The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything Read Free

of everyone’s vocation in life. But if, over time, you find yourself sacrificing everything else to that one end, you might discover that work has become a kind of “god” for you.
    When people ask me whether anyone could ever break the first commandment (“You shall have no other gods before me.”) I often say that while few people today believe in multiple gods, as in the past, many more may believe in newer “gods.” For some people their “god” is career. Or money. Or status.
    What would St. Ignatius say about all this?
    Most likely he would furrow his brow and say (in Basque, Spanish, or Latin, of course) that while you need to earn a living, you have to be careful not to let your career become a “disordered affection” that prevents you from being free to meet new people, spending time with those you love, and viewing people as ends rather than means. It’s an “affection” since it’s something that appeals to you. It’s “disordered” because it’s not ordered toward something life-giving.
    Ignatius would invite you to move toward “detachment.” Once you did so, you would become freer and happier.
    That’s why Ignatius counseled people to avoid disordered affections. They block the path to detachment, to growing more in freedom, growing as a person, and growing closer to God. If that sounds surprisingly Buddhist, it is: that particular goal has long been a part of many spiritual traditions.
    So if anyone asks you to define Ignatian spirituality in a few words, you could say that it is:
Finding God in all things
Becoming a contemplative in action
Looking at the world in an incarnational way
Seeking freedom and detachment
    You could say any of those things, or all of them, and you would be correct. In this book we’ll talk in depth about each of these answers, and we’ll also look at how each relates to, well, everything.
    To understand the Ignatian vision, it helps to know about the man himself. Like all of the spiritual masters, Ignatius’s experiences influenced his worldview and his spiritual practices. Plus, the story of St. Ignatius Loyola is a good reminder that everyone’s life—whether sixteenth-century mystic or modern-day seeker—is primarily a journey of the spirit.
    First, I’ll give you a short sketch of his life. Then, throughout the book, I’ll return to a few episodes to highlight various themes and insights. And you might be surprised to discover that like many people today, Ignatius wasn’t always “religious” or even, to use the more popular term, “spiritual.”
    A (V ERY S HORT ) L IFE OF I GNATIUS L OYOLA
    Iñigo de Loyola was born in the Basque region of northern Spain in 1491 and spent much of his young adult life preparing to be a courtier and soldier. The young Basque was something of a ladies’ man and, according to some sources, a real hothead. The first sentence of his autobiography tells us that he was “given over the vanities of the world” and primarily concerned with “a great and foolish desire to win fame.”
    In other words, he was a vain fellow mainly interested in worldly success. “He is in the habit of going around in cuirass and coat of mail,” a contemporary wrote about the twentyish Ignatius, who “wears his hair long to the shoulder, and walks around in a two-colored, slashed doublet with a bright cap.”
    Like many of the saints, Iñigo (he switched to the Latin-sounding Ignatius later on) was not always “saintly.” John W. Padberg, a Jesuit historian, recently told me that Ignatius may be the only saint with a notarized police record: for nighttime brawling with an intent to inflict serious harm.
    During a battle in Pamplona in 1521, the aspiring soldier’s leg was struck and shattered by a cannonball, which led to several months of painful recuperation. The initial operation on the leg was botched, and Iñigo, who wanted his leg to look good in the fashionable tights of the day, submitted to a further series of gruesome