Message for the Feast Day of St. Ignatius of Loyola

31st July, 2018: The sixteenth century was remarkable for its colourful parade of extraordinary personalities who were destined to influence, all succeeding generations for good or evil. In that long, brilliant line of statesmen, scholars, reformers and revolutionaries, there was a short, bald-headed Spaniard. He had a small book tucked under his arm and a spirituality buried deep in his heart. The man was Ignatius Loyola, the book was the Spiritual Exercises and the spirituality was “contemplative in action” by “finding God in all things.”


   God does not work in a vacuum. God works in the real world. He deals with us as human beings. God sanctifies us through our daily actions, our fears, failures and yes, even our sins. He is the potter, we are the clay. We have to allow God to transform us and conquer us. Once St Ignatius remarked to some young religious, ‘He who goes about to reform the world must begin with himself.’ St. Ignatius wanted the Jesuits to be strong in Spirituality against the devil and explained how the rest of us needed to begin by surrendering completely to Christ our King. ‘If our church is not marked by caring for the poor, the oppressed and the hungry, we are guilty of heresy’. We need to allow Jesus to help us to be caring to the underprivileged, sympathetic to the sick, attentive to the youth and considerate and kind-hearted to all those around us. Let us pray to St Ignatius whose feast is on 31 July, to grant us these spiritual gifts so that we can live a life of a true Christian life.

Fr. Dominic Gomes, VG