Outside the front door of LMU’s Jesuit Residence is a statue of St Ignatius of Loyola. Born Iñigo Lopez into a noble family in the Spanish Basque region in 1491, he began life as a courtier and professional soldier. A serious war injury derailed his dreams of military glory and professional success. An internal crisis and a spiritual awakening sent his life off in a totally different direction.
Years of spiritual searching and wandering led him to the University of Paris (I like to remind people that he was both an international and a transfer student). There he gathered around him a small community of like-minded students who were effectively the first Jesuits.
In Paris, too, he was registered in Latin as a student, with the name “Ignatius,” after the early Christian writer, martyr saint, and bishop of Antioch (Antakya in today’s Türkiye). And it is as Ignatius of Loyola that history has remembered Iñigo.
Jesuits were – and continue to be – known for many things, especially going to the frontiers of the world and education. Ignatius was born 20 years after Copernicus, eight years after Luther, and a year before Columbus left on his first voyage: In his lifetime, the worldview of the European late Middle Ages underwent dramatic changes, including how people understood of the physical universe; the unity of European Christians was shattered; and of the world revealed itself to be peopled by far more diverse inhabitants than had been thought previously.
Those seismic shifts – along with the Christian humanism in which he was schooled in 1530s Paris – deeply shaped Jesuit education, and their echoes can be detected in the DNA of LMU.
The real origin of the name “Ignatius” is unknown. Popular belief has often (but mistakenly) associated this Greek name with the Latin word for fire, “ignis.” This is partly because Ignatius frequently signed off his many letters to the first generations of Jesuit explorers, preachers, and missionaries with the phrase “ite, inflammate omnia” (“go and set all things ablaze”).
By the end of Ignatius’ life in 1556, there were more than 1,000 Jesuits, in countries as far spread as Africa, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Japan. They would all have recognized “ite” (“go”) as the same word that concludes every Mass (“go in peace”). It is a command to remain not with safe and familiar realities, but to venture out into the unknown, even the hostile. Their Bible was in Latin, and they would have immediately associated Ignatius’ words “inflammate omnia” with the Holy Spirit, which the Bible describes with images of burning tongues of fire. A famous medieval Latin prayer invites the Holy Spirit to “come and light the fire of love in people’s hearts.” Jesus himself said that he had come to “bring fire to the world.”
Ignatius’ words are displayed on LeVecke Bridge going into University Hall. LMU’s Ignite a Brighter World campaign invites us to “illuminate new ways of thinking. Where creativity is boundless. Where justice prevails.” In different words, Ignatius’ companions would have recognized these ambitions. Fire does indeed bring light, but symbolizes more than enlightenment. It also brings warmth, and it is associated with love, which always includes justice but takes it further. And as Californians know, fire can just as easily disrupt – destructively as well as creatively. It requires careful handling.
In the ancient Hebrew mindset at the root of Ignatius’ command is yet others association: fire purifies, driving away disease and contagion; fire refines, getting rid of dross; and fire makes things holy, ready to serve God authentically.
If we think about all that that “ignite” includes, it is a fine set of tasks and ambitions for this latest iteration of Jesuit education – and indeed for life.
There are several activities celebrating Ignatian Heritage Month across campus with the hope of bringing a greater understanding and appreciation for LMU’s Ignatian heritage.