Loyola University Maryland - Evergreen / Green and Gray Yearbook (Baltimore, MD)

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Ignatius and Loyola at the University of Paris Jesuit enigma, the startling achievements of the Order despite the human short- comings of its priestly troopers unless we grant the root assumption of Ignatius and the Jesuits that men may be possessed of strong personal love of Jesus Christ, Captain and King. Men are few, life is short, training long, so not just any good Do the Jesuits belong but the better, the best in the circumstances was Ignatius aim, hence to romantic history or present fact? Are they his motto: ‘To the greater glory of God.” still alive? A living corporation is judged by its deeds rather than by its program. Let us look at the record. The Order has worked for the laity. In church at the altar rail and in the confessional, in school in the training of ‘‘leaders,” in publica- tions— theological, philosophical, social, ascetic — in her missions, by and large, the individual man has not been treated as a type nor as a digit. This work for the lay Christian, born or converted, should be the pride of the Order. Baroque art and architecture, but with plenty of room for the laity close to the altar rail, late renaissance classical education baptized as it were, reams of paper filled 12

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ERIEF STORY OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS and a word about the beginning of Loyola College of Baltimortj F ounded 400 years ago and still very much alive today, the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, numbers 26,000 in the world, of whom over 5,000 are citizens of the United States. It is a vital organism. Men of vari- ous types and differing characters, yet some impressionable Catholics claim they can recognize one as such. But our brief summary cannot afford to indulge in romantic wanderings. Neither Macaulay nor Thackeray may serve as our model. However, it should be that we their students know them in part as they are. What are our editorial impressions after some study of Jesuits in the past and a more prolonged acquaintance with live Jesuits? Here is the starting point: we will never understand the St. Ignatius Loyola 11

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with argument, missions dotting the globe, the Order in Ignatius time was much the same as it is today. Our own college is typical, containing in miniature the paradoxes of Jesuit endeavour, adventure with restraint, progress with conservatism. So, in presenting a panoramic view of the Jesuit story, we offer an essential to an understanding of Loyola College. Monsignor Peter Guilday wrote in Thought for March, 1940: ‘Probably no general history of the Jesuits will ever satisfy us. Even the recent histories of the Society by individual nations or assistancies fall short of the ideal, mainly because no uni- form method has been followed, with the result that we have such disparate works as Astrain, Duhr, Fouqueray, Hughes, Pollen and Zaleski. Undoubtedly, as in the past, many laudable efforts will be made in many languages during this Jubilee year to portray again for our generation the heritage of the last four centuries ...” Our brief effort is rather an impression from the standpoint of the American student of the Jesuits than a history. of Loyola was a Spanish officer fed on tales of chivalry with a strain of that hardheaded energetic patience essen- tial to campaigners which grew in him as the years advanced. Wounded at Pam- peluna and forced to think, he discovered values, that a life spent for the love of God would be more worthwhile than one spent in the wars or in searching self- glorification. He enlarged upon and realized these thoughts in a self-taught education in the spiritual way ‘‘under the shadow of the wings” of the Holy Spirit. His Spiritual Exercises — pocketbook size — ever since one of the standard guides for souls seek- 13