St. Ignatius of Loyola has always struck me as a saint to whom I ought to look with particular esteem and admiration, though I have no special reasons of my own for venerating his cult. Rather, just because he is the man who gave us the Society of Jesus, the elite of the religious elite, including some of the greatests scholars and martyrs and scholar/martyrs that the world has ever known – what must this man, their founder, have been like?

A thought from his vita in the old old Roman Breviary (and from the new old Roman Breviary):

In propugnatione Pampelonensi accepto vulnere graviter decumbens, ex fortuita piorum librorum lectione, ad Christi Sanctorumque sectanda vestigia mirabiliter exarsit.

Though in the defense of Pampeluna he received a wound and lay gravely ill, by the fortuitous reading of pious books, he ardently burned to follow the footsteps of Christ and the Saints.

I suppose it fitting that the first of the Jesuits should set us an example of spiritual reading, of the value of books in general, we might say, to effect spiritual improvement.

The neo-con Catholic machine, Ignatius Press, has up today, in honor of the feast, this interview with Fr. Cornelius Buckley, S.J. about his new book, When Jesuits Were Giants. I enjoyed this part at the end:

IgnatiusInsight.com: What can we do to encourage vocations of the quality of Father Ruellan’s?

Father Buckley: First of all, pray. Secondly, pray. Thirdly, pray. There are plenty of vocations out there, but the young want challenges to greater heights. I do not want to go into detail here–where angels fear to tread–other than to ask: Why are the Marines so successful in the little recruiting that they do?

I don’t know why the angels should fear to say that the Jesuits today, by and large, are a bunch of wimpy, girly men, but I appreciate that Fr. Buckley is thinking along the right lines. Men are drawn by orthodoxy, they’re drawn by excellence, academic and spiritual, they’re drawn by challenges which few enough ordinary souls would be able to meet. The Jesuits were once the Marines of the Catholic Church: they were tough men, but polished, who ran a tight ship. Can they regain that legacy? At this time, I agree with Fr. Buckley: all we can do is pray.

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