless rich in significance for understanding the heart of Ignatius.
Our pilgrim, who had now made his way down from Montserrat, wanted to be nothing more than a Christian, a real apprentice Christian. He was still impregnated by pelagianism or self-willed sanctity, for he was obsessed with notions of doing great things by his own decision, rather than enduring them or experiencing them. He wanted to achieve his sanctity by short cuts. Without his being conscious of the fact, he was a ‘chosen instrument’, but he never suspected ‘how much he had to suffer’ (Acts 9:15-16).
There were still many things for him to learn, but he was determined to begin ‘the adventure of a poor Christian’. He wanted to be so poor that he would even renounce his own name. He would no longer be known to others as Inigo but as Ignatius; much less would he be a Loyola. He would simply be a pilgrim, an anonymous Christian, a Christian without a proper name, but not without identity, not without Christian fervour. Throughout his Autobiography he will refer to himself simply as ‘the pilgrim’.
To be continued
For Pondering:
Revisit a moment when you made a fresh start in life, in order to draw energy from it.
This article first appeared in The Messenger (October 2008), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
