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

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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

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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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ing God, are the notes of his own experiences in a cave at Manresa where he prayed and wrestled alone. The world was still divided in the traditional way of the Middle Ages into war- riors, farmers and clerks or clerics — so Ignatius, though over thirty, had to go to Of Ignatius, the Soldier of Christ. The “Exer- cises” as Key to char- acter of Order. school. At the University of Paris he won companions whose names you may read on page 8. Due to a real love of God, these men wanted to visit the Holy Land, but the Pope had other work for them. We repeat the motive, love. because it is hard for us of little faith to remember that men can have a warm human emotion toward God — the necessary root of life for John, Paul, Augustine, Benedict, Bernard, Francis, Dominic, Ignatius. Pope Paul III commissioned them as a religious order or company. Loyola wished obedience to be the special mark of the Society, a providential fact at a time when so many were jumping the traces. Often pictured as an autocrat, the founder actually mellowed the usual religious rules, was opposed to any honors for Jesuits, gave commanders no different living 14