"A Spiritual Cannonball"

Homily of Rev. Fr.Eric Eusebio, SJ in a joint celebration of the Feast of St. Ignatius and the Centenary of Canonical Erection of the Congregation of the Religious of the Virgin Mary

Every RVM sister wears a silver medal around her neck. If I’m not mistaken, on one side is the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, our Lady of the Assumption. On the other face of the medal, this time I’m sure that I will see the face of someone so familiar to me, our founder, St. Ignatius of Loyola. I guess that is the reason why we are here this morning to celebrate the feast of this man who, by God’s providential design, influenced your foundress, Servant of God Madre Ignacia del Espiritu Santo. Outsiders do not immediately see the connection between St. Ignatius and Mother Ignacia, aside perhaps from the similarity of their names. But we surely do see the connection. Mother Ignacia was, in the 1680’s, very close to the Sons of St. Ignatius, the Jesuit priests of Intramuros, especially to Fr. Paul Kleine, who was her spiritual director and who helped her prepare the Constitutions of the Beaterio de la Compania de Jesus. But the connection between Ignatius and Ignacia does not end there. Because 100 years ago on this day, Ignacia’s Beaterio of the Society of Jesus would be canonically recognized on the archdiocesan level as the Congregation of the Religious of the Virgin Mary. The official universal recognition of the Holy See would come soon after, on March 17, 1907.

So let’s simply recall with fondness and respect this man who some or many of you lovingly call “ Lolo Iggy”. Let’s just focus on his conversation experience and then take up from there a few aspects of our common Ignatian heritage.

His Spanish, pre-conversion name was Inigo and he lived from about 1491 to July 31, 1556. So we celebrate today his 450 th death anniversary. He was a slightly younger contemporary of Martin Luther, and thus lived at the time of the Protestant Reformation in northern Europe. It was a time of crisis in the Church. Inigo was a Spaniard, of northern Spain, a Basque. Though coming from a noble family, he was not at all a scholar. At age 14, as was the custom of young men of noble families at that time, he was sent to live in the house of the royal family for proper training as a knight.

This worldly, romantic and idealistic man of action, was sent to fight for the Spanish king in Pamplona which was besieged by the French army. In the middle of that fierce battle, a cannonball was fired and landed near Inigo, shattering his right leg and injuring his left, an event which would change his life forever. After a long period of recuperation from this crippling battle wound, this worldly man changed. If his passion for life before was to serve the King of Spain, now he became totally decided on serving the Divine Majesty, Jesus Christ.

This former man of the world eventually felt called to evangelize others by means of what we now recognize as the first “retreat” in the history of the Church, the Spiritual Exercises. They were a tool to enable retreatants to seek and find God in all things. Actually, the spirituality of the great existing religious orders at that time was described by St. Thomas Aquinas himself in this way: to pray and then to share with others the fruits of prayer. In other words, one goes to the chapel to encounter God. And then one goes out to the marketplace to share the God one has found. Maganda naman ‘yon, di ba?

 But the radical newness of Ignatian spirituality is this: we can find God both in the chapel and in the marketplace. Matatagpuan natin si Hesus na ating kapatid sa simbahan man o sa palengke. Do you remember the song composed by Fr. Hontiveros, “Hesus na aking Kapatid”?

 Hesus na aking kapatid sa lupa nami’y bumalik. Iyong mukha’y ibang iba. Hindi kita nakikilala. Tulutan mo aking mata mamulat sa katotohan. Ikaw, Poon, Makikilala sa taong mapagkumbaba. Hesus na aking kapatid sa bukid ka nagtatanim o sa palengke rin naman, ikaw ay naghahanap- buhay.

The song says that we do not have to bring God to an empty world because after the first Christmas, when God became man, and since that early Easter Sunday morning of the Resurrection, God has already become one of us, and he is here with us. The problem, though, is that God’s voice is not the only voice we hear in the marketplace. Other voices compete with God’s. They often imitate God’s voice. We sometimes think we hear his voice, but instead we hear the voice of power, or the voice of ambition, or the voice of pride, or the voice of the flesh. This is why what Ignatius called “discernment” is so central to our Ignatian heritage. When we discern, we sort out and evaluate the various voices and inspirations we encounter in our life and ministries.

So what is the purpose of prayer, according to St. Ignatius? It is to grow in what we call “discerning love”: a growing sensitivity to the way God is speaking in and through the world in which we live. Prayer develops in us a discerning awareness of a God who works in our life, in history. Thus since the time of Lolo Iggy, religious life has become more apostolic rather than monastic. If God is in the world and works in the world, then we ought to labor together with him in the world. Hesus na aking kapatid sa bukid ka nagtatanim o sa palengke rin naman, ikaw ay naghahanap – buhay.

 If we come to think of it, this kind of apostolic spirituality of contemplation–in-action which rocked the world through St. Ignatius all started with that terrible cannonball that was fired that year in Pamplona. But there was a cannonball that proved to be more powerful than that which hit Inigo. It was a spiritual cannonball that convulsed his spirit, and like a high voltage current, he passed it on to this day to generations of Jesuits, countless religious women like you, and lay people. That spiritual cannonball was the strong realization that God loved him despite his sinfulness. For him and for his followers, love should be the dominant note, the highest quality they can develop in life. Ignatius always asked himself, “ How can I reciprocate the great love Christ has shown for me?” For Ignatius, the answer was crystal clear: Love is shown more in deeds rather than in words. It is shown in deeds, always done ad maiorem Dei gloriam, good, heroic deeds done out of service for others, in the world and for the world.

Let me now end with a song, a Broadway song which is based would you believe on the second week of the Spiritual Exercises? In particular, it is the 3 rd prelude of the Contemplation on the Incarnation. We recall that there, Ignatius bids the retreatant “ to ask for what I want: it will be to ask for an interior knowledge of the Lord, Who for me has become man, that I may love him more and follow Him”. This song is from the 1973 film and 1976 Broadway musical entitled “Godspell, “based on the Gospel of St. Matthew, with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz. What a tribute this song is to our Lolo Iggy, having turned out to be one of the most loved and most remembered songs of Broadway. Let this be the constant prayer of our lives, day by day.

Day by day, day by day, O dear Lord, three things I pray:
to see thee more clearly, to love thee more dearly,
follow thee more nearly, day by day.