The lives of some famous people seem to be popularly defined by one well-known episode or phrase: Marie Antoinette’s apocryphal “Let them eat cake” for example. The “cannonball moment” in the life of St Ignatius might be another case.
The story is well known: the Basque soldier and courtier born as Iñigo López Oñaz de Loyola was hit by a ricocheting cannonball and severely injured at the Battle of Pamplona in 1521. Carried back to his family home in Loyola, his leg shattered, he underwent excruciating surgeries. It was a long difficult recuperation and over months, Iñigo underwent a deep personal conversion.
The cannonball had shattered his ambitions for military glory and courtly honor. It was an experience of broken dreams and hopes. Trauma inevitably brings about crisis. But Iñigo didn’t dwell on his loss and was not defined by that crisis. Instead, he responded to an interior calling to a new way of being and serving.
All of us can name key experiences – positive as well as negative ones – which we think of as the moment when the course of our lives changed. Yet people are more than the sum of those experiences. While the cannonball moment was indeed significant, it goes nowhere near summing up Ignatius the man, nor why that life might be important for us. There is more – far, far more – that deserves our keen attention.
His life between Pamplona and the papal approval of the Society of Jesus in 1540 is sketched out in his “Autobiography,” a short document which is at times frustratingly short of details. What is abundantly evident, however, is that Ignatius had many more times of conversion, including his year spent in a cave at Manresa and his pilgrimage to the Holy Land and important mystical experiences, including at La Storta, outside Rome.
Ignatius referred to himself as “the pilgrim,” i.e. someone on a journey. After his physical, psychological crisis he embarked on a lifelong journey of searching and discovering. Ignatius learned by experience for himself that God is interested and involved in the minutiae of our lives – the humdrum as well as the highs and lows. Many of us will be familiar with the Ignatian phrase “finding God in all things.” In fact, Ignatius’ own words are subtly different: buscar y hallar la voluntad de Dios en todo – a seeking and finding what God wants, in everything we do.
The seeking part is as important as finding. Seeking and discovering God’s will in all things involves free and loving communication. This is a two-way relationship. By refining how we perceive God acting in and around us, we can find purpose, meaning, and direction.
Ignatius spent the last 16 years of his life in Rome at a “desk job.” Among his many tasks was writing the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus. This substantial work is fundamental to understanding what Ignatius intended the Jesuits and the schools and colleges they founded to be and to accomplish. Yet it is relatively unfamiliar reading, even among Jesuits.
Far more than a dry legal text or a book on spirituality, the Constitutions show a mind that was both visionary and pragmatic, inspired by a great ideal while also being fully aware of the importance of small and apparently minor details. They are the fruit of Ignatius’ deep belief that the Society of Jesus existed because God wanted it to exist. The Constitutions define the mission and identity of the Jesuits and illuminate the purpose of Jesuit institutions: everything is for God’s glory, and our fundamental option should be for whatever makes that glory even greater.
The dramatic ups and downs of Ignatius’ life are certainly impressive. But his undramatic, long-term dedication to his calling, and his consistent, day-in, day-out refusal to be distracted are just as important. The Constitutions call for clarity, honesty, and long-haul fidelity. We inhabit a time and culture in which commitment is a scarce commodity; being distracted is for many of us increasingly our default position. Ignatius’ desire to know and do the will of God as the guiding principle of life offers a radical and life-affirming alternative.