“An extraordinary change has come about, transforming the recluse into an apostle.” This is how Brian Grogan SJ describes what happens to Ignatius in Manresa.
When Ignatius says that God was his schoolmaster, he does not mean, as Luther did, that he was radically liberated from the mediation of the Church. Just the opposite: he participated in the sacraments, immersed himself in traditional devotions, and took his problems to his confessor, whose direction he blindly obeyed.
At the same time, he clearly understood that apart from all of these matters, God and God alone taught him as a schoolmaster teaches a young boy. This pupil that he was illuminating now seemed to see new meaning in the old truths he had learned from the study of his catechism, or that he had heard while he was sitting around the kitchen table at Loyola, or what he had subsequently picked up from the books he had read.
With awe and wonder, he learned the unfathomable depths of things about which we speak today in terms that have been all but worn out by overuse: God, the Trinity, the creation and essence of creatures, the Eucharist, and the close presence of the humanity of Christ.
He had difficulty in articulating all of this, but what he did learn he described in a delightful way. He also remembers the place where this enlightenment took place: ‘It seemed to be on the steps of the monastery, during the elevation at Mass.’ But when it came to describing the experience itself, the task became much more difficult – the elevation of his spirit, seeing with the inner eye of the soul, and visual but non-audible images were all accompanied with great joy and consolation and followed by much sobbing and uncontrollable tears.
What God impressed upon his soul we do not know, but he branded him with a red-hot iron, because after these visions had ceased, their effects lasted. For the rest of his life, for instance, he felt great devotion while praying to the Holy Trinity. ‘All these things he saw strengthened him at the time and always gave him such conviction that if there were no Scriptures to teach us in these matters of the faith, he would be resolved to die for them, merely because of what he had seen.’
What a pity it is that the book he began to write on the Trinity has been lost. It consisted of more than eighty pages, and would have been written in a devotional rather than an academic style.
Along the banks of the Cardoner River there occurred the greatest of his experiences. ‘Once he was going out of devotion to a church about a mile from Manresa. The road ran along close to the river. As he went along, occupied with his devotions, he sat down for a moment facing the river that ran deep at that place. As he sat, the eyes of his understanding began to open and, although he saw no vision, he did see and understand many things, both spiritual things and matters of faith and learning.
This took place with so great an enlightenment that everything seemed altogether new to him. This clarity was so great that in the whole course in his life, right up to his sixty-second year, even if he were to gather all the help he had received from God and all the many things he knew, and added them altogether, he does not think that they would equal all that he received at that one time. And thus, his understanding became enlightened in so great a manner that it seemed to him that he was a different man and that he had a different intellect from the one he had had before.’
Modern-day scientists refer to this transition from the rational, reflective consciousness to the field of profound intuition as ‘altered states of consciousness’. Such unexpected and indescribable experiences as the pilgrim underwent are special gifts given to the privileged persons of very different religious backgrounds and in every era of history.
They are not permanent states, but passing stages. Their effects, however, are stable and long lasting. Peace and harmony take possession of the souls of such persons. What one has learned through discursive knowledge seems obscure and incomplete, compared to what one comes to through intuition.
This illumination affects the deepest layers of one’s being. The recipient becomes aware of the newness of things. From the depth of his interior he communicates with the universe and with Someone who remains outside it, but Who yet remains present to him in all of his difficulties. ‘Everything seemed altogether new to him’ and he had the impression of being ‘a different man’. He began to see ‘with other eyes than those that he had’. A different man, other eyes, altogether new things – these are charismatic phrases.
Illuminations such as the one Ignatius experienced are never an end in themselves. They are usually the point of departure for a person’s insertion into the real world. Ignatius felt himself more free, more the creator of his self-identity, open to others in a different way. He gives up his excessive ways, trims his hair, pares his nails, and abandons the idea of becoming a Carthusian because he sees ‘the good effects he could have on souls through his dealings with them’. He wants to give to others what he has found.
An extraordinary change has come about, transforming the recluse into an apostle. Ignatius had gained over the years considerable personal experience about the problems of the human heart, and how obstacles, deceits, heavenly visitations and discernments affected it. He gained insight into the ways of human freedom, and he learned about ‘the giant call’, the term used by the German poet Rilke, the call to which the saints listen and respond. Ignatius believed that this ‘giant call’ was not a rare and reserved privilege and that the obstacles that prevented one from hearing it were not unusual either.
From his Manresa days onward, he began to guide others along the path he had already travelled, in the ‘conquest of self and the regulation of life in such a way that no decision is made under the influence of any inordinate attachment’.
For Pondering: Do you notice that sometimes you see the things of God in a new way?
An extraordinary change has come about, transforming the recluse into an apostle,
