St. Ignatius was a soldier.
His military career, that is, the one that was for the glory of this world, came to an end when he was wounded.
And on his bed of pain, he went through a conversion to God
and began to realize that his worldly pursuits,
even if they involved...
courage and patriotism,
were, to a large extent, very self-centered.
And so he began to think about the saints
and how they had accomplished great deeds,
great deeds that were based on self-contempt
and a willingness to really and truly put others,
and most especially God, first.
And so, after his conversion, when he became more and more inspired,
and eventually founded the Jesuit Order
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit
and through the mediation of our Blessed Mother,
he conceived of his new company
of men dedicated to the re-evangelization of Europe.
He considered them an army in the service of God,
in the service of God, he was a military man
and he remained throughout his life a military man.
And this can be seen in his great
and famous spiritual exercises
in which in one of the meditations,
he reflects on what he calls the two standards.
And by two standards, he means the two banners
under which all men find themselves
under either one or the other standard.
And the first standard is the standard of this world,
which is the one that belongs to Satan.
And the other standard is the one that belongs to Christ
under which stand all the children of God.
And he makes it clear that there really are
no other real choices, that we stand under one or the other.
And by using
this figure of speech, the two standards,
he also makes it clear to us that it is a fight,
that it is not simply standing on one side of a line
or the other as though it were easy to pass
from one side or the other.
It's actually a commitment.
And there's an ongoing struggle between these two sides
and that the struggle is ultimate and final.
And so the struggle continues to this day,
but that in the end, our choices will have great consequences.
The other aspect of this figure that he uses indicates
to us that there is a social dimension to our salvation
and to this commitment, that we are fighting for souls.
We are engaged in a battle for the salvation
not only of ourselves but the salvation of others.
as well. And so he dedicated himself, of course, to the standard of Christ and fought for Christ
under that standard and didn't count the cost. He, first of all, had to deal with himself,
overcoming his sinfulness and selfishness. There's a story of St. Ignatius that he was
passing through a city on a horse and coming the other way, a Muslim came riding. On the back of
that, the Muslim's horse, he had an emblem of the Blessed Mother attached to the horse's tail.
And apparently he had obtained this emblem probably from a Christian that he had killed.
And so St. Ignatius's first inclination was to go to the Lord.
And so he would go and lop the head off of this Muslim that was riding on a horse and using
an emblem of the Blessed Mother as a decoration for his horse.
Then he thought better about it and he dedicated himself more fervently to the works of penance
and to the evangelization of the world in which he lived. But he had the fighting spirit.
And it was a spirit that was necessary because much of Europe at that time,
had been lost to Protestantism. And one of the great works that the Jesuits engaged themselves in
was the re-evangelization of Europe. And then on from Europe, on to missionary assignments,
where we had great and wonderful fighting saints such as our great North American martyrs,
St. Isaac Jogues and St. John Deborah Boeuf and all the rest who came here to the New World and
placed themselves in the hands of the Holy Spirit. And so he was able to do that. And so he was able to
do that in the custody of basically savages in order to bring them to conversion and ultimately to heaven.
And in the process, they lost their lives.
So, these great heroic saints who had high ideals and the manly fighting spirit that allowed them
to dedicate themselves to these ideals, even though it might cost them their life, and in very many cases,
cost them their life, reminds us that the conflict in which we are involved is a conflict
for our ultimate future and that everything is held in the balance and that we do have
a responsibility for one another.
If we were, you know, if we saw a burning building and heard screams in the building,
probably most of us would do something about it.
And if we didn't, we would feel guilty.
Well, the situation in which we find ourselves with people all around us who are like us,
headed for eternity and for judgment, calls for the same kind of reaction.
We need to pray.
We need to sacrifice.
We need to bear witness to the truth.
We need to know our faith.
We need to be willing and able to defend it if necessary.
All in a spirit of charity, always putting ourselves out there, you know, in the face
of danger and being willing to suffer for the truth and even to die for the truth so
that others might not die the second death, the death which is eternal and which is final.
We look to our Lord who is our King, who stands under his own standard and under whose standard,
we fight because he has given, shown us the way, it is the way of the cross and the way
of the Eucharist.
Let us pray for this grace with the intercession of St. Ignatius as we continue to celebrate
this Holy Mass.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.