{"id":1351,"date":"2016-07-31T05:00:26","date_gmt":"2016-07-31T09:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sjcmetheology.wpengine.com\/?p=1351"},"modified":"2016-07-31T05:00:26","modified_gmt":"2016-07-31T09:00:26","slug":"a-stained-cookbook-means-somebody-used-it-often","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/a-stained-cookbook-means-somebody-used-it-often\/","title":{"rendered":"A Stained Cookbook Means Somebody Used It Often"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes the liturgical calendar delivers punches in such succession that we find it difficult to keep up.\u00a0 Today is the feast of St. Ignatius Loyola<\/a> (1491-1556), founder of the Society of Jesus.\u00a0 And what could be said about the Jesuits that has not already been said? There\u2019s no time to rest, though. Tomorrow is the feast of St. Alphonsus Liguori<\/a> (1696-1787), founder of the Redemptorists, an order with its own proud history of apostolic work.\u00a0 It is, after all, a good thing that the Church thinks in centuries, not minutes, days, weeks, and certainly not tweets!\u00a0 (Pope Francis is, though, an accomplished Twitter<\/a> user.)\u00a0 We need the liturgical cycle to bring before us this unceasing stream of saintly exemplars.\u00a0 We do our best to emulate them, knowing that next year we hope to glean a little more insight from the saints as they become familiar friends.\u00a0 For me, it\u2019s St. Ignatius Loyola (and St. Alphonsus), but my colleague Carmina Chapp<\/a> attends instead to Dorothy Day<\/a>. Somebody else might appreciate \u00a0St. Charles Lwanga<\/a> or a saint known only to a few people and God<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"St.<\/a>

St. Ignatius of Loyola
Source; Marquette University<\/p><\/div>\n

St. Ignatius ranks among those Catholic greats\u2014St. Augustine of Hippo, Cardinal Newman, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton\u2014who generate such interest that simple internet searches threaten to melt down servers.\u00a0 Still, Ignatius\u2019 life seems almost operatic, even movie-worthy<\/a>.\u00a0 Born to a wealthy family, Ignatius\u2019 military career broke amid cannon fire at Pamplona, Spain.\u00a0 His wounded leg had to be broken twice in order to set properly.\u00a0 Bedridden, Ignatius began reading the lives of the saints. St. Ignatius thus understood fully St. Luke\u2019s depiction of Christ\u2019s injunction to treasure God, not earthly things.<\/p>\n

But God said to him,
\n\u2018You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you;
\nand the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?\u2019
\nThus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves
\nbut are not rich in what matters to God.\u201d<\/p>\n

Providentially, that Gospel reading appears today<\/a>, St. Ignatius\u2019 feast day. Having endured what he had, earthly possession surely seemed frail indeed.\u00a0 As one blogger, working with Dom Gueranger, puts it<\/a>: \u201cIt dawned on him that the Church also has her army which, under the orders of the representative of Christ, fights to defend here below the sacred interests of the God\u00a0of hosts.\u201d\u00a0 An army for<\/u><\/em> God\u2014in the days of the Reformation, that stirred Ignatius to action.\u00a0 Ignatius founded the Society of Jesus\u2014the Jesuits\u2014in 1534, headquartered in Rome<\/a>.\u00a0 From there Ignatius sent missionaries all over the work:\u00a0 China, Japan, India, and both<\/a> North and<\/a> South America<\/a>.\u00a0 As he did, he charged them<\/a>: \u201cGo, my brothers, Inflame the world and spread everywhere the fire which Jesus Christ came to kindle on the earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an image: setting the world afire for God!\u00a0 Yet St. Ignatius\u2019 best-known venue to recognizing that same fire in ourselves came through a most prosaic book:\u00a0 The Spiritual Exercises<\/em>. Like much of the Catholic tradition I first met St. Ignatius Loyola while studying at Wabash College<\/a>, led by a host of devout Presbyterian scholars.\u00a0 They loved the Church and thus they taught its history, even the Catholics who opposed their beloved reformers Calvin and Luther.\u00a0 William Placher\u2019s description (p. 176)<\/a> of the Spiritual Exercises<\/em><\/a> always stuck with me:\u00a0 \u201cMuch of it has all the literary eloquence of a cook-book, and a similarly practical intent, designed as it is for spiritual directors to use in guiding people through a religious retreat.\u201d\u00a0 Bill liked to cite St. Ignatius\u2019 \u201cRules for Thinking with the Church,\u201d the thirteenth of which requires: \u201cTo keep ourselves right in all things, we ought to hold fast to this principle: What I see as white, I will believe to be black if the hierarchical Church thus determines it.\u201d\u00a0 For Protestants suspicious of Rome, that\u2019s a great line, but it paints a paltry picture of the saint himself.\u00a0 E.g., Bill rarely mentioned the other rules which extoll a medieval piety of saint veneration or the preceding \u201cRules for Distributing Alms\u201d (or, more fundamentally, the thoroughly Scriptural foundation for the entire Exercises<\/em>).\u00a0 Loyalty to Rome came as part of that inflaming fire the first Jesuits found God had given them through St. Ignatius.\u00a0 Jesuit identity certainly involves ecclesiastical fidelity, but not only that.<\/p>\n

At one level, of course, Placher is right;\u00a0 cookbooks are meant to be used.\u00a0 Which is the better cookbook:\u00a0 the slick production with recipes requiring several odd, rarely used ingredients or the one that bears clear signs of frequent, sustained use?\u00a0 After all, if stained with sauces and flour, that cookbook has been used<\/u><\/em>.\u00a0 The recipes work\u2014cooks can follow and make them and, this is important, those consuming like the offerings.\u00a0 St. Ignatius\u2019 spiritual direction certainly fits this.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0It works and has done so over the centuries.\u00a0 St. Ignatius\u2019 Spiritual Exercises<\/u><\/em> describe a retreat to be taken over thirty-one days.\u00a0 Jesuits take the entire retreat at least twice during their lives, and today the laity often seeks St. Ignatius\u2019 retreat-director advice episodically\u2014whether seeking insight on prayerful examination of the day or extra encouragement to lose self in order to gain Christ. The Exercises<\/em> still generate widespread consideration far beyond the Jesuits\u2019 own members.<\/a>\u00a0 The Jesuit cookbook still contains much that satisfies.<\/p>\n

Like some diets, though, that draw criticism, not everybody likes it.\u00a0 In Victorian England both Jesuits and Redemptorists\u2014there\u2019s tomorrow\u2019s saint again\u2014particularly stirred up anti-Catholic sentiment among Protestant elites.\u00a0 Not content with merely advancing popery, the legacies of both St. Ignatius and St. Alphonsus celebrated suspiciously loose spiritualities.\u00a0 Both seemed willing to contort the Gospel to fit the apostolic situation.\u00a0 This adaptability, though, should be seen in the context of St. Ignatius\u2019 charge:\u00a0 ignite the world<\/u><\/em>.\u00a0 \u00a0Sometimes, as any camper knows, you need more than one match to start that fire.\u00a0 St. Ignatius, having lived quite a life before he came to God, developed a reformed Catholic spirituality that provided that ignition.\u00a0 Through the Exercises<\/u><\/em>\u2019 simple prose have come a plentitude of paths, all through the Church, back to God.<\/p>\n

Guest blogger Jeffrey Marlett<\/strong> blogs at Spiritual Diabetes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes the liturgical calendar delivers punches in such succession that we find it difficult to keep up.\u00a0 Today is the feast of St. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556), founder of the Society of Jesus.\u00a0 And what could be said about the Jesuits … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,23,1],"tags":[268],"class_list":["post-1351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-saints","category-spirituality","category-uncategorized","tag-st-ignatius-of-loyola"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}