July Drinking Companion

I decided to write about Ignatius of Loyola today, for many reasons, but most of all because of his fellow Jesuit St. Aloysius. Ignatius’ life sums up a thought I had recently that came to the best understanding of the Lord’s Prayer so far. “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

These are words we mindlessly pray for good reason regularly. Robotically doing things isn’t always a bad thing, since it means it’s engrained in our very being. Like for example I make coffee without thinking through muscle memory. People are always amazed at how I operate so efficiently. The same could be said for holiness, we just do the right thing without thinking, because it’s engrained in us and truly takes practice to obtain effortlessly, like any athlete or professional we admire. From my personal experience, it also takes practice to fall into the darkest places in life, they don’t just happen either, we are conditioned. This is why I am rigid in protecting myself from ever going down that road again. I spent 15 years suffering in the same ways we see regularly all over the media and our world.

I say all of this because I mindlessly prayed the Lord’s Prayer without much thought in my life. It was always frustrating to think I was doing God’s will, but always stuck in a vicious cycle that left me feeling lost and alone. I now see more clearly of what I was missing, and St. Ignatius can be a great teacher of this back in his day, and currently with the modern Jesuits who have strayed from their founders foundations, which confuse many leading them to desolate place aka the hole in the sidewalk. Ignatius was part of the Counter Reformation, understanding there is truth and freedom in orthodoxy, rather than the great division that has since rose from the Protestant Reformation. Most off all he understood unity in this straight way that united the Church for the first 1000 years, and essentially 1500 years.

To be clear Christians are Christians if you believe in the Holy Trinity and are baptized in it, just reality is there are thousands of redefinitions of Jesus’ teachings sine the Reformation, which has led to thousands of different denominations that ignore history and unity as One Body of Christ. There’s good and bad in all of this, but in the original Greek, the devil is described as the great divider, diabolikós. So philosophically speaking, anything that is used to divide us and fight among ourselves, is not of God, but of the great divider.

Ignatius was a Spanish soldier, who at one point experienced a leg injury that left him immobile. It was during this time he began to see he was called to be a soldier, just not a soldier of war, but a soldier of Jesus Christ. St. Aloysius and St. Francis of Assisi had similar experiences. This in a nutshell is our failure as humans, but perfection in God. First off as humans, we pursue the world’s will instead of the Lord’s will. Thus the confusion of these saints who served in the army of the world, instead of the army of heaven. However God works with us all and makes straight those crooked lines that we created in our fallen state.

The current Jesuits, like the people of Georgetown University more specifically share these struggles sadly. They have become a group of worldly types promoting every kind of political agenda and confusion. It’s a misplaced empathy, that only leads to more desolation for themselves and/or the people around them. I see it first hand attending their parishes along the east coast. We see this among many Catholic public faces across the spectrum as well. They abandon the teaching of their faith, which historically is the Apostolic teaching of Jesus, for a redefined modernization to justify doing wrong. I tried these ways, but couldn’t figure out why I was so depressed, angry, anxious, suicidal and every other negative emotion one can feel. Reality is I was letting all the wrong things into my life. Slowly but surely I rooted those misunderstandings out and patiently look for anything else I might be missing.

Argue all you want, but in the end it just leaves an individual unhappy, and fighting with others; it’s “my lived experience”. In addition I saw it through many others in my quasi sociology, studying people who are truly successful and happy from a Buddhist monk, to the fallen saint on the streets to the holy saint that rose above to do right, like Augustus Tolton. I really wanted to write about this man, for this month, I since I offer his holy card on my table currently. Most of all I saw all the people around me that had it all, but it was never enough. They sacrificed their family whether it was never being around, to sacrificing their child in the womb, they saw success or selfish ways as more important than faith and peace with their path in life. We are called to sacrifice like Jesus, but it’s important to understand what is true sacrifice, “to lay down ones own life for another”. No greater love than this. A reminder not all love is the same, biblically speaking there are 3 levels of love.

Jesus teaches this, when he asks Peter if he loves Him. Peter responds with a lesser form of love than the agape love Jesus uses in the original Greek (I learned this at a Jesuit LGBT retreat by the way, which was a special experience that’s a bit much to explain in a blog. Please reserve your judgements). I’m consistently torn by the good work they do, and the confusing ideology they spread that runs counter to orthodox understanding.

This was St. Ignatius and the original Jesuits and this is what led to Ignatian spirituality. It is a very hard look in the mirror to correct and adjust our course in life. The goal of this spirituality is to reflect everyday of what you do, so you don’t robotically go about your way, doing things that hurt yourself and/or others around you. Sometimes we all need this reset in life. If you are unhappy, like so many of the saints were, consider slowing down, look around and ask “Is His will being done in your life on earth as it should be in heaven today?”

Th school of Athens. One of my favorite images at the Vatican Museum of Art. It captures the philosophers that were the foundations of our society. In the center is Plato and Aristotle. Sadly we do not understand philosophy as we used to. It can be life changing as it brings great consistency to life.