Celebrate the Ignatian Year With a Spiritual Treasury

National Catholic Register, 19 May 2021

We are invited to consider the ‘cannonball moment’ in our own lives.

With nary a moment for the Church to catch her breath after the excitement of the 2020-2021 Year of Laudato Si, the Jesuit Year of St. Ignatius begins on May 20. 

The Jesuits are preparing to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the canonizations of St. Ignatius Loyola and St. Francis Xavier. The anniversary will fall on March 12,  2022.

March 12, 1622, was the single greatest day in the history of canonizations, with the two original Jesuits canonized in the same ceremony with three others: St. Teresa of Avila, St. Philip Neri and St. Isidore, the Spanish farmer.

The Council of Trent was the doctrinal and juridical response to the Protestant Reformation. The saints of 1622 were the pastoral response, as the Church’s authentic reform is always led by saints.

The Jesuits will celebrate with a special Ignatian Year. It begins this week, on the 500th anniversary of the “conversion” of Ignatius. The Ignatian Year will reach its high point next March12 and then conclude on July 31, the feast of St. Ignatius. 

On May 20, 1521, the soldier Ignatius was wounded in battle, when a cannonball shattered his legs near Pamplona, Spain. It was during his recovery that Ignatius, reading the lives of Christ and the saints, turned away from the search for worldly glory. The Ignatian year jubilee will open on the fifth centenary of the “cannonball moment” that shattered Ignatius’ previous perspectives on life.

His reflections on discerning God’s will during the months of recovery would lead to his famous Spiritual Exercises, which have found a central place in the spiritual treasury of the Church. Leaving behind the military life, Ignatius would make his way to Paris, the intellectual center of Catholicism. There, he would meet Francis Xavier and Peter Faber, forming the nucleus of what would become the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits.

There will be a vast array of initiatives from Jesuits the world over in the 14 months ahead. The Jesuits of North America are inviting people to consider the “cannonball moments” in their own lives. 

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