July 31, 2026
Summary of the Morrow's Meditation
We will meditate tomorrow upon St. Ignatius, and we shall see with what zeal he labored: 1st, to sanctify himself; 2d, to sanctify others. We will then make the resolution: 1st, to examine into all the attachments which may still remain in our hearts and generously to break them off; 2d, to watch over our intentions, that we may do nothing from habit or routine or from human motives, but refer all to the greater glory of God; 3d, to lead our neighbor to what is good by means of our example, and when we are able by our words. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the motto of St. Ignatius: "All to the greater glory of God."
Meditation for the Morning
Let us adore Jesus Christ bringing the sacred fire from heaven to earth, and with it kindling the heart of St. Ignatius (Luke xii. 49). Let us admire the wonderful change which He worked in this great saint, and let us beg of Him to change us in the same manner.
FIRST POINT
Zeal of St. Ignatius in Sanctifying Himself
Whoever aspires to holiness must destroy in himself nature vitiated by original sin, and fill himself with holy love. This is what St. Ignatius understood in an admirable manner. 1st. He destroyed nature in himself. When he was one day reading the Lives of the Saints, grace said to his heart: Do like the saints whose lives you are reading; leave the world, its hopes, its possessions, and its glories, but above all bid farewell to yourself. At that very moment he quitted the world, which until then had been his idol; he renounced the love of his senses, which until then he had flattered by a life of pleasures and enjoyments; he condemned himself to the privations and severities of penance, exchanged his luxurious garments for the rags of the poor, and, shut up in the grotto of Manresa, without any other bed than the bare ground, without any other food than bread and water, he crucified his flesh by severe discipline. If, later on, he spared his body these austerities that he might employ his strength for the greater glory of God, he counterbalanced them by the austere modesty which, by regulating the behavior, the deportment, and the eyes, preserves the soul in a state of holy recollection. At the same time he renounces his inclinations; from the magnificence and the refinement of the court, he passes into hospitals, devotes himself to the care of all kinds of human miseries, even the most disgusting, and makes himself the servant of all, he who, until then, had been accustomed to command and to speak as a master. He renounces his temper; he who had been hasty and choleric by nature, still more choleric and more likely to be carried away by anger in his profession as a soldier, becomes gentle as a lamb and patient like Jesus Christ, even when he was being subjected to the most shameful kind of treatment, the sole thought of which would formerly have made him shudder, but which now was his delight and the object of his desires. He renounces his self-love; not content with hiding the splendor of his birth beneath the commonest kind of clothing, the charm of his courtesy under a negligent exterior, the talents he possessed under an affected stupidity, he receives, as a piece of good fortune, contempts and insults, and exults when he is put into chains like a criminal. Lastly, he renounces all attachments, to the extent of being able to say, "I see nothing on earth the loss of which could trouble the peace of my soul." 2d. His heart, thus emptied of all that is not God, fills itself to such a degree with God, that he breathes henceforth nothing here below except holy love. All creatures recall God to him so perfectly that nothing more than the sight of a flower throws him into ecstasy, and thus all things considered outside God seem to him to be insipid. At the same time it seems to him as though he did not even yet love enough, and he asks God for His love, sacrificing to Him everything else for the sake of so great a possession. He is heard and answered; new flames of love consume him, make him fall into a swoon, draw from his eyes torrents of tears, keep him in an habitual union with God, in an abandonment without reserve to the divine rule, in so great a horror of displeasing God in the very slightest degree that it seems to him that in hell his greatest torment would be to see God was not loved there; lastly, he exercises constant attention to do everything, to say everything, and to think everything for the greater glory of God.
SECOND POINT
Zeal of St. Ignatius in Sanctifying Others
It is not enough for me only, he said, to serve the Lord; all hearts must be brought to love Him, all tongues to bless Him. From the depths of his grotto at Manresa he sees a world to be reformed, another world to be evangelized: Europe, which is losing the faith, America and the Indies, which do not as yet possess it; and embracing the whole of the universe in his zeal, he begins by composing and spreading the book of the Spiritual Exercises, which has converted more souls than it contains letters; then he comes to Paris to mix with children and to pursue his studies, which had been neglected until then, but which are necessary to his designs. There he founds the Society of Jesus, the centre of so many doctors and apostles, of so many evangelists and martyrs. The general of this new army, he sends these soldiers of Jesus Christ into all parts of the world; and he, whilst governing this great body from the centre of Catholicity, catechises little ones and the poor, brings back sinners, embraces all kind of good works, and is so full of devotedness that on one occasion he threw himself into a frozen pond that he might touch a soul which was on the point of being lost, even to the point of losing his eternal salvation had it been necessary; for, he said, I would rather remain on earth uncertain of my salvation than enter at that moment into Paradise, if I could thereby convert one single soul. Could there possibly be more zeal for the sanctification of his neighbor? Alas! what do we do in comparison?
Resolutions and Spiritual Nosegay as above