Today's Holy Saint: Ignatius of Loyola

Described by James Kiefer as a mystic, educator, preacher and founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius of Loyola lived in the mid 16th century.

He was a solider who was badly injured. After healing a bit, “he went on pilgrimage to Montserrat (near Barcelona), where he hung up his sword over the altar, and then spent about a year at Manresa near Montserrat first working as a nurse and orderly in a hospital there, and then retiring to a cave to live as a hermit and study The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas a Kempis, a book urging the Christian to take Christ as example, and seek daily to follow in His footsteps. It is probably during this year that he wrote his Spiritual Exercises, a manual of Christian prayer and meditation. He directs the reader to begin with an event in the life of Christ, and to imagine the scene in detail, to replay the episode in his mind like a movie script, and to try to feel as if he had himself witnessed the event, and then to use this experience as a motive for love, gratitude, and dedication to the service of God.”

“Today, his followers are aggressively proud of the fact that no member of their order has ever sat on an Inquisitorial tribunal. (It is possible that Ignatius already had doubts about the Inquisition. He was a Basque, and I am told that the Inquisition was never active in Biscay because the Basques, although thoroughly orthodox Christians, would not tolerate it.) In 1534, he and six fellow students formed a group who vowed to travel to Jerusalem and there preach the Gospel to the Muslims. (The most famous of the six is Francis Xavier, who went to India and China as a missionary, and who is commemorated on 3 December.) This group later took the name, "The Society of Jesus," and were nicknamed "the Jesuits" by outsiders, a nickname that stuck.” (Kiefer)

Buy a book of Ignatius quotes at Amazon, or his letters at Powell’s (the greatest bookstore in the world).
Lessons: http://www.io.com/~kellywp/LesserFF/Jul/Ignatius.html
More info: http://www.luc.edu/jesuit/ignatius.bio.html
Catholic insight: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07639c.htm