A volunteer searching through the archives of the New Orleans Province of the Jesuits recently discovered a rare photo of Blessed Miguel Pro, SJ, along with an American Jesuit’s remembrances of time spent with the Jesuit martyr in a Belgian hospital.  John Druhan, SJ, wrote that Pro spoke American slang with a Mexican accent and liked to sing popular songs.  The photo (above) appeared on the cover of the province magazine, along with an article about Pro.

Here’s a prayer to St. Ignatius to pray on All Saints Day.  When you’re finished you can pray the litany of Jesuit saints.

St. Ignatius,
You who helped evangelize and spread the Great Message,
Who was able to refocus your life,
In troublesome times for yourself,
On the most important being in life.
Help us follow in your footsteps,
Through the long and troubling task,
Of refocusing ourselves on the almighty one,
God, our savior.
Amen.

Jonathan Vigliaturo
Rockhurst High School
Kansas City, Missouri

From In All Things: Everyday Prayers of Jesuit High School Students

This prayer by the Jesuit saint Robert Bellarmine puts a new spin on finding God on all things:

What various powers lie hidden in plants! What strange powers are found in stones, especially magnetic stones and amber. What strength do we see in animals, such as lions, bears, bulls and elephants. How clever, although tiny, are ants, spiders, bees and flies. I pass over the power of the angels and the might of the sun and stars, which are far away from us. Finally, how great is human genius, which has invented skills such that we wonder whether nature surpasses art or art surpasses nature! Now lift up your eyes to God, my soul, and reflect on how great is the strength, efficacy, and power of the Lord your God….

Something to think about | I hold that every poor man, every vagrant, every beggar is Christ carrying his cross. And as Christ, we must love and help him. We must treat him as a brother, a human being like ourselves. If we were to start a campaign of love for the poor and homeless, we would, in a short time, do away with depressing scenes of begging, children sleeping in doorways and women with babies in their arms fainting in our streets.

There are many sufferings to heal. Christ stumbles through our streets in the person of so many poor who are hungry, thrown out of their miserable lodgings because of sickness and destitution. Christ has no home!  And we who have the good fortune to have one and have food to satisfy our hunger, what are we doing about it?

St. Alberto Hurtado, SJ

Tuesday was the Feast of Blessed Peter Favre, SJ, sometimes called “the second Jesuit” because he was especially close to Ignatius when the order was getting started.  Peter was looking for direction in life when he ran into Ignatius.  He was overwhelmed with choices, like a young person today:

I was always very unsure of myself and blown about by many winds: sometimes wishing to be married, sometimes a doctor, sometimes a lawyer, sometimes a professor of theology, sometimes a cleric without a degree–at times wishing me to be a monk.

He found his purpose in life through the Spiritual Exercises, directed by Ignatius.

Fr. Jim Martin, SJ says that the relationship between Peter and Ignatius shows that friends need not be cut from the same cloth.  Favre was from a humble background and professed a simple faith:  “One friend had seen little of the world; the other much. One had always found religion a source of solace; the other had proceeded to God along a tortuous path.”

Today is the first day of the  Novena of Grace, an annual time of prayer directed to the intercession of St. Francis Xavier.  This special novena has been celebrated for hundreds of years.  It ends on March 12, the day that St. Francis and St. Ignatius Loyola were canonized.  A Jesuit who was miraculously healed through Francis’s intercession said that the saint promised  that “all who ask his intercession with God for nine days, in honor of his canonization, would infallibly experience the effects of his great power in heaven and would receive whatever they asked that would contribute to their salvation.”

Prayers for the novena have been posted by the Maryland province of the Jesuits.  If you pray them, you’ll learn much about the dramatic life of one of the church’s great saints.

All Saints Day will arrive in a few weeks, and if you have a taste for saints, check out our new feature on IgnatianSpirituality.com honoring Jesuit saints and blesseds.

The page links to biographies of Jesuit saints (including one of my favorites, St. Roque Gonzalez) and Jesuit blesseds–all 147 of them!

Saturday is a big day in the Ignatian calendar–it’s the Feast of St. Ignatius Loyola.  To mark the day, we’re giving away five copies of the book Compass Points by Margaret Silf.  To have a chance to win, just leave a comment here on this post before midnight on Saturday, July 31.  We’ll pick five winners with a random drawing.

You can say anything you want in your comment.  But, if you would care to, you might say something about St. Ignatius.  How has he inspired you?  What is your favorite story about him?

You might know Margaret Silf as the author of Inner Compass, a fine introduction to Ignatian spirituality.  She is a columnist for America magazine and a well-known spiritual director.  Compass Points is her latest book.

You can increase your chances of winning a book by entering an identical contest at People for Others, our sister blog, maintained by Paul Campbell SJ.

It’s July, the month of high summer (in the Northern Hemisphere) and the month of St. Ignatius Loyola, whose spiritual ideas we celebrate here at IgnatianSpirituality.com.  Ignatius’s feast day is July 31.  Loyola Press has assembled a collection of reflections, insights, prayers, blog posts, and article excerpts for every day of the month.

Here is the list. Today’s good idea is an invitation to browse the “What Is Ignatian Spirituality?” section of this website.

Today marks the 400th anniversary of the death of the Jesuit Matteo Ricci, who was the first Westerner in the court of Imperial China.  He is one of my heroes, not only because I am fascinated by the history of China, but also because his ministry represents in my mind a model for the future of interreligious dialogue, globalization, and even Catholic mission.  (See the China Daily story.)

Ricci’s was a very Ignatian approach to evangelization.  He entered China hoping to first learn about the country and its people.  His first published work there, in fact, was on friendship (Jiaoyou lun, 1595).  Mindful of the maxim to find God “in all things,” he wrote to his confreres in Europe that China’s vast civilization was certainly not bereft of God’s presence–only a kind of European (and even Catholic) triumphalism could posit such nonsense.  He paid attention, hoping to discern the ways God was already revealing himself to the Chinese, even before he could share with them the story of Jesus.  He donned the garb of Buddhist monks (although he himself had little tolerance for Buddhism), but later understood that the way to gain the respect of the literati was through presenting himself as a Confucian scholar.  The picture here shows him in that stage of his ministry.  Ricci went on to write on astronomy, mathematics, cartography (see the Library of Congress exhibit), mnemonics, philosophy, and Christian doctrine.  He made a lasting impact on both China and Korea; both he and his Chinese friend (and convert to Catholicism) Paul Xu Guangxi have been talked about as candidates for beatification.

Further viewing: Vatican exhibit on Matteo Ricci (You Tube)

Further reading: Ronald Modras’ chapter on Ricci in Ignatian Humanism (Loyola Press, 2004).