Glories of Spain

by Charles W. Wood

They journeyed slowly, but the distance was not great. At noon they were overtaken by the mother of Pascual, who in company with others, was returning from celebrating the Feast of the Annunciation at Montserrat. This lady, Inez, directed him to the hospital of Santa Lucia, where he would obtain relief for his leg, which threatened to become troublesome if not dangerous. Inez quickly discovered that Loyola was no ordinary pilgrim, and supplied him with food from her own table during the five days he remained in the hospital.

The day after his arrival he went up to the great church of La Seo, and remained in prayer for five hours, seeking direction for his movements. At the end of five days he left the hospital for a room found him by Inez. Here he at once adopted that spirit of fasting and penance which knew no moderation and with him became fanaticism. The food sent by Inez he gave away, and lived upon black bread and water. He constantly went bare-headed and bare-footed, wore a hair shirt like Chanones, and occasionally added to his sufferings by putting on a girdle made of the leaves of the prickly gladiole. He neglected himself in every way, never cutting his nails or combing his hair and beard; so that he who had once been the most fastidious of cavaliers now became a byword to those who met him and gazed in contempt and derision. He spent much time at the hospital nursing the sick, devoting himself to the most forbidding cases.

This life continued for four months, and then he withdrew to the cave which he declared had been miraculously revealed to him. It overlooked a valley called by the people the Vale of Paradise, and its existence was known to few.

The cave was dark and small and belonged to a friend of Loyola's who lived to be a century old. Here he existed in great seclusion, spending seven hours of every day in prayer, and often remaining on his knees all night. It was here that he chiefly composed his "Spiritual Exercises," which contain so much beauty and devotion. Here also came to him the first idea of the Order of Jesus, which he afterwards founded. But it must be remarked that the Jesuit Society as framed by Ignatius Loyola was a more simple and unworldy institution than it afterwards became. His own rules seem to have been very pure and without guile or worldly ambition; his mind embraced only heaven and the things which concerned heaven. If Loyola were to return to earth, he would be the first to condemn many of its principles and practices and to say: "These are none of mine."

That he became spiritual as perhaps has been given to few cannot be doubted by any one who had read his writings and studied his life. We of another creed cannot be in touch with him on many points, but all must profoundly admire his absolute death to self, the perfect resignation of all his thoughts and wishes to the Divine guidance.

In Manresa, we have said that his penances amounted to fanaticism. His prayers and fastings so weakened the body, that frequently for hours and sometimes for days he would lose consciousness, and fall into death-like swoons. He retired to his cave and was tormented by a morbid recollection of his past sins. For many months he was filled with horror and knew nothing of peace of mind or spiritual consolation. He was haunted by terrible voices and visions; and it was only after body and soul had, as it were, been torn asunder, and he had gone through all the agonies of a living spiritual death, that at last peace and light, the certainty of pardon and the Divine favour, came to him.

After that his past life seems to have been placed behind him and knew him no more. He became a teacher of men; a great spiritual healer in whom the heavy-laden found comfort and encouragement; a profound reader of the human heart, to which he never ministered in vain. Perhaps one of his greatest weapons was humility, by which he placed himself on a level with all who came to him, and which enabled him to apply in the right way all the deep and earnest sympathy that was in him.

His visions, the voices he heard, the so-called miracles he witnessed, were no doubt delusions due to the highly wrought imagination and ecstatic state of the mystic; but with Loyola they did not end here. They bore fruit. He was practical as well as theoretical: and dead as he became to self, a little of the sensible, matter-of-fact discipline of his early training must have clung to him to the last. His after life was full of activity and action. It would be difficult to say where he did not go, what countries he did not visit with practical issues, in days when men could not easily run to and fro on the earth as they do now.

Loyola died as he had lived, full of faith and hope. He had caught the malarial fever in Rome, and was not strong enough to fight against it. In August, 1556, the end came, when he was sixty-five years old; but in everything except years he might have gone through a century of time. His physical powers were worn out with hard work and abstinence; and perhaps the greatest miracle in connection with Ignatius Loyola was the fact that he lived long after the vital forces should have ceased to hold together. After his death the doctors found it impossible to discover what power had kept him alive during his later years, but agreed that it was nothing less than supernatural.

Thus Manresa is for ever connected with the name and fame of Ignatius Loyola the saint.