Transcript
Tim Gray (0:01)
You're listening to a podcast on Catholic saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live and share their faith. I'm Tim Gray, president of the Augustine Institute, and joining me is Professor Ben Akers, who's also our executive director of Formed. And so he's the one who makes all these things happen here at Formed, and he's the boss of Formed. So it's great to have. And today is the feast of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. So we're going to talk about this great, great saint, Saint Ignatius. We have a great image of him that was original Sketch that we have, and we use that for part of our series, true reformers, because St. Ignatius gets canonized, I think, the year 1622, and he's right at the Counter Reformation. And he's really the high tide, I would say, of the Counter Reformation. I mean, what he brings in and what he does to renew the Church is just absolutely astounded. It's an amazing story, and we're going to talk about this incredible saint, but I just want to mention we have a book, True Reformers, that the Augustine published, and there's a wonderful chapter on St. Ignatius here, as well as all the other saints who are these stellar saints of the Counter Reformation. This time when the Church was in great corruption and worldliness, and yet it went through an incredible renewal and revival. And that's what we hope is going to happen Age today that the Church has kind of gotten a bit corrupt in some ways and complacent in others and worldly in many. And it's time for a great renewal. And that's what St. John Paul II called the Church to a great new springtime. And the last time we had a great new springtime was really the kind of Reformation, the time of people like Saint Ignatius of Loyola. So let's just go back and talk about St. Ignatius of Loyola. Of course, he's born in 1491 in Spain. And you know, that was a time when there was the beginning of a renewal in Spain. You had Cardinal Jimenez, Francesco Jimenez, who in the 1490s becomes the cardinal Archbishop of Toledo. He works with Queen Isabella. And Queen Isabella really wants a reform of the Church. And it's interesting that the reform of the church in Spain begins with a lay woman, right? It's Queen Isabella who really pushes and uses her, her royalty, to push the pope to appoint this Franciscan who's known as a Holy Priest, Francesco de Jimenez, Cardinal Jimenez. She gets him appointed as the archbishop of Toledo, and then he works with Queen Isabella to bring about a reform in Spain. And of course, one of the fruits of that reform is going to be what we're going to see with the conversion of St Ignatius of Loyola. But let's talk about St Ignatius and how he ends up going through a radical conversion.
Ben Akers (2:41)
And just to go back to the point of what you were saying of we need renewal, we need reform in the Church. This is one of the principles that the Counter Reformation teaches us, that we can learn today as well. And I'll say it in Latin and then I'll translate it, because everything always sounds better in Latin, right? Ecclesia semper reformanda. The Church always reforming, that the Church always needs to be in a spirit of reform. And not only the Church, but we, as each one of us, exactly, members of the Church, that we're all called to personal reform. And that's what we see in each of these. Jimenez, as you mentioned before, he reforms himself. It's not until age 48, when he's appointed this cardinal archbishop, that he has a deeper conversion in his own life to read the reform of himself, to lead the reform of the order, the Franciscan order that he's a member of, and then the reform of the clergy, which he's in charge of. And so we really see that it's never too late. And same with St. Ignatius, his conversion happens at age 30. So that's not old, but it's later in life. You think that these. Sometimes we think that these saints are just born saints. They bore the st. Period in front of their name. Right? But they're not. They're just like us. And Ignatius is a great example of that. He was very worldly. He was very vain, even though he was born to a Catholic family, a noble family, youngest of 11 children. By age 7, his mother had died. But he always wanted to be a soldier. That was his dream in life. He loved reading books of chivalry, the knights doing great deeds and fighting for a damsel in distress. These are the books that captured his imagination. This is the life he wanted to choose. And he lived a very vain life. He says that he cared about what he looked like. He was very particular about his looks, about his dress, the way he. His comportment. And these were things that were a priority to him. And he sought his fortune in the army. And so his conversion really takes place at. It begins on the battlefield he's fighting for in the battle of Pamploda. And Pamplona is part of the Kingdom of Navarre. Spain was divided into different countries. And the Kingdom of Navarre was between France and Spain. It's kind of that border there. And he's fighting the battle of Pamplona and he was fighting for the Spanish forces against the French. And at a key moment, the Spanish wanted to pull back. They said, look, we can't compete against the enemy. And even though Ignatius was a lower ranking officer, he rallied the troops and convinced them, no, we need to fight, we need to fight brave. And a cannonball blows through the wall of the town and he stands in the gap and leads the men in a surge of energy from the Spanish forces. But another cannonball rips through his legs, really just tearing his right, the left calf off, his right shin completely broken. And soon after the Spanish have to surrender. And so he is convalescing. And this break was so bad that they had to set it, and they didn't set it really well on the battlefield.