Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
St. Ignatius was born in 1491 in the castle of the Lords of Loyola. He was the last of 13 children and was baptized Íñigo. Ignatius is a name he took later in life, but it will be convenient to call him by that name even earlier than that. His family was in contact with the royalty of Spain and possessed a sizable income. His mother died when he was still a child and his father died when he was 16, but before his father died, he managed to place him as a page at the court of the king's treasurer so he could learn the manners of a courtier and prepare for a career as a gentleman in the king's service. Unfortunately, in the courts, he also learned the vices of the idle rich. In 1516, King Ferdinand died, and Ignatius' patron lost favor, so he had to find another position. He entered the service of the Viceroy of Navarre in the following year. In 1521, the French invaded, and on May 20th, Ignatius was among the defenders in the Siege of Pamplona. They were hopelessly outnumbered, but he rallied the defenders. He refused to abandon the city's fortress and held out against the French until a cannonball shattered his right leg and wounded his left. He was carried back to Loyola, where he spent about a year convalescing in the castle. To pass the time, he asked for some chivalric novels to read, but there weren't any. All they could offer him were The Life of Christ and A Book of the Lives of Saints, so he read those.
And as he read, he began to admire the deeds of the saints and ask himself, what if I did as like St. Francis or like St. Dominic? After all, they were only men like he was; why couldn't he do the same? During those months, he also had a vision of Jesus and Mary, which made it possible for him to turn away from his past sins of the flesh and never again return to them. By the time he was well, he had undergone a thorough conversion. He went to Montserrat, made a general confession, and left his sword at the altar of the Blessed Virgin. He would no longer need it now that the Lord he was serving was Jesus Christ. Then he went to nearby Manresa, where he spent the better part of a year in intense prayer and penance.
His Spiritual Exercises are in large part the fruit of what he learned there. Then he departed for Jerusalem, where he wanted to live as the saints had lived and to convert the Muslims, or at least to work for their conversion. However, he stayed there less than a month because a Franciscan provincial who had authority over pilgrims ordered him to leave. 
If he couldn't live in Jerusalem, he would teach others to follow Christ, and for that, he would need to study theology, which meant learning Latin. So in 1524, at the age of 33, he began to study Latin. His classmates were children, and they were not kind to him. This old or this grown man who was studying with children and who at times seemed to lose his senses when he would go into ecstasy. In 1526, he began to study philosophy and theology in Alcalá and Salamanca. In both places, he got into trouble for teaching about theological subjects before the authorities considered him qualified to do so. So in 1528, he went to Paris to continue his studies. 
There he gathered around him a group of like-minded men, including St. Francis Xavier and St. Peter Faber. On August 15, 1534, in a Montmartre chapel, a small band of seven took a vow to go to Jerusalem within a year after their studies if this were possible and to work for the conversion of the Turks. The following year, St. Ignatius finished his studies as a Master of Arts, and the group began making its way to the Holy Land. When they reached Venice, they waited for a ship, but the impending war with the Ottoman Turks made it impossible to depart. 
So they went to Rome, where in November 1538, they were able to offer their services to Pope Paul III. The first mission he gave them was to catechize children in Rome. 
St. Ignatius celebrated his first Mass on Christmas night. He had been ordained a year and a half before but had refrained from celebrating Mass because he wanted his first Mass to be in Bethlehem. The war made that impossible, so he did the next best thing by celebrating in front of the relics of the crib kept in the Basilica of St. Mary Major. 
The Pope wanted the group to become a religious institute, but their idea of the life they were called to lead didn't exactly match traditional ideas of religious orders. So they settled on a new form of religious life. They prayed the breviary individually instead of singing the office in common, and they valued mobility for the needs of the church over stability of place for the sake of the soul. They called themselves the Company of Jesus, or in Latin, the Society of Jesus. The plan received the Pope's approval on November 27, 1540, and in April of the following year, they elected St. Ignatius General and pronounced their vows. 
As superior of the new order, St. Ignatius remained in Rome, wrote its constitutions, and supervised the society's growth not only in Italy but also in other countries of Europe. He also even sent missionaries to India. In the 15 years that he governed the congregation, it grew to over 1,000 men serving as teachers, preachers, and missionaries. He died in Rome on July 31, 1556, and was canonized in 1622.
Grace builds on nature, and St. Ignatius's military training give him an interest in studying spiritual warfare. He analyzed the devil's tactics and described them in his Spiritual Exercises. One place he does this is in his famous meditation on the two standards.
He first has us consider the standard, the flag of the devil, and the instructions he gives his minions. They have first attempt with longing for riches as he is accustomed to do in most cases, that men may more easily come to vain honor of the world and then to vast pride. So the first step shall be that of riches, the second that of honor, the third that of pride, and from these three steps he draws on to all their vices. So the devil's goal is to build up pride, which is the beginning of all sin. Pride tends to increase in people who are honored because it feels good to be honored, and it makes you think you deserve it. 
In order to have the victim honored, the tempter has to arrange for him to acquire something that people honor, and this is typically some kind of riches, but it doesn't have to be money. It could be power, good looks, knowledge, and ability to sing, act, or tell jokes. The tempter may not even have to provide it himself. It could be something God gave for his purposes. Once the victim has something to honor, the tempter brings on the honors to build up pride.
So once St. Ignatius has shown us the devil's typical strategy so that we will not fall for his trap, he then has us consider Christ and what he calls his servants to do. This is the exact opposite of the devil's strategy. While the devil tries to produce pride as a source of sin, Christ and his angels try to produce humility as a foundation for virtue.
Instead of riches, Christ tries to lead us to poverty, at least poverty in spirit. To be poor in spirit is to be detached from whatever riches you may possess. You have them from God because that is what he wills for you now, but if he wills something else in the future, you will accept that because what you love is his will and not the riches for their own sake. 
As being honored by men tends to produce pride, so being disrespected or humiliated tends to produce humility. But in both cases, it depends on how you react. If you are alert to the danger of pride, then when you are honored, you will remember that all you have comes from God, and so he is the one who deserves that honor that is being directed toward you.
Conversely, you can react with anger to a humiliating experience and so cling to your pride instead of growing more humble. What is the right way to react? When you make a mistake or don't get the respect you deserve, you should thank God for the opportunity to grow in humility, for that is the foundation of all virtue. This is certainly not what we naturally tend to do, but this is how we imitate Christ and his blessed mother, who chose poverty and humility.
Bless those who curse you because they are unintentionally doing you a favor. And so we see why it is that God resists the proud and gives his grace to the humble. He resists the proud so that they will become humble, for only the humble can receive his gifts without being endangered by them. These are only a few of the many things that we can learn from St. Ignatius and his disciples. 
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.