 Welcome, everyone, for our fourth and final session of our study group on the autobiography of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Again, my name is Jessica Colligan, and with me, of course, is Father Jerry Blazscheck, who will be leading our discussion. As a reminder, we ask that you please keep your microphones muted while Father Jerry is speaking, just so you don't have any background noise. And of course, we encourage you to please use the chat or to use the raise hand feature if you have any questions for Father Jerry or if you want to respond to any of the prompts or questions that he's throwing out to you. We very much want this to be another interactive discussion, so please don't be shy. And now I will turn things back over to Father Jerry. Thank you, and I thank you. Now, since we have Janet here and Jess, I want to thank both Janet Canapa and Jessica Colligan for making this series possible. I can blither on any time, but nothing really happens. And you're not, you wouldn't be surprised by this. Without the women in our world, nothing really happens. And so, oh, yeah, I see all the women nodding. Don, you better nod, you know, you boys better nod, too. But it's true. I mean, this opportunity is coming in, it's coming into actuality thanks to the commitment of Jessica and Janet. So thank you. This is the last in this series. Jess is going to say something at the end about other possibilities in the future. But since this is our last opportunity specifically to talk about San Ignatius's autobiography, please make sure that you feel bold enough and confident enough to make sure that you ask some questions that may be percolating. I don't want us to stop without being able to address the questions that are most important to you. That's really what counts, OK? So thanks again. We're entering into the last segment of the autobiography. It was preceded. Now we're going to be talking about Ignatius going back to his home in Spain. And then from going to Spain to Genoa to Venice down to Rome and the last segment of his life. But before we conclude or before we start Ignatius's trip to Italy, I wanted to just wrap up some details of his very long stay in Paris. Remember, there's nowhere where Ignatius just spends longer, except Rome, of course, than the time he spends at the University of Paris. So enamored is Ignatius of the way of studying in Paris that he really incorporates the essentials of it into the the Ratzio studio or the guidebook for what he'll make Jesuit schools abide by. And remember, I think we touched on this briefly. And some of you agreed that it also marked your own experience of Fairfield or another Jesuit university or high school. We said that unlike the Renaissance schools and certainly unlike the Italian schools of his period, the University of Paris had a very structured curriculum and it built it assumed that it built on the steps that preceded before you would go to step three. You should have gone through step two and step one. So Ignatius appreciated that and he wanted education to be thoughtful. And it built on the strengths and skills that people built up. So he was very enthusiastic about the modus parisiensis as they called it in those years when Latin was used for everything. But for our purposes, remember Ignatius goes simply because the Inquisition forces him. Ignatius conducts his ministries up till now. And until really the time in Venice, he conducts all of his ministries as a layman. And that is a big part of his problem. There is such suspicion about lay people who are unordained or who don't have theological degrees that that's why Ignatius is dogged by the Inquisition. Even now it's very hard for people to imagine that we can say come to the Ignatian Spirituality Center and for some people it's a little bit challenging to say and it's not going to be a Jesuit who's going to be your spiritual director. It's going to be a very well and carefully trained woman who may or may not even be a Catholic for that matter. But she knows our tradition and she is an expert spiritual director. And God bless us, we have a number and some of you are among them. And you know how important that is for us. So Ignatius, he goes to the University of Paris. Do you remember, he had been told that he couldn't talk to people about the issue that made so many people in that epic so scrupulous, the difference between a venial and a mortal sin. There are enough of us graybeards and people, you know, long in the tooth that grew up at a time where that was really something that people could be easily tortured over and I think some of you can remember that. And certainly people at Ignatius's time were. So Ignatius is there in Paris from 1528 to 1535. He reaches the point where his health has broken down badly. And his companions who are now, if you notice in the autobiography, his companions, excuse me, his companions are assuming a new agency. He doesn't detail how it was that this group of companions has solidified to the point where they make decisions together. But it had happened of the seven companions of Ignatius, who then become really the founders of the Society of Jesus. We don't we don't do Ignatius any dignity when we say he found the society. No, these first fathers of the society found the society. And it becomes clear if we pay attention to the narrative, but again and again, Ignatius will say they decided, they determine, they ask, they, they, they, they decree. All right, so they are the ones who say to Ignatius, it's time for you to go back to Spain. The doctors have told you that you're not going to recover unless you are in your native air. So he goes back. But before he goes back, he's taken his master, he's taken his bachelor's degree, he's taken his master's degree. He's ready to start his theological studies. And at this stage, the seven companions who have joined him realize that if Ignatius is going back, they have to in one way or another formally solidify their association. Mind you, they're not talking about forming a religious order. Religious orders, there were too many of them at the time and too many of them were decadent and too many of them had horrible reputations that the first, these first companions, they didn't want to get mixed up in religious orders. That was, that would be to identify yourself with corrupt people. The religious orders, mind you, this is the time of Trent. They were in desperate need of reform. They were too rich, too decadent and too many shady things were happening. Too much ambition, too much profit had accumulated. So Ignatius and the boys here, they have no intention of forming a religious order, but because of one thing, they've decided that they need to be together and that they will go and spend their lives in the holy land helping souls. Now mind you, again, that term, I've commented on that to you before. It sounds vague and it's intentionally a little bit vague, but I love that formulation and it's one we still use among Jesuits to help souls. I think I've pointed out to you that to say to help souls relieves us of the illusion that we're saving souls or that we're taking people to God. God is already at the heart of people's lives. God has already given God's own self to people. So we don't bring people to God, we help souls and we help and collaborate with the Lord as the Lord is giving himself to people and help is such a modest little verb. I like that, and it relieves me of my own illusions that I have to be Messiah and it relieves me of the illusion that it's up to us to fix things. It's God who's already active. So what they decide to do is to pronounce vows together and they choose a little chapel at the foot of Montmartre in Paris, near the shrine where Saint Denis, where they venerated Saint Denis and in that little chapel, Pierre Favre, Peter Favre is the only one who's a priest and he says mass. And again, remember, they're not founding a religious order. This is all quite private but they do something ritually, which is very different and you'll see and we still do it among the Jesuits. Our formula for pronouncing vows, if you were to go to any other religious community, people pronounce their vows after the gospel before the offertory. The Jesuit practice is to pronounce our vows right before communion. After the priest holds up the blessed sacrament and says, behold the Lamb of God, then he stops. So at this moment when we're celebrating the presence and gift of Jesus to his people to be consumed, to be the bread of life, that's the moment when in response, in response to this enormous gift, in response to this emptying of God in Jesus to become food for his people, that's the moment as a response that a Jesuit comes forward and pronounces his vows. And that's unique in the church. There's no other religious order who has at that moment. And it signals what Ignatius understands his life and the life of the Jesuits and the life of all of us to be a response to the munificence, a response to the self emptying of God in Christ. And that evokes from us the desire to give ourselves back in gratitude and in service. I've said this to you before, but service for Ignatius is a form of gratitude. It is the fruit of gratitude. And gratitude is evoked by the experience of the extraordinary love of God. So Ignatius and the companions make those vows and they vow to go to Jerusalem to spend their life there. And if they can't, for whatever reason, then they will come back to Rome and they will go to the vicar of Christ, the Pope and say to the Pope, since you have knowledge and authority given to you by Christ, we simply say to you, as we would say to Christ, do with me what you will. And this is the heart of what you'll maybe hear sometimes about the fourth vow of the Jesuits. So poverty, chastity and obedience, but in our vow formula, there's a vow of special obedience to the Holy Father with regard to mission. Doesn't mean that we're supposed to be the arch defenders of everything that Pope says or thinks or does. No, it means that a Jesuit, unlike a diocesan priest or unlike members of other religious orders, say we are universally available. That's, it sounds like a big deal, but just think of other Tom Samiskey. Some of you knew Tom when he was headmaster, I'm sorry, president of Fairfield Prep. The Jesuits were given by the Holy See responsibility for Siberia, imagine. And so our superior general looks around the society and says, I'm looking for Jesuits throughout the world to staff the missions that the Holy Father has given us in Siberia. Or a dear friend of mine is the bishop of Kyrgyzstan. I almost ended up there, but he's there because that's the nature of a Jesuit vocation. To say to the Pope who is universal pastor, we are available and we will go wherever you send us. Okay, so enough of that. So Ignatius then decides that he's gonna go back to Spain but before I go into Spain and what happens there, let me stop and ask if there are any questions or comments so far. You're either asleep or you've had your martini and Margaret's laughing, Margaret, what are you drinking? You think this is coffee? Okay. I'm not admitting to anything. You're not admitting to anything. And Margaret, you're obviously not dealing with the case of scruples, you've passed that time. That is correct. So Ignatius goes back to Spain. I hope you had some opportunity to read Ignatius' account. One of the things that strikes me very strongly is Ignatius refuses to go to his brother's house. Doesn't that seem rude? Doesn't that seem insulting to his brother? Why does Ignatius insist when he goes back to his home territory, before he goes back and visits the families of all of these new associates of his, he refuses to stay with his family and instead stays once again in a hospital which was a lodging place for the poor, for the sick, for pilgrims, for homeless people. Why does Ignatius insist on this? What do you make of that? Isn't it offensive that he doesn't go to his family? I think he feels that's no longer his role. He's not part of that scene. As a courtesan, he's more as a pilgrim with the people. And that's why he turns it down. Really the offer by, I guess the messages that were sent by the brother to take him back to the castle means that's not my style. I think you're right, Don. He's saying, to identify, to go back to the castle is huge social, huge economic and social divide. I think Ignatius and his money, this is what you're saying, Don. He's no longer affiliated. He's no longer identified with the life of a courtier. And he wants to make that very clear when he comes back that he's the pilgrim. And as you said, Don, and this is a point that I think bears some further discussion, he chooses to be with the people. He chooses to stay in a place where he will encounter people that God knows he would never have encountered in his brother's estate. And he is exposed to the struggles and problems of people that would never have come to his attention if he remained isolated with the rich and the powerful and the socially prominent. Paranthetically, this is what's behind Pope Francis saying from the beginning of his papacy, shepherds should smell like their sheep. And that shepherds shouldn't be people who are called to ministry, whether they lay or ordained shouldn't be so isolated from their people that they have no contact or understanding or empathy, a term that Francis uses again and again and again is acercania, closeness. He said, there's no pastoral ministry that is not drawn from acercania, closeness to your people. So however, I think Ignatius gets there because he has followed Christ. Ignatius himself with his own determination and his own experience of what is then distilled is the spiritual exercises. He has followed Christ. He's come to be intimate with Christ. He's taken on the spirit of Christ, which of course has no approval from the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, the Romans. Jesus, in Jesus's life, it's clearly, it is a lived out option for the ordinary person. It's not a stewing and condemning people who have a little bit more money, but they don't usually lack for attention. But in Jesus's ministry, he has identified himself with the needs and struggles of the people who are at the, as we would now say at the margins. Most people were living at the margins, right? And so Ignatius is saying, my ministry require, I think for himself, he'd probably, as you said, Don, wants to make it very clear to himself and his family and everybody else, I'm not going back to my old life. I've gotten these fancy degrees from the University of Paris, but this doesn't mean that I'm going to prepare myself for a life of clerical privilege, that I'm going to look for an episcopal position. I'm going to take over, I'm going to be a hierarch. He's saying no, but it's dramatic that that is who he chooses to stay with. Consequently, what social reform, do you think he would have been a social reformer? I mean, he's asking, he's pushing the structure of his state to make social changes. People who don't live and struggle with the poor don't tend to make, to insist on social changes because they don't know anything about them. They don't know what the people are experiencing. So what is Ignatius who's living, eating, sleeping with the poor and the outcasts and people who beg for their living and who are sick and who have been outcast. So what is he insisting on? This is subtle in the Ignatian account, but it's important. You remember what social reforms does he want to have happen? He actually pushes the governor to have a regular welfare state. He persuades the governor to pass a law in which the poor are provided for from public funds. How often do you think that happened? He also is insisting that there be a restriction on gambling because he's living there in this hospice and he sees the effects of an addiction to gambling. If you haven't seen that yourself, it's grievous. And this whole business about veils, unveils for young women, he was saying, we've got to do something about clerical concubinage. He wanted to protect women from simply being the toys of clerics who would use them and never marry them. And so Ignatius is opposing all kinds of social things that he would never have noticed if he hadn't been living with the poor, never, never. And that's why forever, forever Ignatius struggles with the issue of quotes, unquote, poverty for this, once he gets down to starting a religious order, it kills him because Ignatius would like total poverty. And so, and this is how serious Ignatius was about this, seeing what distance from the poor, I mean, he probably didn't have a kind of a sociological analysis that would say, the poor are poor because the rich are rich, but he certainly understood that following the example of Jesus and his own experience, he needed to be with and for the poor and that being with the rich and the privileged was no help. It tended to make him more, he saw it in people, tended to reduce people and lead them more and more towards self. He says poverty, he talks about wealth leads to pride, wealth leads to the pursuit of honors, which leads to pride. Ignatius will later struggle with how is he gonna have poverty in his order? He knows one thing and I mentioned this because remember consistently, we're seeing how much Ignatius is insisting on begging and not building up capital. How many times in the autobiography does Ignatius gather alms, even if he's going on a trip and then he'll give it away or he'll use whatever is required for the trip and then give it away. He never wants to accumulate money. Now this sounds most fanciful, but yes, Don. I just wanted to make a comment and I'll be quiet. Please, I'm sorry, go ahead, please. Anybody, please, don't let me blither on. No, the comment I was gonna make, he's really being true to the second week of the exercises where you study who Christ was. Right. You become like Christ. That's right. And he led that life even from his birth. That's right. And stable and all through. It was interesting for me too that he had such a sense of even like honor, even when they gave him money, like you only take the draft. That's right. If the money wasn't used for what he collected for, it went back to the person. It went right back. It went right back. It wasn't easy. Now, I mean, nobody is gonna say when you look at the Jesuit residents here at Fairfield or if you look at my room, the number of books I have or the number of icons I have, you're gonna say, that Joker can't claim that he's poor. But here's what I can tell you about our legislation. And I don't know whether you know this, that no Jesuit community here at Fairfield, for example, can accumulate money. At the end of a year, we put together a budget. And in our case, since I'm pretty much everybody in the community is earning something, which we pool, at the end of the year, whatever money remains, we are allowed to keep only one quarter of what our budget for next year is gonna look like. As a contingency, if the boiler blows up, if somebody gets sick, we can put in a bank account and earn interest only one quarter of what our budget would be. Then everything else that we've earned this year or that's been given to us as gifts that we've turned in, all of that must be given away. And part of it will go to a big chunk of it has historically always gone right back to the university, especially scholarship aid. Now we'll put some money into the Murphy Center. Our province will ask us for some money to take care of the elderly and the sick. But the province itself, too, cannot have any interest bearing accounts except for the education of the young and the care of the old. But day by day living, we have no interest bearing accounts and we can't build it up. That's just a small, and I'm not boasting about that, but that's a small way that we're still trying to live out Ignatius' instinct. Now what else did Ignatius do when he went back to Spain? He did what Jesuits always do. The first thing he did was have conversations about the things of God, spiritual conversation. And then he started giving the exercises and then he started doing something which was almost unheard of. He started teaching catechism to little kids. He was concerned about youth not knowing the first thing about their faith. We talk about that all the time now, but this is not new. People were not concerned about passing on the faith. I suppose the culture was supposed to take care of it. But Ignatius insists that with all of his fancy learning in Paris, with all of his, Paris is the center of the world. The French will tell you that, but it was intellectually. Ignatius takes his exquisite education and he teaches catechism to little kids and to simple people. To the point where Ignatius insists after he and the companions found the society that one of the vows for those who will be professed in the Jesuits, listen to this. Whoops, did I lose it here? This is the vow formula for people who are professed to the Jesuits. I make profession and promise to Almighty God in the presence of his virgin mother, remember what a big role Mary plays and the entire heavenly court and all those here present and you Father Superior, who holds the place of God and your successors. I promise perpetual poverty, chastity and obedience and in conformity with it, a special care for the instruction of children. And then it goes on in Latin to say in simple people. And I promise further special obedience to the sovereign pontiff with regard to missions. So it's interesting that from the very beginning, there's a sense of the importance of simple people, of people who have been uneducated and Ignatius says this better be in the vow formula because this is likely to be something that people will ignore. They're teaching catechism to little kids or teaching theology to our unlettered, uneducated young students or to form programs to teach catechism to unlettered adults, unlettered in the sense that they don't know anything about our tradition. So this is core. The things that Jesuits do, you look at what Ignatius does and that's why I'm spending this amount of time. Ignatius when he goes home is already living out the pattern of Ignatian and Jesuit ministries. Stay close to the poor, stay close to the simple. Teach and pass on the faith to people who haven't had the chance to have it explained to them. Introduce it to them. Take your big fancy learning and figure out a way that you can make it comprehensible and attractive to kids of the simple people. It's never gonna be enough simply to be a scholar if you're gonna be a Jesuit or if you're gonna be in the Ignatian tradition. Not enough to do pure speculation. Always the challenge is how do you translate? How do you bring that to the needs and interests and aptitude of people who are not highly refined scholars? And then be concerned because you listen to the poor, use your position to advocate and to push for societal structures that will respond to the abuses and needs of people who are in a problematic situation and constantly be giving the spiritual exercises one way or another. So that's what Ignatius is doing there. He preaches, nobody was preaching by the way. Nobody was bothering to, this is why, of course, the Reformation was in some way so necessary and so successful. People were saying, for God's sake, somebody should give a homily on a Sunday. And so Ignatius is already, this is before the Council of Trent is already insisting on preaching. All right, enough of that. Then he goes and visits the families of his companions. And then he decides, okay, it's time now. The agreement was that after he visits, everybody takes letters from his companions to their families that's paid in Portugal. Now he's gonna go over to Venice because that's where the ships live for the Holy Land. And he's gonna wait for the companions to come when they finish their studies. And then he tells the story of how he gets from Valencia to Genoa. Do you remember that story? Did anybody notice it? It's a strange story and I can't figure out why he tells it. Oh, it's asking for a handbag. Huh? Oh, please, Tess. Oh, hey, Jerry, thank you so much for that. Hi, good to see you. Thank you so much for those beautiful insights. It, in all the while where you're describing those characteristics of Ignatius, I can't help but reflect on our Pope, Francis, because he so beautifully exemplifies so much of that. And I was reflecting on a time that he brought, he was delivering masks and he brought someone onto the altar with Down syndrome and what an important and beautiful testimony that was. And so I really appreciate all those insights. Thank you, Tess. And thank you for bringing Francis into the picture because really, you know, it's so immediate and the correlation is so clear. Thank you. Thanks. All right, so what happens with Ignatius? It's a very stormy sea, terrible. The sea between Valencia and Genoa. You see, you know, people are saying, don't go, they're pirates. And also there's a big storm. He almost drowns in the storm, but he gets to Genoa and then he's going from Genoa through Bologna to get to Venice. If you've had your Perillo tour of North Italy, you didn't have to do what Ignatius did. What did Ignatius have to do? He's walking. He's walking from Genoa to Venice and he tells a story about walking on a very narrow ledge. And Jean, what happens? Do you remember? Yeah, so he can't really, it gets too narrow and he's on his hands and knees crawling to get there. But I kind of identified with him. I'm like, you know what? I would have done probably the same thing. Barbara, you probably think so too. Yeah, that sounds like something would happen to Jean. So it was kind of, yeah, he was just, he was gonna do it on his own. Only on a narrow path. And he's gonna do it on his own. He doesn't like really wanna get the help from anybody else. I can do this. I'm gonna do it and I'm gonna find a way. So he's so determined. And then where does he end up? He slips off the path and falls into the mud. And everybody laughs at him. And everybody laughs at him. Why does he tell the story? What do you think? This would be a very interesting exercise. And if we had more time, it would have been very interesting with every paragraph to say, okay, so why is he telling this story? He has a million stories to choose from. Why is he telling this one? Who's his intended audience? What point is he trying to make? Who is he trying to speak to? I think all of us, I think he's laughing at himself too along with others to kind of make light of some things like you can't take so many things seriously. Like sometimes things happen and you just have to laugh. That's what I took away from it. I don't think it's more complicated than that. I think Ignatius is trying to look at me. I was so, first of all, I was so stubborn. I was gonna make this on my own. Here I was, no horse, no accompaniment. And look what happened. I don't think he's beating himself up. This is the biggest thing's happened in life, right? And that people laugh at you. So he gets to Venice. Before you go on, Margaret has her hand up, I don't know. Go ahead, Margaret. I had to read that a couple of times to be sure I was reading it correctly. And especially by the fact that he turned around and even to look back, the path was as narrow as that going forward, which kind of threw me a little bit. But as I reflected on it, I felt like for him, it was a matter of number one, not giving up, but finding a way to get past what he was experiencing and getting to the end point of where he wanted to be. Exactly. And if somebody is another one of our participants, I don't know, I don't know if you all saw it. And Ignatius, he's convinced that God is gonna take care of him. But that doesn't, but if God taking care of us, doesn't mean you're not gonna fall in the mud. So God's protection and God's care doesn't mean that we're not gonna come out of the swamp there, but finally it's his confidence that he is on a mission and that God will protect him. And I think that we also draw that, okay? So Ignatius gets to Venice. Venice did not have its own University of Bologna, Padua did, the University of Padua was the closest university, but he still has his theological studies to finish up. So he's gonna get private tutoring there in Venice, but what does he do? He was busy giving the exercises and active in conversazione espirituale. Typical, typical. He can't give up. He knows he has to study theology, but he has to give the exercises. So I mean, there we are, I'm sorry, maybe I'm partial to this because after all I was the director of the Murphy Center. Jesuits and Ignatian, the Ignatian tradition that doesn't give the exercise is squandering its biggest heritage. That's why we've spent so much time, energy, resources, establishing and asking you all to help us with the Murphy Center. There's nothing more precious that we have to offer. Look at Ignatius as example. Again and again and again, no matter what else he has to do, he ends up giving the spiritual exercises. But where does it get him? And again, I think this is important for the people who are following after him in this first generation of Jesuits, but for all of us, persecution. Do you remember? It's very strong in this episode in Venice. People are attacking him and fomenting all kinds of rumors about him that he had been driven out of Paris, he had been driven out of Spain. And interestingly, Ignatius himself demands, demands that a court case be brought and that his detractors and enemies make the best case they can and that Ignatius gets, he insists that the case be carried through and he gets a favorable sentence. I think I said to you earlier on that this is unfortunately Ignatius. Ignatius' approach was provocative, not intentionally so, but again, to say that here he is still a layman. He has theology now, but the other companions are also giving the exercises. They're spending 40 days directing people in prayer and accompanying them as lay people. This was such a highly clericalized church that Ignatius' approach is revolutionary, unheard of and the consequences are that he's suspected of heresy. Doesn't stop him, doesn't stop him. Ignatius has a different view of how God deals with people and the breath and power of God to break into people's personal lives and that the ability to accompany somebody spiritually is not controlled by a license by your ordination or by your sex. It just was not something that Ignatius was prepared to buy into. Any comments so far? We wanna go anywhere further with that? Okay, so the companions arrive in Paris and Ignatius does something very interesting. Since they still have to wait a couple more months before the season comes when ships start moving out to cross the Mediterranean to the Holy land, they have a couple about like three months and so Ignatius divides them up. And what does he have of them do? What does he have of them do? First of all, the groups are constituted intentionally international because by now there are companions who are Portuguese, French, Spanish, Italian and Ignatius, every group that he divides them into to send them out is made up of diverse nationalities. He's not gonna fall prey into a clannishness or allowing his group and the fraternity and care for one another to be based on the easy affiliations of language and culture. He's asking for something more and he's asking for a level of affection, intimacy and love and commitment that comes from a relationship with Christ that supersedes natural affections. Sounds hard, maybe sounds a pietistic but that's what he expected. The closer you move into a love with Christ, your hearts are expanded. He believed that that was the case. He felt it himself. The closer you become to the source of love, the more you become capable of loving people to whom you have no natural affiliation, culturally, linguistically or historically. And what does he ask them to do? He asks them to work again. Here we are again. He sends them, he doesn't send them to teach in universities at this point. He sends them back into hospitals with the very poor. He sends them to places where they're gonna spend their time taking care of the sick, the dying, who are infectious, let's be honest. The homeless pilgrims, he wants these Jesuits, these companions of his. That's where they have to be and to help them spiritually if they can. But for Ignatius, there can never be a forgetfulness about the suffering of people who are poor, of people who are impoverished, who are sick, who are suffering. They have to be there. Parents, so that leads me into, I wanna share this with you. So there were Ignatius years later in the maybe now in the 1540s. When he comes to begin to think about they've already decided to found an order, to found a religious order. Then he starts thinking about what should people who enter the order do? What should be the formation of people who want to be part of this company that bears the name Jesus? So he says in our constitutions eventually, that they have to go through esperimenta, experiences. Ignatius was an experiential learner. He said, this is not gonna be book learning, but anybody who wants to follow in this path has to go through a series of formative and probative experiences. The first experience will be making the spiritual exercises of a month. So every young Jesuit, any candidate for Ignatius is time till now has to make a 30 day silent retreat. The second experience, listen to this, will be to serve for another month or so in hospitals. The candidates will take their meals there, they will sleep there, they will serve for as many hours as is required according to the times, places and persons. They should help and serve the sick and the well in conformity with the directions they receive. They should learn to lower and humble themselves, giving clear proof that they are giving themselves entirely to the service of people and not pursuing pumps and vanities. In this way, they will serve Christ the Lord. When I was a novice, we worked at Calvary Hospital for two months. I don't know whether you know Calvary Hospital in the Bronx, a hospital for people who are at the last stages of cancer. And even now to this very day, every Jesuit novice will spend two or three months working in a hospital for the and cure for people who are in cure who are at home in the last stages or they'll be working some other hospitals. They should spend a month making a pilgrimage without money, begging from door to door and accompany them accustomed themselves to discomfort and food and lodging, abandoning all reliance on money and other created things and placing all their reliance on their creator and Lord. When I was novice master, I was too much of a wimp to send my novices out on the highways of New York state. But what I did do is I sent them to live with our seminarians in very difficult situations in Mexico. Because what I sensed was the real challenge for the yuppies who came to our novitiate was leaving behind their power of language. They were all very smart, pretty powerful people. And it's okay, you're gonna live with our Mexican seminarians in very difficult situations in Guadalajara or Mexico. And you're gonna be like a child. You're gonna learn Spanish or indigenous language. Anyway, I only mentioned those because this was Ignatius's way of saying, of emphasizing how much the spiritual exercises, how much living with and being transformed by intimacy with the sick and the dying and the poor and the needy and the marginalized people that this is formative. You see, so this is very important. And if you read nowadays, if you read something like what's this, our wonderful Jesuit who works with the gang, Greg Boyle. Greg Boyle has written all kinds of things about, to go to the margins, and this is Francis's point too, to go to the margins is not so that we can drag people because we're all so wonderful and we know what life is about, to drag people to the center, to go to the margins, just keep extending the circle. And we are transformed by our association with the viewpoints, the suffering, the insights, and not romanticizing marginalized suffering people. But the point is for us to have our humanity expanded and our categories burst open and our empathy in our hearts transformed. So I'm mentioning all this to you because when Jesuits talk about, for example, opening a college in downtown Bridgeport, this is not some crazy new idea. It's saying we must be with and for and learning from people who historically and culturally have been pushed to the margins. It's where we belong. And if we're not giving the spiritual exercises, if we're not open to conversations about the things of God, if we're not willing to take our learning and make it available to simple people or people who haven't had the opportunity for education, and if we're not willing to move beyond quotes, unquote, our comfort zone and be with people whose life experience is very different from our own, then we've abandoned Ignatius. Then it has nothing to do with the Ignatius tradition. All right. Comments, questions before I blither on? Tess, please. Thanks, Jerry. You know, I've had an opportunity to do some work at Bethel, the center in Milford for people experiencing homelessness. And I so wish that the Murphy Center could extend more help there or similar places. Last night, I had the opportunity to meet with staff there. And we have staff who actually go out and meet people who are even reluctant to be housed. So people who are forming small communities outside of the shelter and living on the streets. And I look at these young people who do this work and I just stand in complete awe of the work that they're doing. And the spiritual piece is so important, both for the residents of the shelter and for the staff. There's something that brings such a sense of serenity and peace when prayer enters the conversation. And of course, it's open-ended prayer, not favoring any particular. But I so appreciate all the words that you had tonight for us, Jerry, because all of that work is just important work. And I love that the Murphy Center has that at its heart. It's heart. Thank you, Tess. Tess, I'm not sure whether Tess is a graduate of our formation program. Tess, I'm not sure during your time whether we talked much about pivot ministries. Pivot ministries is a rehabilitation center in downtown Bridgeport. John and Elliot, I think John and Elliot, yeah. That's right. Yeah, that's right. Such important work. And Go T.A. still goes there. Yes. Go T.A. Vansal. We initially went down there. This is under the inspiration of Father Jim Bowler. And I don't know whether Marcy was involved, but the intention was to offer spiritual direction, spiritual conversation to the men still, it's largely, it's all men at this stage who were in rehabilitation in the center. And the staff said to us, if you really want to help the men, you got to help us. Yes, yeah. It's such an important piece. So we really need, we more desperately than right now, the clients slash students, they got to just get sober first. And eventually we can help them, but we desperately need somebody to help us find God in this immensely challenging service slash ministry that we have. So you're absolutely right, Tess. And again, I'll tell you from the start, the first time I met Bishop Pagiano, how many years ago was it now seven or eight years ago when I first came to Bridgeport and we were talking about the Ignatian Spirituality Center. And he said, look, I just want you to be, I want you to be very certain that, he said, I want you to go to Greenwich. I want you to go to New King. I want you to go to the Western part of the diocese, but please for the love of God, don't forget Bridgeport. Don't forget Norwalk. Don't forget Danbury. Don't forget the Haitians and Creoles speakers and Vietnamese, and especially the Hispanic people of the diocese. And I think that challenge still lies, and challenges us still at the Murphy Center. And there are those pockets of poverty in every town. So I so support the initiative of the Murphy Center to get more involved in all of that work. Jean, you must see some of it in New York as well. And actually I just came back from the Navajo Nation. We went, we did Arizona and New Mexico, 840 miles on little bus and the whole Navajo Nation and the Zuni Pueblo. And to see the spirituality of the people and also at St. Mary's Mission, it's the Franciscans. But what I see they're all priests, they're all getting older. This is my takeaway. There was a Scottish priest at the Zuni Pueblo who has been there nine years. And there are no young priests coming up. And the women, like you said, the women are the ones doing it all. The sisters who were there. They have sisters from India now, sisters from the Philippines. There was one sister from Wisconsin. So lay people getting involved with the church and spreading the good news and also being able to somehow, I don't know, do more. I'm seeing it's desperately needed, not only in our inner cities, but throughout the whole country in these pockets. Look, I mean, this is maybe, this isn't over to the top statement. I probably wouldn't wanna try to defend myself with something like this, but would male clerics have made space in these ministries for women if we didn't have to? Not likely. So, I mean, I'm not happy that the number of Jesuits is decreasing, but the fact that that decrease is, that that decreasing is somehow correlated to the increasing presence of an activity and leadership of women and non-ordained. Like that's not for nothing, right? I don't wanna say the one causes the other, but I think God can turn things around and that we now have the opportunity for people to use the skills and the talents and the gifts that God gave them. I'm just gonna jump, we only have a couple more minutes, so I'm gonna jump really quickly to Ignatius when he finally gets to Rome. And it's significant, and I don't wanna leave it out because once he gets to Rome, what does he do again? He starts giving the spiritual exercises. He keeps busy helping souls, but what are the activities that he gets involved with? Immediately. And see, people think of that, oh, well, Jesuits, it's universities and schools, and that's all they do. But what does Ignatius do? As soon as he gets to Rome, he does what we would call the works of mercy. And but he doesn't do them himself, he organizes confraternities. Ignatius has the ability to gather people probably people who had been veterans of his spiritual exercises or spiritual conversations or one form of spiritual exercises or another, and he and the companions get people together and largely women to take care of the confraternity of the orphans, whose job it was was to find alms and then to establish homes for the sick, the disabled and the orphan. The streets, I mean, the streets are still filled, every city is filled, but Rome at that time, the French had besieged Rome, there were plagues, there was economic hardship, the cities were filled with people who fit into these categories. So Ignatius saw this and he helped inspire lay women and men to form their own independent confraternities to take care of, to organize and to fund the care of orphans, the widows and the sick. And then he had another group called the Compagnia della Grazia, delle virgine visirabile. So unmarried young women who didn't have dowries, who didn't have families who could support them, who were basically being pressed either into entering a religious community or becoming prostitutes. Those were your options. If you didn't have a dowry, what are you gonna do? And so Ignatius got together this group of people and they started, you know, forming communities, homes for training for, finding dowries for people, teaching them skills. And then they also have a home for the cat, for catty humans, Muslims or Jews, who when they expressed any interest in Christianity were expelled from their communities. At the same time, he's giving the spiritual exercises. And at the same time, he's writing our constitutions. At the same time, when he's doing this, he acknowledges toward the end of the account that he's finding more and more devotion. And then he explains what devotion is. Devotion is an ease and a fluidity and an openness to find the presence and the action of the divine at all times and in all circumstances. So he says with everything that's going on, what he wants to tell people is that this life is a life that leads to a greater openness and to a greater connection with the divine. We don't have much time, so I'm gonna shut up. Questions, comments. I'm sorry that I've blithered on this way, please. Please, anybody, save me, throw me a line. Margaret. Why are you calling on me? Because you waved your hand, didn't you? Somehow your little square got flashing out. No, I'm just laughing because I find you're blithering, as you call it, to be not only informative, but so inspirational that you could go on for the whole hour and I wouldn't mind it. Thank you, thank you. In fact, one of the earlier sessions, I mean, you just, the passion with which you spoke left me exhausted and I thought to myself, wow, if as Christians, we had that level of passion, how different the world would be. But get close to Christ, and the closer we get to Christ, the more he sets us on fire. Parenthetically, in our general headquarters in Rome where I worked for a few years, there's a statue of St. Ignatius, right opposite the chapel and kind of a big vestibule. And it says in Latin, ite flammite in the world. So go and set the world on fire. Jesuits who were so poetic, we had a fire extinguisher behind the statue. Barbara, you're flashing at me. I am? Yeah, maybe that was just your laugh. Okay, well I'll say something. In 2006, I had the opportunity to go with a group of editors of Jesuit publications to Rome. And among the many things we got to do was we got to go to the archives since the Jesuits. And the head archivist showed us some of the actual letters that Ignatius had written. We had to have gloves on and we couldn't really touch anything. But he said that Ignatius was always writing to people, to his companions in other countries, et cetera. But he said 60% of the letters are about real estate. Because he wants real estate. He wanted them to find the most central and busiest locations so that not so they could have places of prestige, but so that people could find them. That's right. That was very interesting. Barbara, that's terrific. If you go to Rome now, you can tell that if you go to the Jezu, which was the first Jesuit church in Rome, and it's where Ignatius's rooms were, it's where the beginning of the society, it's like 10 roads are converging. And that's exactly what Ignatius wanted. That it was smack dab in the middle of busy Rome. There's a saying that Benedict loved the countryside. Francis loved the small towns, but Ignatius loved the city. Not because I think he was particularly inclined to the city. I think he would have loved the countryside too. But the city is where decisions are being made, business has to be done and people are living. And especially people who are suffering. So when in this spot where Ignatius, from this very small little chapel of De La Strada, Nostra Signora de la Strada, Our Lady of the Streets, he loved that. I mean, first of all, that was fabulous to him. There was no title of Our Lady that he loved more. And that's why I'm so grateful for their father, Paul Rourke, to replicating the beautiful icon of Our Lady of the Streets and having it in the back of Egan Chapel. I love celebrating and being able to look at her, looking at all of us. But it was a place where it was contiguous to the ghetto. It was contiguous to the major area of prostitution and trafficking of people. It was on the road to the Papal Palace. It was near the governmental center. Everybody who was, anybody had a pass through that quarter. And that's where we belong. I've gone over, what else? Anybody else, but what the hell? Anybody else want to say anything? Bart, do I see you down there flashing? I was just scratching my chin. I did not read the book. Bart, you and your, Bart's, Bart has a very, Bart's father is very precious to me. Bart's father was a Jesuit brother who taught me a great deal about what being a Jesuit was about. Anybody else? Going once, going twice. Just want to say thank you so much, Jerry. That was unbelievably excellent as always. And thanks so much for bringing Ignatius back to life again for us and really, really being the example of his great work. So thanks. And remember that pretty much everything until just the very last part was all about the story of a layperson. It looks like Catherine, if you want to chime in with your hand raised. I'm sorry, Catherine, please. I hesitate to take up even 10 seconds because it probably isn't relevant, but I do want to thank you, Father, for allowing me to participate in this. I'm a graduate of Fairfield University and got a master's degree and was a teacher for a few years and became a public defender and a corporate lawyer and various things in my life. And I wanted to come into this group, not only because it was my alma mater people, but my son, I have one child. He's presently about 44. And when he was a teenager, he went through some kind of conversion, spiritual conversion. He went to Fairfield Prep, he was summa cum laude. But he was a very religious person. He did not want to leave our Lord, the priest in the chapel saying mass every morning alone. So sometimes he would insist on going there early and being dropped off so priest won't be, but he had a tremendous love for St. Ignatius. I was too busy working. I didn't really know why, but when he went off to college, he got involved with fraternities and all kinds of things. And he's a great son. But when he came back home, he was, he had kind of lost his track. He'd always talked about being a doctor when he was nine years old. He had lost his track. Yeah, he had undergone this major conversion, spiritual conversion. He had read Fulton Sheen's all his books. He read St. Ignatius. He had favorite saints and Maximilian Colby. And I didn't know why, what it was about St. Ignatius, he loved so much. But when he went off to Cogaddie, he came back, he decided to, the only child he was very independent, went down to North Carolina and taught in private school. While he was there, he left much of his clothes back home. And so I was searching his pockets to send stuff to the cleaners. And there in his coat that he wore most of the time, it was a black leather coat. The only thing he had in that two things, one was a medal, but one was a picture of St. Ignatius of Loyola. That was what he came back from four years of college with. So anyway, I was always intrigued. And when I was a teenager myself, my mother was very fascinated. It was the Jesuits who converted the Indians in North America, correct? St. Isaac Joe's and rebirth. My mother just could not stop talking about them. She was overwhelmed by their courage and bravery and what they did for the North American people. So I had my one and only child who is totally awed by St. Ignatius and carried that card with him in his coat pocket everywhere. My mother was awed by the Jesuits. My son now is a doctor in the emergency room. I see him as serving the poor as he walks in the shoes of Jesus Christ, his divine position. He stirs the poor. He refers some to me who have issues. And of course as a public defender, you're kind of a social worker too. And I think we have a commonality with Jesuits in this social worker aspect, but it was because of the main people in my life that I wanted to be in this group. And I really appreciate your having this group and allowing me, I haven't done anything with respect to coming back to participate in things at Fairfield University. I've just been so busy all my life, but I'm very grateful and I hope you give another talk someday. Thank you, Catherine. I would like to be a part of it, even though until today, I didn't know how to turn on this picture to get into the group. We're glad you came home, Catherine. I didn't know how to even join in the group. I thought I was joined, but I guess I wasn't until. And then I learned how to raise the hand just in the nick of time. Great, thank you, Catherine. And we'll see you next time round. All right, I think you were the last one to have your hand up, Audra. I did, thank you. Thank you, Catherine. So I just wanted to say, yeah, I just wanted to say thank you so much for the opportunity of having this group. I think one of the things that I miss the most at Fairfield, I'm also a Fairfield graduate. And it's like the spiritual opportunities that we have from the chapel. I miss so much going to the chapel in the mornings and in the afternoons. And also the activities that the Morphe Center will have for us, the spiritual direction and so on and so forth. So I just wanted to say thank you. It's great to still be connected with the Fairfield community that I miss so much. Thank you very much. Thank you to our alumni and alumni. Thanks, Jean. And thank you for members from the larger community. Delighted that you could join us. And thank you for your comments. And if we do something like this again, we'll have to figure out again. One of the principles of the Ignatian way is always to examine, was this mod just, was this the best way that we could be of service to God and to each other and to you? So that's a good moment to pass over to Jess. Thank you. And thank you all for joining us both tonight and throughout these four sessions. Thank you, Margaret, for telling Father Jerry what I tell him all the time. I always tell him how wonderful and inspiring he is and he ignores me or doesn't believe me. So thank you for reiterating that for me. We do want to do this again. We have had over the past two years several different virtual events, all of which you can find on our YouTube playlist. But this was obviously the first of the book clubs or discussions groups. So when I send out an email later this week or the recording to this discussion, I'm going to be asking for your feedback. So give it some thought. And if you have a topic or a book that you think would be worthy of doing this again with in the future, we would love to hear that feedback. And as Father Jerry said, really think about what is the best way? What are you going to get the most out of doing these discussions going forward? We would very much like to hear from you. But I think that's it for now. So stay tuned for that email in the next day or two. And thank you all again. Thank you, Father Jerry. And I hope you all have a wonderful rest of the evening. Thank you very much. Thanks, Jerry. Have a great day, everybody. Thanks, guys. Bye-bye.