University of Detroit - Tower Yearbook (Detroit, MI)

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ST. ROBERT BELLARMINE ST. ISAAC JOCUES Doctors, the Councils or at least their compendium, and almost the whole of the Corpus of Canon Law” that he might have something to give to his students, and not simply that he might become learned in himself. At the very end, this “star of the first magnitude in the heaven of the Church,” as Pope Pius XI called him, is found asking to be buried at the feet of Aloysius Gonzaga, the young Jesuit Scholastic whose Spiritual Father he once was. A month before Bellarmine’s death, another admirer of Aloysius Gonzaga lay dying at the Jesuit Scholasticate in Rome. Unlike the great Cardinal, John serchmans was neither a prodigy nor a giant of mighty learning who could not be hidden. His life was dull, his years uneventful. He died before he had done anything out of the ordinary. His name seemed to have had no particular claim to immortality. Yet, because it could be unmistakably attested that he had broken no single rule deliberately, nor disobeyed any regulation of his Superiors, the Church has placed him among the heroes of the Society and the saints of the Church. John Berchmans was the incarnation of the Jesuit rule. He made the complete sacrifice of the Suscipe; he lived for the Greater Glory of God. In contrast to John Berchman’s life, Isaac Jogues’ was a series of dramatic episodes. Jogues was the first Catholic priest to reach Manhattan Island and probably the first white man to reach the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Rescued once from a martyr’s death, he was ordered back to France to regain his health. But Jogues was so permeated with the ideals of Ignatius that he returned in two years to continue his work among North American Indians. At their hands he met a cruel death — for the Greater Glory of God. Today, four hundred years after their Papal approbation, the principles of Ignatius are still the driving element of the Society of Jesus. ‘Today, as in the very beginning, “Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam” is the motto of every Jesuit. The thirtieth successor of St. Ignatius, Wlodimir Ledochowski, present General ot the Society of Jesus, has seen it at work in the recent Jesuit martyrs of Spain, Mexico, Russia, and Germany. lenatius had visioned a like unity in Christ for the whole of mankind. But his vision seems shattered by the atheistic Communists who substitute hatred for love, and the warring nations which consider the state as something ultimate to which everything else should be subordinated and directed. But his followers are not discouraged. Perhaps it will take another four hundred years to open up to the world the same vision of Justice and Charity and Love. At any rate, the Society of Jesus is trying and will ever keep trying in its educational system to make men see the right order of things — the Glory of God on which personal happiness and civilization itself depends, Page 12

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Page 11 ST, ALOYSIUS CONZACA ST. PETER CANISIUS completely by the heresies of Luther and the scandalous lives of the clergy: Igna tius immediately established the German College for the training of German youths to go back as clerical missionaries to their own land. At the same time, he sent some of his best men to Ingolstadt to establish German universities that would rival the Protestant institutions. Among these Jesuits whom he sent was one of the most brilliant young scholars in Europe, Peter Canisius. The success of Peter’s mission and the wonderful works accomplished by him seem almost in credible. A rathei incomplete bibliography of the Society devotes thirty-eight quarto pages to a list of the works published by Canisius. He was not only a prolific writer but he was Papal Theologian, Catechizer of Children, Confessor to the Queen, Priest of the poor, Founder of Universities, and Apostle of Germany. Hundreds of gold-lettered pages might tell of Ignatius’ efforts to make his followers masters of themselves and of the world about them. ‘The Spiritual Exercises, the Constitutions of the Society, the letters to his novices and to his veterans, could be read, but it would always be the same indifference to “health or sickness, wealth or poverty, honour or dishonour, long life or short” as long as it was for their Creator’s greater glory. It would always be the song of the Suscipe “Take, O Lord, and receive all my liberty; my memory, my understanding, and my whole will. ‘Thou hast given me all that I have and all that I possess; I re store it all to Thee and surrender it, that Thou mayest dispose of it according to Thy will. Give me only Thy love and Thy grace, and I am rich enough and desire nothing more.” This complete surrender to God was the only love-prayer Ignatius knew. He taught it to his spiritual children and knew that they would teach it to all na- tions. He had given them the key to happiness in this life as well as the next, and now he was content to die. It was the last day of July, 1556. The correctness of Ignatius’ principles was soon proven by two of his dis- ciples; Bellarmine, the great Doctor of Theology, and Berchmans, humble observer of the Constitutions. Bellarmine, of whom Pope Clement VIII said “Phe Church of God has no equal in his learning,” was the meeting point of most of the theological reason- ing that went before him, and the starting point of most modern systems. In his day, scholars on both sides quoted Bellarmine, and leetured for or against him. Yet Robert Bellarmine seems to have been unaware of anything but the Ignatian principles. With the same simple demeanor, with the same simple manner, he would address the Pope, the severest adversaries, the students in his classroom. All of his ambitions and great gifts were used not for himself but for others. He himself tells us that he read “almost all the Fathers, and many scholastic

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