 Welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us for the first part of our discussion group about a pilgrim's journey, the autobiography of St. Ignatius of Loyola. My name is Jessica Colligan, and I'm happy to welcome you on behalf of Fairfield's Alumni Relations Office. With me, of course, is Father Jerry Blaszczak, who is our alumni chaplain and the special assistant to the president. We are going to get started just a second, but I just want to give a couple of reminders first. We ask that you keep your microphones muted just to minimize any background noise as Father Jerry is speaking. And also I recommend that you use speaker view rather than gallery view in Zoom, and that will just keep the screen focused on Father Jerry when he's speaking. And finally, we want this to be interactive. We want to be able to hear from you. So please feel free to use the chat if you have any questions, if you have comments, or you can use the raise hand feature, and we'll be happy to call on you to share your thoughts if you'd prefer to do so with the microphone and with the video. We definitely want this to be more of a study group or a discussion group rather than a lecture from Father Jerry. So please participate as much as you would like to. And now I will turn things over to Father Jerry. Thank you so much, Jessica. I want to thank Jessica. I have absolutely zero technical abilities and even as modest as the requirements are of technology for this program, not I wouldn't even be able to manage it without Jessica. And Jessica also is an inspiration because she so much cares about all of you alumni and alumni that even when I hesitated and thought I'm not sure what will will the alumni be interested in a topic like this. She believes in you and so she helps me believe that maybe together we can really enter into the spirit of San Ignatius. I want to thank all of you for being here. Jess made it very clear that our intention is not just for me to talk at you for an hour, that I'm hoping you had some time to look at the text, Father Tolenda's version of sending Ignatius' memoirs, autobiography. I'll talk about what we should call it in a second. But let me remind you why we're doing this at this particular time. Way back before COVID even began. I think we now look at these momentous events that we date our lives according to the events that have happened since even before the beginning of COVID. The general superior of our society, Father Arturo Sosa invited all the members of the Ignatian family. That means all of you who work in Jesuit ministries, who have been inspired by your time in Jesuit institutions or who have just found yourself being attracted to and shaped by the spirit of San Ignatius and the Jesuits. He invites all of us in this wider Ignatian family to celebrate together what he calls an Ignatian year. He asked that the year be opened on May the 20th, 2021, was the anniversary of the day when San Ignatius was injured in his effort to defend the fortress at Pamplona, about which you read in Father Tolenda's book and in San Ignatius' autobiography. That was people conventionally talk about as the day that the change in Ignatius' life began. As you well know, the Ignatius who lived before for almost the 30 years that he lived before, he had this incident as he was defending Pamplona. Ignatius would have certainly, proudly, insistently described himself as a faithful Catholic. He was a basque, after all, he was a subject of the king of Castile, and so certainly in memory of all of his ancestors, he would have affirmed categorically that he was a Catholic, a faithful Catholic. But as Ignatius will say later on, the consistency, the application, the depth of his behavior, and his assimilation of the tradition of the following of Christ was pretty sketchy, pretty incoherent. So when he has his leg smashed, defending Pamplona, and when he's carried back to the family castle in Loyola, begins, what I would want to insist is a long process of conversion. For Ignatius, the conversion does not happen overnight. So the Ignatian year curiously and importantly begins by remembering the events that bring Ignatius and us toward conversion. And as you all know from your maybe your own lives and the people you know or minister to, very often conversion happens in the midst of disarray, disjuncture, confusion, complication. Very often we're not able to make, we're not open to the conversion that God invites us to until things got until things get shaken up. And sometimes in the very midst of turmoil and confusion and upset, as was the case with Ignatius, that's the seedbed. That's the moment when conversion can take place. Well, what Father Sosa asks us to do, and that's why the Alumni Affairs Division is offering us this opportunity, Father Sosa invites us to return to what he calls our spiritual patrimony, which consists of the experiences of Saint Ignatius. Here's what Father Sosa writes. That spiritual source that feeds us and nourishes us is listening to Ignatius's experience. And we should hear the Lord calling us as we allow him to work our own conversion inspired by the personal experience of Saint Ignatius. So what I had in mind was as we use the autobiography of Saint Ignatius to go back and let his experiences touch us, what I'm hoping is that it can stir in us some reflections and some awareness of what God might be doing in our lives. You know, it's almost a commonplace that God calls forth certain people at certain moments in history and gives them extraordinary blessings of the Spirit. They're called charisms, gifts of the Spirit, and they're given not just for the person, but that they're given as paradigms, as models, as ways of proceeding. That's the way Ignatius talked about it and wasted our way of proceeding. Ignatius's way of proceeding with God, what God did for Ignatius. Ignatius's companions began to see as a gift not only for Ignatius, but for them. If you had a chance to read the preface by Father Gonzalez to camera and by Father Nadal, they talk about how they convinced Ignatius and why they convinced Ignatius to tell his story. Ignatius was an incredibly reticent person, very shy, very cautious about telling his story. But here's the real reason why he was afraid of telling his story. Ignatius knew how prone he was to pride. Ignatius knew how much he lived from the opinion and esteem and attention of others. He knew that that was one of his life traps. And I would say Ignatius recognized that what he called vein glory was maybe the major life trap that he had. It was his really the chink in his armor and that he knew that he would lose his way. He would lose his own identity as a follower of Christ if he allowed himself to be played and allowed himself to let himself be guided by his great desire to be highly regarded. I think that most of us can relate to Ignatius in that regard. We'll say a little bit more about that in a second. But it's one of the reasons why I find Ignatius such an attractive character. He admits from the very first line of his of his autobiography that he was prone to waste time and energy and have his life be guided by his need to be admired, to be adulated, to be pursued, and to be made much of. This is what Ignatius calls vein glory. Before I go any further, I want to say probably as a methodological common observation, the pages that we're asking you to read are really not as many as it looks like because some of you have already complained to Jess and to me that the footnotes are so tiny you can't even see them. Well, please, the footnotes are at your at your own discretion. Okay, what we really want to focus on is the text of Saint Ignatius as Ignatius talks about his experience. And the footnotes are significant only insofar as they help you understand and give you greater capacity to enter into the text. But again, I would like to invite you as you read Ignatius's experience to ask yourselves in what way Ignatius's experience helps you understand your own story. You remember that Father Nadal, his early associate, asked him and Father Polanco asked him to tell his story because they're convinced that if Ignatius tells them his story, they will understand their own stories better. That's why we still tell stories about great heroes of our tradition. That's why we treasure the stories of Mother Teresa or the stories of Dorothy Day or the stories of Archbishop Romero or Desmond Tutu or even Gandhi or even Dr. Martin Luther King. We tell their stories not just to admire them, but we're also telling those stories to learn about ourselves, right? Not just to learn about somebody that we put on a pedestal, but we believe that their stories can help us understand our own stories better. Okay. Now, if you had a chance to read those introductory prefaces from Gonçalves de Câmara, who was the Portuguese Jesuit to whom Ignatius recited his memoirs, do you remember that very much the early Jesuits realized that Ignatius was getting older and sicker and that he was very likely to die soon? They wanted him to leave a testimony. They wanted him to leave his memories that could guide them as they faced their own challenges. But Ignatius refused. He simply refused. And as I told you, it was largely because Ignatius knew that if he just didn't think his own story was that interesting to tell, but something changed his mind. Do you remember? Did you have a chance or do you have a memory from reading the text? What changed Ignatius's mind? Why did he, despite all of his hesitancy, why did he finally agree to tell his story? Anybody remember? I think one of the reasons was because he became convinced that it wasn't going to be a vain glory dialogue. It's going to be how God interacted in him. It's playing of what happened to him by being open to the spirit. So we learned from that. Right. Right. And who was it who sort of who led him into this decision, Dodd? Do you remember? No, not really. I think it was, you know, I don't remember. I'm sorry, Jerry, but I do remember that. That was a big thing for him. Do you remember? Do you remember Gonzalez to camera? Ignatius is in his 60s. Gonzalez to camera is a young Jesuit. They're living in the Jesuit house in Rome. They're sitting in the garden. And Gonzalez to camera opens his heart one day to Ignatius and says, I'm having a terrible problem with what he calls vain glory, with the desire for people to respect me and like me. I'm finding myself performing all the time. And Ignatius listens to him. And Ignatius says to himself, and then he goes away and he realizes, maybe if I tell this kid my story, maybe he'll be helped. So here's the point for Ignatius. What finally matters is I judar a las almas to help souls, to serve souls. So for Ignatius, no matter what his reticence is, no matter what his character is, if he believes that sharing his story might in any way help other people, he's going to do it. And this is the gold standard for Ignatius. Ignatius is what gets Ignatius in trouble all the time is why the order is so suspect because Ignatius decides helping souls is more important than spending six or eight hours chanting the divine office and church every day. People don't forget that at the time of Ignatius, the standard for holiness, the expectation for holiness was that you should avoid the world, that you should keep away from interaction with people, and that even serving people, the spirits for corporal works of mercy were regarded as risky because any contact with the world would possibly compromise the purity and holiness that it was assumed by large parts of the church at this time was only available to people who were going to spend hours in silence, hours of praying, hours in solitude, and hours doing fasting and mortification. Ignatius, and we're going to see this when he goes to and spends his time in Montresa, something happens to Ignatius. That was the conventional model of piety, of religious observance, of a way to God. Something happens to Ignatius where that collapses because Ignatius begins to notice that as he pays attention to people and has something as simple as what he will later call spiritual conversation, people are helped. And he notices it even in the castle back at Loyola. His first spiritual ministry is having conversations about God with the people in the family castle in Loyola. He notices that people are helped. And so for Ignatius, what will become the ultimate criteria for deciding how to serve God is what helps people, what serves souls. So once he realizes that maybe telling his story is going to help consolve us to camera, he sort of begins to have the imagination that maybe it'll help other people as well. And it's our conviction that Ignatius' story helps us even now. But let's go back. So Peter has his hand raised, Peter Brown. I'm sorry, Peter, go right ahead. Well, when I read the text, it was his first actual, what I perceive as was, he first realized God was speaking to him, that it was, you know, this whole process that he was going through. It was, he realized that God was asking him to write this down. The gentleman who told him that he had to do it, it was revelation from the Lord. Absolutely. It was his first, it was, you know, he talks about St. Ignatius as the person who defines God speaking, evil spirit speaking and being able to differentiate between the two. I think this is his first realization. Not sure if it's his first, Peter, but it is certainly what motivates him. You're absolutely right. I apologize. I don't know. No, no, no reason to apologize. And I'm not being, you know, I'm not being pedantic here, but I think you're right. It's absolutely because he experiences exactly, Peter, that through the need that consolves to camera is expressing, he interprets that as a call from the Lord. Okay. You're absolutely right. Absolutely right. Okay. So tell me, how does the conversion of Ignatius start? How does he describe it? Anybody? Where does it start? Well, I think after he got hurt, he had some time for reading and learning about the saints. Okay. And that was very, I guess impactful for him. And he starts to realize that he wanted to be like them. He started to wonder how it would be for him to do all the works that he had read about the saints. And I think there was this one particular night that he was looking at the sky and the stars. And he kept thinking about going through Jerusalem and how that was bringing some sort of peace to him. Okay. You're right, Alra. It has to do with his reading of the lives of the saints. But what else is he reading? What else is going on in his imagination? Certainly his imagination gets fired up by the lives of the saints. And why is he reading the lives of the saints? Because he was particularly pious? Because he was laid up and he was laid up in bed and had nothing else to do. He had nothing else to read. He thought for sure that there were going to be the contemporary Danielle Steele novels in the house, the kind of contemporary trash novels of the time, novels about chivalrous people that he and nations could relate to. Because after all, if you had a chance to read the initial, the orientation to Ignatius before Pamplona, Ignatius was raised to be a courtier. And the novels that came out of the courtly life were novels of chivalry. And Ignatius wanted in his discomfort and his boredom, he desperately wanted to read novels that were going to project him back and project him forward to the life of a courtier. So jousting, womanizing, flirting at court, being a little bit of a diplomat of being a musician, it was the whole life of a gentleman at court. That's what he wanted. And so his sister, as soon as his brother took over the castle and married a nice pious lady, she cleared out of the family library all those kinds of books. And so by the time Ignatius comes back, the only thing that's there are lives of Christ and lives of the saints. So simply to pass the time he reads the lives of the saints. But as you said, that's what happens. Ignatius then, his imagination gets caught, right? And he starts daydreaming about what it would be like, imitate the saints. However, however, what else is he daydreaming about? He's reading the life of Christ. Margaret, I'm sorry, he's leaving, he's what? He's reading the life of Christ. He's reading the life of Christ, great. So he thinks about that. But what else is he thinking about? He vacillates between thinking about following the saints and what else? The beautiful woman. Yes, the beautiful woman he was always after. And what else? He imagines going back to court and jousting and being admired for his physique. Because don't forget, Ignatius so much wanted to fit back into the stylish tight pants of the time that he has his legs sought apart. You remember that? That Ignatius realizes that because of his wound, there's going to be a bump on his knee. He can't tolerate that. He's got to look perfect when he gets back to court. So he has them stretch his body and saw off that little nub on his body so that he's going to be able to look hot when he gets back to court. It's kind of interesting. It's kind of interesting when we're the fashionable boots and his leg is pretty good. But they're high boots and tight boots and he doesn't want, he wants to look to be exactly right. That's right. So that's what he wants. And then suddenly he's reading the lives of the saints. But when he thinks about going back to court, so he vacillates, right? On the one hand, he finds himself thinking about going back to court and being a courtier and being a man about town. And then he thinks about imitating the saints. And so what happens? What does he notice? This is crucial. The real beginning of the conversion happens, but Ignatius begins to notice the patterns of his daydream. It sounds like the gifts of the spirit. When he thinks of following Saint Dominic or Saint Francis, it's cheerful. Joy brings something. The other thinking of one of the beautiful women on court, it doesn't end that way after a while. He gets tired, he doesn't feel satisfied. So he turns more to Christ. Interesting, right? He acknowledges. He notices one day. He notices one. Probably for God knows how long he's just been vacillating his daydreams between the men. And he says for hours, for hours, he could imagine himself going back to court and, you know, doing all the things that he loved to do at court. And he says that initially he was quite attractive and he was quite happy, but he noticed that the longer he stayed with those images of going back to court, he began to be, Ignatius says, triste, sad. And he began to feel in his heart basillo, empty. But he noticed that when he thought of himself as imitating Saint Francis and Saint Dominic, initially he was repelled because he didn't want to fast. He didn't want to be obedient. He didn't want to give up the things that had made his life, he thought so compelling and so interesting. But he noticed that the more he sat with them, he began to experience a deep sense of himself as alive, as excited, as fully alive. Now this, my friends, was the beginning of what Ignatius will call discernment of spirits. Tom, you know something about that. What's going on here, do you think? With Ignatius beginning to notice, sorry to put you on the spot, but as Ignatius begins to notice this variation, where does he go with that? Later on, by the time you get to the spiritual exercises, anybody. Ignatius is going to be able to say, if you pay attention, and this is, a lot of you on this call have been spiritual directors and go to people for spiritual direction, a spiritual director is very often going to be, if they're in the Ignatian tradition, is going to be asking you to pay attention to what's going on in your heart. How are you feeling? What's going on today? What's drawing you? What's making you happy? What's making you sad? Where do you feel alive? And where do you feel distressed or empty? Let me give you an example. Some of you know that we have a 10-week program for students or for anybody else from the Murphy Center, and students, anybody else is asked to spend an hour in quiet every day and then to see a spiritual director. Let me tell you the story, and I won't go too long because it's a fabulous story, and I think that it's a good illustrative story. Let's call him Brendan. Brendan, let's say he's a hockey player. I'm changing the detail so there's no way you can identify him. Brendan's a hockey player and he's a bit of a thug, very good looking, and he knows it. So Brendan bounces into my office one. I don't know how Brendan signed up for this 10-week program. Brendan bounces into my office very self-confident. It calls me Jerry, which is sweet, but not what you'd normally expect. And so Brendan said, so Jerry, what's all this about? And I explained the process, and Brendan is remarkably alert to what's going on in his life. Raised Catholic, not particularly practicing. One day Brendan, here's just an example of Brendan and how he used eventually Ignatius' discernment of spirits. What's causing me to feel good? What's leading me to growth and holiness? Brendan came in and he said, you know, Jerry, I just wanted to tell you that you know that I'm a hockey player, right? And I said, yeah. He said, I love to win. And I love applause. Nothing makes me happier than, especially if my girlfriend is there. I really want to impress people. I love to score goals. I don't think there's anything I like more than to score goals. Then he said, or so I thought. Then he said, you know what? The real truth is that really what makes me happy and what excites me and what keeps me playing hockey is helping the younger kids. He said, I really like to set up a shot for one of the younger kids. I really get excited. I get really, I'm not going to use all of his powerful language to describe how he feels when he sets up a shot for a younger kid. But he said, to see them feeling good about themselves, to see them realizing the potential they have, especially when the seniors, you know, put them down all the time. He said, I don't think anything makes me happier than to help the younger kids. Later, Brendan comes in and tells me, he may have been by this time started calling me father. He said, you know what happened? I got drunk on Saturday night, Sunday morning. We had a big snowfall. I woke up. I looked out the window on my way to the bathroom. And there was this little girl trying to dig out her car from the snow. And I said, F that, I'm going back to bed. Brendan goes back to bed and he wakes up again and he said, I can't do that. So I got up. He said, put on my clothes and I dug out her car. And I knew Brendan's words. That's what life is about. So Brendan, you know, a little bit like Ignatius, had a culture and a style of life in mind that he presumed was always going to make him happy and be fulfilled. And then Brendan begins to reflect on what's going on in his heart, what really makes him happy and what really makes him sad. And so Brendan started as a result of that, of this inward turn, Brendan begins to think about and discover emotions he didn't have, like gratitude. He said, he came in, he bounced in one day and said, I don't believe that I've ever thought about how grateful I am to my parents. I don't think I've ever been grateful to my parents for all they've done for me. All they've put up with me. And again, please believe me, Brendan's language was far more colorful. But you see the turn. Some theologians will call this the anthropological turn. Brendan is paying attention. He's getting clues. Do you understand? He's getting clues to what God may be calling him to and what kind of person he really is meant to be. So I said to Brendan one day, I said, Brendan, what do you make of all this? How is it that you seem happy and content and fulfilled when you're doing this kind of stuff? And he said, maybe what you people say is right. Maybe I really am made in the image and likeness of God. And maybe God really is about helping people and letting people be all that they can be. And maybe when I'm in tune with that is when I'm really happy. Wow. So Brendan was, you know, and then I then I later, I later had Brendan read the account of Ignatius and Loyola and he said, that's I think me, Father. So that's where, but what do you think? What do you make of what happened at Loyola? Any one of you? I think what I found fascinating is I guess his his desire for being recognized for what he calls vanglory, but then how he goes all the way when he thinks about the life of the saints that they did major things, right? So that, I guess, sort of personality or character continues to follow him, but flipping it to the other side, more in the spiritual side, to want to do something significant, which he did. So that's interesting what I was saying. So it does Ignatius, who always wants to go over the top? Does he simply carry that over automatically? You know, is the is the converted Ignatius still the guy who wants to do Hassanias do extraordinary things? Is he still the guy who has to be special? Yes. Mary Francis Malone, please tell us what do you think? Well, actually, one of the things I found fascinating about this is through this wonderful book three or four times, but the sense of how you realize how his imagination and imaginative prayer and a sense of finding what was very interesting was he wanted to do all this, not for his own glory, but for the glory of God and not in repentance for his sins. So he again carries the historical sense of who he was, fully comes to that extraordinarily magical moment, which I think will come a bit later, that his imagination, which is in fact the spirit senses that his life is more and it's more in giving and it's more in being in the world as an assistant, not as a leader. So I think this story infills in a very, you know, very inspiring way as as we all move through different phases of our lives, but the kernels of imaginative prayer are there early, but they need to be developed and they are, I'm sure, developed as we go through the rest of the volume. So I think that's an interesting point. At this stage, he's pretty well, as Zauro was saying, as she noticed, he's pretty well bound up with the external structures of the lives of the saints whom he admires, right? So his imitation for them is very, it's quite, it may have a deep motivation, but it's pretty, it's pretty bound to the paradigms that he's getting. Curiously, however, Ignatius will end up calling himself the pilgrim, right? And so as you said, it's not, it's going to be, as we're going to see throughout the autobiography, Ignatius keeps discovering that the path that he thought he was going to go on is foreclosed. And the plans that he thought were urgently to be accomplished in imitation of Dominic or Francis or whomever are impossible. It's as if, as time goes on, Ignatius reaches the awareness that all of us eventually have to take in, that I am not the protagonist of my own life, that it's not, that it's a matter of God revealing to me over the course of my experiences and over the circumstances of my life, God's will for me unfolds and God empowers me to respond to the invitation that each new turn in the road requires. And I keep learning the qualities of greater surrender. And as Mary Francis, as you put it, no longer having to be the boss, no longer having to be the special person, but to be, to be the servant, to be the helper. Interestingly, Ignatius, by the time he writes the constitutions for the Jesuits, he doesn't use high-flown language like, we're going to help people, we're going to, we're going to take people to God. No, Ignatius knows from his own experience that God is already in people's lives. So he opts for a very modest description. He talks about helping souls. All we do is help souls. And we help souls to discover the happiness, the completion, the joy, the openness, the excitement of living a life in response to God's presence and God's cool. Heather, we have a couple of raised hands, Tom. Yeah, hi. Tom, first of all, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Tom, I was getting desperate. I was afraid I was talking too long. And I was writing and I didn't hear it. I said, I think he just called my name. No, I apologize. No, no problem. Now, it seemed to me, I know this is early in his life, early in the story, but he seemed to be a man of extremes, a man who goes from this guy who's struggling with vein glory and this need for adulation. And after his conversion, it's like a 180. It's like a guy who's wearing a perpetual hair shirt and how, you know, beating himself on the back, how penitent he needs to be and how awful he is. He's living at the extremes, it seems, and not in the middle anywhere. Do you remember, Tom, do you remember the way, or do any of you remember the way Ignatius describes himself just before he almost kills the Moor? Yes. Mary Francis, do you remember that? Go ahead. We'll get back, Tom. What does he say? It just goes back to the history of who he was as an incredible soldier that he was going to save the day. He was going to protect the lady. And I think you can't imagine Ignatius, if you can't imagine his historical sense. True that he has come through the ages with an extraordinary spirituality. But it's based in a man who, as the society has always said, was in tune with his time. For sure. And the extraordinary sense of letting the donkey say, you make the final, you make the final decision was, I think, the first glimmer. And it was only a glimmer, but it was the first glimmer of saying, I'm no longer in charge. And so that whole sense is what's a kind of guiding spirit which can move you from his century to where we are today. How do you see what's, what's the link? Mary Francis, can you explain that? Can I explain that? You know, it's a sense, and it sounds kind of flippant in a way. But one time, a number of years gone, I was in Fairfield, somebody said, well, you know, what, what are you as a woman doing it? And I thought to myself, you know, what is a woman doing in a 16th century male order? And the sense is that Ignatius finally rose, I wouldn't say rose above his culture, but he developed this, dare I say, interaction with God that says, there's something more than me, and there's something more than my time. And it's a sense of, maybe God has a longer trajectory, not for me, but from next centuries or centuries or centuries after that. And when you read all of his letters to his brother, Jesuits, it's a sense of, you know, it's not me. It's not only us. It's just how, you know, try and phrase how we move salvation history along. How we help. Exactly. Because that's all we can do. But the situating yourself, as you're putting it, Mary Francis, and it's going to become more explicit, obviously, and it isn't as he expresses it in the spiritual exercises, that the context in which I see my life is the wider sweep of God's intention for the world, right? Yes. And that's not, as you say, and it, and it's what talk about a great mystical enlightenment for any of us, when we suddenly see that the terms and the assumptions and the assumptions that I've grown up with or that I've made my own by habit or by convenience, that they are not necessarily true. And that life and my meaning and my purpose are in a much different and wider context. Talk about shattering by illuminating and exciting, right? You know, 40, probably 30 years after this event, this is number 14 Ignatius comments just before he tells the story about the more something happened on the way that will be good to record so that others understand how the Lord dealt with that soul and listen to how he describes himself, still blind, still filled with ardent desires, thus he decided to practice great penances, not with any view of satisfying his souls, but to please and appease God. Whenever he made up his mind to do penance, whatever the saints did, he was determined to do the same, but even more. But all of his consolation derived from these thoughts. Listen to this. He never considered anything about the interior life, and he had no idea what humility was about, nor charity, nor patience, nor discretion. His only intention, not having any other reason in mind, was to perform these important external actions because the saints had done them. So it's not that Ignatius is saying, by his example, that your religious life is only a matter of interiority, but he is saying that the conventions that maybe are presented to you and the models that you're proceeding from, deal with them carefully. They may not be what God is asking of you. God may be opening up new ways, and what really matters is charity, discretion, patience, kindness, not these external performances. So I think he's already indicating, as Mary Francis, I think, is suggesting that he's being self-critical here. He's saying, wow, I think I'm carrying over. He didn't see the time, but later he looks back and says, you know, my religious behavior was also a good bit of performance, and that it needed a lot of purification and, you know, a lot of interiorization. And I think, is that the story of most of us, right? Our motives have to get deeper and deeper and more and more from the heart, from the root of our lives. Anybody else, please? I'm sorry, Margaret, by all means. Father Jerry, I have a disclaimer at first, and that is I got my book late, and I had trouble finding a magnifying glass to read the small text. Got the point, Margaret. Stick to the big text, Margaret. I was somewhat conflicted. I got through the introduction and preface, and I was wondering about why Ignatius was so reticent to disclose to Father Concalves his spiritual life, why he held back. I mean, that to me did not seem to be consistent with what I had read, not that he's going to go around talking about it all the time, but he'd been questioned point blank by two people. And this was really for the love of the people that he loved. Right. So why was he so reticent? Glenn Sauer, what do you think? In terms of why he's so reticent, I think like you said, he doesn't want the story, he doesn't want this to be about himself because he's so sensitive to that trap that the Vainglory holds for him. He's aware of that from his past experiences, and he doesn't want it to be about himself. Thanks, Glenn. I mean, maybe just because you agree with me, but I think you're right. I think that is his MO. He knows that this is a major, major trap for him. And so I think, Margaret, he wants to be exceedingly careful. And it's only when he's convinced that this might help consolve us to camera. And I think probably when he reflects back that when he has shared his story, when he has gotten to what he'll call spiritual conversations, that he has noticed, and we'll see that more when we get to Manresa, that he realizes that people are greatly aided when he invites them into spiritual conversation. Look, I mean, you know, there are a number of us here who grew up in a church where you certainly didn't have anybody who talked to you about an interior life. Church was conformity to liturgy and to rules. And that a practicing Catholic especially might have an interior life with God where there's affect and love and warmth and intimacy. We didn't talk about those things. And so I'm not surprised that Ignatius was hesitant to do it, especially given his temperament, which he recognized was prone to self-aggrandizement. Jess, do we have other questions or comments? Anybody please. Hi, it's Tess. While we're talking about Ignatius's early years, we often don't mention the fact that his mother died in childbirth and that he was the youngest of 13. I have to imagine that that had a tremendous impact on his life. The fact that he was raised by the blacksmith's wife and then called back to court when he was seven. It seemed to me that, and then he had political issues with his brother according to the book, it seemed to me that he was a tremendous seeker his whole life. And what he seemed to be seeking very much was a sense of love, a sense of connection, a sense of community. And when I think about him as a young boy and an adolescent, I really have a compassion for him. If some of this bravado came from just him needing to build himself up exteriorly to sort of bolster himself up interiorly. And I know that he later had a great devotion to the Blessed Mother and certainly to fellow Jesuits and his community. So I just can't think of him without reminding myself of his earliest experiences. And that's all I wanted to say. No, for sure, Tess. And thank you for calling that to our attention because I think you're absolutely right. And, you know, there is a huge book by Father Carl Ronner's brother Hugo Ronner, a great historian of the Jesuits. And it's all Ignatius's letters to women. Ignatius, I mean, look, Ignatius would not have survived Manresa had it not been that there were women that he was connected with and who cared about him and into whose homes Ignatius was welcomed. So Ignatius, I think you're right, Tess. I'm not playing amateur psychologist. But Ignatius, I'm guessing, was a whole lot better with women than he was with men because he was pretty harsh with some of his Jesuit brethren. We want to set him up as this great model of fraternity and all that. But it almost looks to me that the closer he was and the more he had affective ties with the closest Jesuits he worked with, he was hardest on them. So, look, you know, in saying that Ignatius has much to teach us, it's not to say that Ignatius probably didn't have, was not heir to all the kinds of psychological challenges that we all are, you know? One thing I, Gary, I noticed that was his continued struggle, even with his vanity, was in one of the reading that the book, the preface, he talks about how one time where the, he got upset that Jesuit were taking notes because he looked straight in his eyes. And he said, no, and he left the meeting. He left the meeting. He said, you know, because he felt he didn't get the respect to do, then he came back. He said, don't you remember, you're not supposed to look at a superior eye to eye. You have to have your eyes are supposed to be down towards the paper more or less. I thought that was an honest struggle. Yeah, we'll have that. We go back. It's kind of consoling that we're all still works in progress and we can think of Ignatius as a model and a paradigm force, but he's a model of somebody who's always a pilgrim, always still growing. We don't have a lot of time left at anybody else. Please, Jess, can you put us onto anybody else with a hand up? Glenn has his hand up. And please. Yeah, Jerry, the part of these two chapters that really strikes me is after his conversation with the more, and he's, he's very much going still back and forth in his mind about his old self and his new self possibly. And at the end, he doesn't know what to do. He could pursue them nor the more and kill him, or he could just go the other way. And essentially he lets the mule decide. He lets God decide. He just gives it up and says, I'm going to let God decide. And if he had pursued the more, it would probably be a very different story than what ended up happening. So it's just that, that sense of even at that age in his stage of development, he had trust to just let it up to God. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, Ignatius does something really remarkable, at least for me, symbolically. You know, typically, when people made a vigil before Our Lady of Montserrat, many of them, especially on the vigil of the assumption, what they did was they were young people who were preparing to be knights, and they would have, they would, they would, they would present to Our Lady their swords there, all of the things that they were going to be wearing as knights. So their vest, their fancy, you know, doublets and capes and all that, they would have them on Our Lady's altar, and begging her to give them the strength to be noble, courageous, chivalrous knights. Ignatius does the reverse. He creates his own ritual. He is there in sackcloth, and he leaves everything on the altar, because wherever he's going, it's not going to be about that. It's like whatever gave him a sense of identity and purpose and dignity and value, he's already so far in this process of conversion, that he at least knows, I got to leave that here. I'm not, I don't, I'm not taking it from Our Lady's altar, and, and, and, you know, investing myself with this, I have divested myself of the things that have been my props, and that I have used to establish a self, to make myself somebody valuable and worthy. And whatever is going on, he knows that's not what is, he doesn't know where he's going, he's going to go to the Holy Land, and after that, who knows, but he leaves that stuff there. And I'm always left when I, when I read this section about Montres, and whenever I've been fortunate enough, because of the jobs I've had, to have to go to Montres, I have to go to Montserrat relatively frequently. And when I kneel there, I'm always asking myself, what do I need to, what do I need to leave before Our Lady's altar? You know, whatever my call is and wherever it's going, what, what, you know, what noble stuff, what stuff do I have to leave in front of Our Lady to be ready for the next part of my journey? Listen, I think one more question. Yeah, Peter, if you want to go ahead. I don't have a question. I just have a comment to make to the other. Father, you talked about earlier, not reading, don't worry about the, the footnotes, just read the text. And I want to, I, I, I've read half the book, I've been and I've read it a couple times, but I'm going to tell, I want to tell everybody how I found out best way to read it so they can please take it. When you read the section, first off, there's, there's the text, then there's annotation, and then there's footnotes. So if you read the text, what, what I found out is like, for example, number 19, you read number 19 in completion. And before you go to 20, you read the author's annotation about what 19 was. Then there's footnotes about that annotation. I agree with you wholeheartedly. Don't read the footnotes are immaterial in the sense that it's, it's, it's references. But the annotation for each section is critical in my belief to the actual understanding of the text. So I share that with you all as a, as a way to go about reading it. For me, it was very helpful. So if you read 19, read 19 and read the annotation, and then there's footnotes in the annotation, which, which really is just obviously for reference purposes. But the annotation I thought was fabulous. And I just wanted to share that with people. Thanks, Peter. That's a very, that's, that's an important note that I, it's good for us to keep in mind. And I'm sorry I didn't call everybody's attention. Well, we're all here together, Father. That's why we're here. All right. And I think Peter's comment is what I'd like to leave us with. I promise you that I'm not going to be talking anywhere near as much next time round because you've heard one another. And I think you heard that many of you, well, all of you have a great deal to offer because what we're looking at is to see how Ignatius' story resonates with our own stories, casts light on our stories, helps us to see our own stories, maybe from a different perspective, maybe from a new way. So that's, that's what church is. That's what church is. That's what community is. The Holy Spirit brings us together and we share what God is doing in our lives and through the help of a great figure like Ignatius. But whatever God gave to Ignatius is alive because it continues to inspire us. Okay. Ignatius is not dead and what God did for Ignatius is not finished. Ignatius transfers it and his figure makes it available to us. So thank you very much. And we'll be back together in two weeks. Thanks. And thank you all so much. Thank you. We'll see you on April 5th. We're recovering chapters 3, 4, 5, pages 64 through 107. Thank you all for being here. We'll see you in two weeks. Thank you.