Receive, Lord, all my liberty, my memory, my understanding and my whole will. Give me only your love and your grace. With this I am rich enough and have no more to ask.

These were the words of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, the largest single religious order of priests and brothers in the Catholic Church.

A Spanish noble, he desired to be a knight in shining armor, but a cannon ball shattered his leg in the Battle of Pamplona in 1521. While convalescing he read the Life of Christ by Robert Saxony and a collection of the Lives of Saints.

Since these men were as human as I am, I could be as saintly as they are, was a spiritual realization that inspired him to be a religious despite family objections.

Ad majorem Dei gloriam

Be a soldier of Christ for the greater glory of God, was his resolve when he regained his health.

After a general confession in the Benedictine Abbey in Montserrat, Spain, he stripped off his richly garments and gave them to a beggar. Before the statue of the Blessed Mother, he offered his armor and sword on the eve of her feast in March 1522.

For almost a year, he prayed unceasingly, begged for alms and fasted.

His bedroom on the fourth floor of the family castle eloquently depicts his metanoia. Beneath a brocaded canopy in his wooden statue with a book on the left hand and eyes staring at the heavens is written: Aqui se entrego a Dios Iigo de Loyola [Here Ignatius Loyola surrendered to God] wrote James Martin, SJ, in The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything: A Spirituality For Life.

The cadence of spiritual insights he experienced convinced him he was being called for a deeper relationship with God. He spent a year of solitude in prayer describing in his autobiography his mystical experiences.

The eyes of his understanding opened, he understood both spiritual and matters of faith of learning, with so great an enlightenment that everything seemed new.

Inspired beyond belief, he drafted his insights in Spiritual Exercise, better known as Ignatian Spirituality.

Since everything is within the realm of spiritual life, a Jesuit most likely will define Ignatian Spirituality as finding God in all things. Fr. David Donovan, SJ, implies since nothing can be hidden everything can be opened up before God.

Quest for God

A bridge is a structure which serves as a pathway to transport people or objects from one point to another. The bridge can be made of different componentswood, ropes, bricks, steel, cement and even glass with each type having its advantages and disadvantages. However, they have one commonalityoffer a passage from one place to another.

Religious orders, organizations and spiritual leaders offer different ways to grow spiritually. Saint Ignatius calls this a way of proceeding for people to grow in faith and find the freedom to become the person one is meant to beto love and to accept love, to make good decisions and to experience the beauty of creation and the mystery of Gods love.

The Order of the Jesuits calls this spirituality for Christian believers and seekers who desire a genuine relationship with God, the Ignatian Spirituality. Since everything is within Gods authority and competence and everything affect mans relationship with God, Ignatian Spirituality is about finding the true God in all things and everyone.

This is the greatest adventure in life for our hearts are restless until it rests in you, according to Saint Augustine.

In Friendship Like No Other, Fr. William A. Barry, SJ, recommends that the faithful need to relate to God to mature in faith.

Man in the modern world

The Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World states: Mans dignity demands that he acts according to a knowing and free choice. Thus, choice is prompted within or motivated from external pressure.

Mans dignity demands he acts with a knowing and free choice. But worldliness is an unsurmountable barricade to moral choice since the dawn of civilization. In a sensual world, the trappings of pleasure, power, prestige and pesos are benchmarks of a good life. These affect, to unprecedented degree, mans disordered affections. Needs are relegated to the background, only wants prevail often in the pyramid of preferences.

To live simply is inward mobility in a consumer society. For status have symbols, making it difficult to regulate desires when aiming for upward scales in the art of living.

Ignatian Spirituality then is about freedom and detachment, God in his goodness gifted man freedom to will.

The Vatican says, Only in freedom can man direct himself toward goodnessauthentic freedom is an exceptional sign of the divine image within man.

Conquer oneself and regulate ones lifethat no decision is made under the influence of any inordinate attachment.

Saint Ignatiuss feast day is celebrated annually on July 31.

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Santiago is a former regional director of the Department of Education National Capital Region. She is currently a faculty member of Mater Redemptoris Collegium in Calauan, Laguna and Mater Redemptor is College in San Jose City, Nueva Ecija.

Image Credits: Wikimedia Commons

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