for Ignatius in the Loyola family home, but they have in common a fundamental point: they both let Christ make them his own. I seek Jesus, I serve Jesus because he sought me first, because I was won over by him: and this is the heart of our experience.
In his third point, the pope explores the Ignatian image of “healthy shame” for our sins, by which he means guilt as a natural and healthy response to our hurtful actions, as opposed to psychologically damaging self-hatred. Healthy shame works as a corrective to human egoism:
We should ask for the grace to be ashamed; shame that comes from the continuous conversation of mercy with him; shame that makes us blush before Jesus Christ; shame that attunes us to the heart of Christ who made himself sin for me; shame that harmonizes each heart through tears and accompanies us in the daily “sequela” of “my Lord.”
And this always brings us, as individuals and as the Society, to humility, to living this great virtue. Humility which every day makes us aware that it is not we who build the Kingdom of God but always the Lord’s grace which acts within us; a humility that spurs us to put our whole self not into serving ourselves or our own ideas, but into the service of Christ and of the Church, as clay vessels, fragile, inadequate and insufficient, yet which contain an immense treasure that we bear and communicate (cf. 2 Cor 4:7).
Following a Jesuit tradition, Pope Francis preaches “in threes.” Here he explores three aspects of humility in Ignatian spirituality: putting Christ at the center, surrendering to Christ’s loving service, and feeling healthy shame over sin. But he does not present these aspects as exhaustive of Ignatian spirituality. Instead, he develops them as points for meditation which he sees in the Mass readings for St. Ignatius Day — as images for prayer which strike him as applicable to our own lives. In addition to these points, there are many other virtues in Ignatian spirituality which inform the language of this pope and the way he relates to God.
Spirituality in Action
While many people have noticed the popularity of Pope Francis, few casual observers may realize that the Ignatian spirituality driving his papacy precedes him and will endure long after he is gone. It is the spirituality of St. Ignatius of Loyola that formed Francis, not Francis who formed Ignatian spirituality. If knowing someone’s family helps us to know that person, then we must understand Francis as a son of St. Ignatius to appreciate the sources of his spiritual fire, and we must look at how the Jesuit saints lived to fully grasp how Francis strives to live.
In this book, I will illustrate the world-focused (rather than worldly) Ignatian spirituality of Pope Francis through the stories of great Jesuit saints and their companions. St. Ignatius notes in his Spiritual Exercises that “love shows itself in deeds more than in words” (#230). It is likewise my goal in this book to show Ignatian spirituality in action more than just talk about it. Rather than send readers to encyclopedias to look up Jesuit terminology, or to a theological library for further study, I hope the lives of the saints covered in this book will speak for themselves, inspiring readers to grow in virtue and in relationship with the Holy Trinity. Because Ignatian spirituality is first and foremost about our experiences of God, not our theological insights, I want to share the experiences of Jesuit saints who have helped Pope Francis and others grow closer to the Lord.
Although Pope Francis embodies Ignatian spirituality on a very large stage due to the prominence of his office, there are many Jesuit saints and non-Jesuit saints (both men and women) who have lived this spirituality in a less visible way. The early Jesuits were scrupulous about promoting the canonization of our martyred or saintly members, as St. Ignatius encouraged his missionaries to always write two letters back to Rome — one with all the positive details for publicity purposes and one with all the problems for internal use. And the first Jesuits were forward-thinking in the way they carefully documented everything: When the Society of Jesus was suppressed in 1773, the Jesuit archives filled an entire building, while the Capuchin Franciscan archives barely occupied a single room!
Partly because we Jesuits are such zealous researchers and writers, the long black line of canonized Jesuit saints now stretches further than those of many other religious orders: There are currently about 350 Jesuit servants of God, venerables, blesseds, and saints in the various stages of canonization. And we observe many common virtues of Ignatian spirituality in the lives of these men, springing from the foundational quality of humility that Pope Francis spoke about. In the next chapters of this book, I will look at the following virtues in some of the most prominent Jesuit saints and their companions:
• Trust: Saints who surrendered themselves profoundly to God
• Openness: Saints who dreamed big, listened to God, and went outside the box
• Generosity: Saints who gave without counting the cost
• Simplicity: Saints who learned to have or not have things, insofar as it served God
• Dedication: Saints who followed Jesus even when things got tough
• Gratitude: Saints who saw everything, including themselves, as a gift from God
Finally, I will conclude the book with a reflection on the transformation we seek in reading the stories of these holy people, suggesting some takeaways from the lives of the Jesuit saints for our own spiritual lives.
Why does any of this matter? Well, as I hope to show, the Holy Spirit has given us Pope Francis not just for the present time, but for the future as well. He’s modeling a particular way of relating to God for all Christians as we progress in our journey through this life to the next. If some readers don’t care much for Pope Francis or for his way of speaking about Jesus, they may not like this book very much either, but I hope they will read it in the spirit in which I have written it: with an openness to considering those spiritual influences which have guided the life of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who we now know as Pope Francis.
Ignatian spirituality calls all of us — not just Jesuits or Catholics — to greater trust, openness, generosity, simplicity, dedication, and gratitude in our relationships with God as we journey through salvation history. Like the Jesuit saints who formed him spiritually, the example of Francis invites all of us to develop Christ-like habits in our lives.
The Gift of Ignatian Spirituality
Having given us a Year of Mercy, and nearing the end of what he foresees as a short papacy, Pope Francis will leave the Catholic Church with the ongoing gift of his Ignatian spirituality — a missionary perspective on discipleship that emphasizes passionate engagement with the world, calling upon Christians to value all that is beautiful and good in God’s creation while rejecting all that is selfish and distorted.
From St. Ignatius to Pope Francis himself, this is a spirituality lived by and for hardworking people trying to make it in the world, and it has helped many pilgrims in their life’s journey to God. Through the stories of Jesuit saints both famous and obscure, as well as the oft-unsung lives of the heroic men and women who collaborated with them on mission, I hope this book will challenge all Christians to follow Jesus with compassion and renewed energy.
The way Francis has lived out this spirituality, handed down to him by St. Ignatius and his brother Jesuits over the centuries, is distinctively bold and tender at the same time. Jesuit saints often inspire people with their intense fusion of the intellectual and the passionate, the sensitive and the bold. We sons of Ignatius value an integration of mind and heart that continues to attract people in our hectic world, calling all of us to an intelligent orthodoxy that’s all about tuning in to the broader culture with sympathy for what’s going on, rather than rejecting everything secular out of
