Ignatius of Loyola
Dear Friends,
Near the time this Parish Link drops on your doormat the church celebrates the saint’s day of Ignatius of Loyola, the 16th century founder of the Jesuit order, the Society of Jesus.
When I was recuperating from Sepsis a few years ago, a friend encouraged me to read Ignatius’ famous ‘Spiritual Exercises’. Ignatius spent years struggling with his health, as he recovered from a horrendous wound he suffered at the battle of Pamplona. Interestingly, this physical illness became a blessing in disguise to him. Bound to his bed, he employed the power of his imagination to contemplate the stories of Jesus’ life. As he did so, he began to see the purpose of his own life in a different light. As one biographer puts it: ‘His external wounding was the occasion for his inner healing’.
Looking back, I too learned a thing or two from that period of physical illness. I began to understand that health and wholeness are two separate things. God’s presence, and the sense of wholeness which it brings, can be experienced both in sickness and in health. Sometimes God heals physically, at other times he helps us bear our illness.
St Ignatius wrote: ‘We should not fix our desires on health or sickness, wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or a short one. For everything has the potential of calling forth in us a deeper response to our life in God.’ This is true. Our value, in God’s eyes, does not depend on our physical health or our ‘usefulness’ to society, but on the manner of our response to the present moment in God’s never-failing presence.
Love and prayers,
