A comment about the early Jesuits

There was, however, one “doctrine” that was fundamental for them, one that gave orientation to all their ministries and to the way they wanted to lead their own lives. It was the basic premise of the Exercises, even though it was buried unobtrusively in the fifteenth Preliminary Observation”: the Creator deals directly with the creature, and the creature deals directly with the Creator—heart to heart, one might say. Upon this teaching Jesuits based their more characteristic themes—indifference, discernment, and inner devotion, or consolation.

John W. O’Malley, SJ
The First Jesuits

In a recent article in America, Adam Hincks, SJ, says that cosmologists don’t have definitive answers to the two questions most people have about the universe: when did it begin? and how big is it?  Scientists don’t even know what most of the universe is made of.  Hincks has a doctorate in cosmology from Princeton, and he’ll likely carry on the great tradition of Jesuit science.

Astronomers all over the world, professional and amateur alike, are getting ready to observe the rare transit of Venus on June 6.  They’ll see the planet of Venus cross the face of the sun, something that won’t happen again until 2117.  It turns out that the Jesuits have a long history of observing these transits.

Pilgrims are now walking and biking the new Ignatian Way pilgrimage route in northern Spain, which follows the route Ignatius walked in 1522 after his conversion.  (Go here to read what I wrote about it last year.)   After watching this video about it, I was ready to stuff my backpack, lace up my hiking boots, and book my flight.   (Click here to see the video on Vimeo.)

Sunday was the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, and it turns out that there’s a Jesuit angle to the tragic story.  An Irish novice named Francis Browne was aboard the ship on the first leg of its maiden voyage from Southampton, England to Cobh, Ireland.  He wanted to continue on to New York, but his superior ordered him to leave the ship and come home.  He dutifully complied, and he had a long career as a Jesuit.

In 1985 another Irish Jesuit discovered a trove of Fr. Browne’s photos, including some taken on board the Titanic.  They are the last images of life aboard the doomed ship, and were used for reference by the producers of the movie Titanic.  You can view some of them here.

There’s little doubt that there’s a Jesuit “style.”  The Jesuits themselves call it “our way of proceeding.”  A recent article on MiradaGlobal.com found five elements in the Jesuit style:

• Pay attention to history (of a person, a society)
• Experience things from the “inside”
• Test personal experience against “reality”
• Put love into action
• Evaluate (don’t repeat “old schemes”)

Read the whole thing.

A while back, I felt deflated when I discovered that the wonderful Prayer of St. Francis (“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace”) wasn’t written by Francis at all.  It was written in 1912 by a writer for a small French Catholic magazine.  My disappointment wasn’t on the level of discovering the truth about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, but it stung a bit.  I wish Francis had written it in the 13th century.

So imagine how I felt when I found out that something similar is likely true of St. Ignatius’s wonderful prayer for generosity.  You know it, I’m sure:

Lord, teach me to be generous,
to serve you as you deserve,
to give and not to count the cost,
to fight and not to heed the wounds,
to toil and not to seek for rest,
to labor and not to look for any reward,
save that of knowing that I do your holy will.

Turns out that no one can find any reference to this prayer before 1897.  The oldest publication of it dates from 1910, where it appeared as “The Scout’s Prayer” in a French Boy Scout manual.  The author is unknown, but no one who has looked into the matter thinks that it was Ignatius.  British Jesuit Jack Mahoney has all the details on the website ThinkingFaith.org.

I’ve prayed the Prayer for Generosity many times, thinking that Ignatius wrote it.  Does it matter that he didn’t?

I don’t think so.  It’s a great prayer. It expresses wholehearted commitment, a desire to imitate Christ, a generous spirit, and a readiness to work hard–all sentiments associated with Ignatian spirituality and the Spiritual Exercises.  They fit Ignatius perfectly.  You feel like he could have written that prayer, just as St. Francis could have written the prayer attributed to him.

Maybe Ignatius didn’t write the Prayer for Generosity in the sixteenth century.  But the spiritual movement he started was healthy enough in the twentieth century to produce a prayer that sounds just like him.  That’s impressive.

Image by elyse under Creative Commons license.

There have been rumblings about director Martin Scorsese making a film of Shusaku Endo’s magnificent historical novel Silence, about Japanese martyrs of the 17th century.  Now it seems that the rumor may become a reality, according to Spero Forum.

In a preface to Endo’s book, Scorsese writes perceptively about faith:

How do you tell the story of Christian faith? The difficulty, the crisis, of believing? How do you describe the struggle? … Shusaku Endo understood the conflict of faith, the necessity of belief fighting the voice of experience.  The voice that always urges the faithful – the questioning faithful – to adapt their beliefs to the world they inhabit, their culture…That’s a paradox, and it can be an extremely painful one: on the face of it, believing and questioning are antithetical.  Yet I believe that they go hand in hand.  One nourishes the other.  Questioning may lead to great loneliness, but if it co-exists with faith – true faith, abiding faith – it can end in the most joyful sense of communion.  It’s this painful, paradoxical passage – from certainty to doubt to loneliness to communion – that Endo understands so well, and renders so clearly, carefully and beautifully in Silence.

I, for one, can’t wait to see the film.

Church historian Pat McNamara writes about how the Jesuits at St. John’s College (later Fordham University) befriended Edgar Allen Poe in the last years of his life.  The poet, grief-stricken and depressed after the death of his wife, found companionship with the Jesuits.

One of them remembered Poe as a “familiar figure at the college . . . It seemed to soothe his mind to wander at will about the lawn and the beautiful grounds back of the college buildings.” Another wrote: “It was one of Poe’s greatest gifts that he could make friends wherever he went. To know him was to love him… It was a pleasure to see him and still more to listen to him.”

For his part, Poe liked the company of Jesuits.  He told a friend they were “highly cultivated gentlemen and scholars, they smoked and they drank and they played cards, and they never said a word about religion.”

Luis Espinal, SJ, is a Jesuit hero I hadn’t heard about.  He was a Spanish Jesuit who worked for social justice in Bolivia.  He was murdered in 1980.  He wrote this.

Losing one’s life means working for others, even though they don’t pay us back. It means doing a favor without it being returned. Losing one’s life means jumping in even when failure is the likely outcome – and doing it without being overly prudent. It means burning bridges for the sake of our neighbor.

Losing one’s life should not be accompanied by pompous or dramatic gestures. Life is to be given simply, without fanfare – like a waterfall, like a mother nursing her child, like the humble sweat of the sower of seed.

Train us, Lord, and send us out to do the impossible, because behind the impossible is your grace and your presence; we cannot fall into the abyss.

In 1534, Ignatius and his companions went to the church of Sainte Pierre in the village of Montmartre north of Paris, and  took vows to work together as a company.  It was an important moment because this band of brothers soon became the first Jesuits.  When my wife and I went to Paris a couple of weeks ago to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary, I was eager to visit this spot.

On the day we visited, Sainte Pierre didn’t look much like the church in the painting by Maurice Utrillo above.  Trucks and cars were parked in front and the small courtyard was filled with booths for a street fair.  We were stunned when we walked inside.  An experimental video with some disturbing imagery was playing on a screen in front of the altar, accompanied by a loud and harsh sound track.  The video was part of an arts festival.  Either the pastor or a friend of his had created it; our French wasn’t good enough to fully understand the explanation from a somewhat chagrined church secretary.

This wasn’t what I was expecting.  I was disappointed and a little angry. But then Ignatius and his companions didn’t get what they were expecting either when they made their vows.  They thought that God would send them to serve in the Holy Land.  They implemented Plan B — putting themselves at the disposal of the pope — when travel to the Holy Land proved impossible.

Things change.  Montmartre was a quiet village on a hill overlooking Paris when the companions made their vows in 1534.  No doubt they wanted a quiet place to pray and reflect.  Today Montmartre is a lively, noisy place with throngs of Parisians and tourists enjoying the restaurants, cafes, and art galleries.  It’s a place well-suited to the Ignatian spirit.

We went back to Sainte Pierre a few days later when the arts festival was over.  The video was gone.  The church was quiet.  The light was soft. (At the left is stained glass window depicting St. Ignatius.)  It was a good time to thank God for what happened here in 1534.