Loyola Day Quotes

Even Ignatius Loyola wavered. That dark night of the soul, man. No one’s immune. It would all be meaningless if you didn’t wonder and doubt. That’s what makes it real. That’s what makes us people. God could have sent angels to flutter around like fairies, delivering rum punch and manna all day on a cosmic cruise ship. But what would that avail us?

1. Ask God for light. I want to look at my day with God's eyes, not merely my own. 2. Give thanks. The day I have just lived is a gift from God. Be grateful for it. 3. Review the day. I carefully look back on the day just completed, being guided by the Holy Spirit. 4. Face your shortcomings. I face up to what is wrong-in my life and in me. 5. Look toward the day to come. I ask where I need God in the day to

You ask me how I manage to put some balance into my life. This is a question I ask myself, as each day I am swallowed up more by my work.… So often I feel I am on a rock, battered from all sides by rising waves. The only escape route is heavenwards. For an hour or a day, I let the waves beat upon the rock; I stop looking out to the horizon and only look upwards towards God.

Fifth Rule. The fifth: In time of desolation never to make a change; but to be firm and constant in the resolutions and determination in which one was the day preceding such desolation, or in the determination in which he was in the preceding consolation. Because, as in consolation it is rather the good spirit who guides and counsels us, so in desolation it is the bad, with whose counsels we cannot take a course to decide rightly.

For the love of God, do not be careless or tepid. For if tautness breaks the bow, idleness breaks the soul. Try to maintain a holy and discreet ardor in work and in the pursuit of learning as well as of virtue. With one as with the other, one energetic act is worth a thousand that are listless, and what a lazy man cannot accomplish in many years an energetic man usually achieves in a short time. —St. Ignatius Loyola, The Letters of St. Ignatius of Loyola, William

I was also aware of three other historically important Christians whose apparently obsessive-compulsive symptoms had become a source of latter-day psychiatric speculation. They were Martin Luther, architect of Europe’s sixteenth-century Reformation and a figure of incomparable importance in the history of Western civilization; Ignatius of Loyola, Luther’s famous adversary, founder of the Catholic order known as the Jesuits and leader of the Counter-Reformation; and Alphonsus Liguori, a nineteenth-century Catholic saint who is renowned for his contributions to the field of moral theology.

1. Pray for light. Begin by asking God for the grace to pray, to see, and to understand. 2. Give thanks. Look at your day in a spirit of gratitude. Everything is a gift from God. 3. Review the day. Guided by the Holy Spirit, look back on your day. Pay attention to your experience. Look for God in it. 4. Look at what's wrong. Face up to failures and shortcomings. Ask forgiveness for your faults. Ask God to show you ways to improve. 5. Resolve what to do in the day to come. Where do you need God today? What can you do today?

Teach us, good Lord, to serve you as you deserve, to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to labor and not to ask for any reward except that of knowing that we do your will. Ignatius Loyola

The photo was published in the majority of Brazilian newspapers in a full-page spread when CNN and all the television channels of the world broadcast the scene, they froze it for a few seconds. Or minutes, hours, I don't know. For me time has infinite duration--I don't know how to measure it by normal parameters. Trying doesn't even interest me. From the World Trade Center buildings, minutes, prior to their collapse--which would appear as a perfect and planned implosion--only a grayish-blue and black vertical lines can be seen. Like a modernist painting--by whom? Which artist painted lines? Mondrian? No, not Mondrian, he painted squares, rectangles. Anyway, in the picture, the man is falling head first. his body straight, one of his legs bent. Did he jump? Slip? Did he faint and then fall? He probably lost consciousness because of the height, the smoke. He fell. He disappeared from the scene, from life, from the city. A million tons of rubble buried him soon after. Nobody knows his name. Impossible for his family to have him identified. He's an unknown who entered into history at the twenty-first century's first great moment of horror--the history of the world, the United States, communications, photography. Without anyone knowing who he is. And nobody will ever know. We'll only have suppositions, families who'll swear that he was theirs. But was he Brazilian, American, Latino, Chinese, Italian, Irish--what? He could have been anything, but now he's nothing. One among thousands gone forever. And, while we're on the subject, what about the firemen who supposedly became such heroes that day--can you name a single one?

Whenever I come to you I come to help, even when I do not speak much or show all the love that is in my heart. On these days I am giving those I love the money with which they can pay their debts.

When he thought of worldly matters, he found much delight; but after growing weary and dismissing them, he found that he was dry and unhappy. But when he thought of going barefoot to Jerusalem and eating nothing but herbs and of imitating the saints in all the austerities they practiced, he not only found consolation in these thoughts, but even after they had left him he remained happy and joyful. He did not consider nor did he stop to examine this difference until one day his eyes were partially opened, and he began to wonder at this difference and to reflect upon it. From experience he knew that some thoughts left him sad while others made him happy, and little by little he came to perceive the different spirits that were moving him; one coming from the devil, the other coming from God.

In the Jesuit novitiate, we were taught a simple daily prayer called the examination of conscience, also known as the examen. Popularized by St. Ignatius Loyola, it consists of five steps. First, you recall things for which you’re grateful and give thanks for them; second, you review the day, looking for signs of God’s presence; third, you call to mind things for which you are sorry; fourth, you ask for forgiveness from God (or decide to reconcile with the person you have harmed or seek forgiveness in the sacrament of reconciliation); fifth, you ask for the grace to see God in the following day.

The missionaries noted that there was a great gathering of people in the woods on the day after St Peter’s Day (30 June) known as Žaislė. Men and women played games and drank for two nights, but the Jesuits reported that the festivities often ended with someone being murdered. In a particular irony, the Jesuits found people making pacts with a devil they called Ihnat, the local name for Ignatius – perhaps in a strange sort of inversion of the immense power the Jesuits attributed to relics of their founder St Ignatius of Loyola.

Finding God in all things. The spirituality of St. Ignatius of Loyola is founded on a simple principle, namely, that God can be found in all things. God is assuredly encountered in a special way in the liturgical proclamation of Scripture and in the celebration of the sacraments. But Ignatius insisted that human experience is also filled with religious significance. Through the practice of a daily examination of consciousness—a review of key moments in one’s day—a person can become adept at recognizing the presence of God in his or her daily encounters and activities. Paul’s bold statement in verse 6 reveals such adeptness. What might look to an outsider as simply the reunion of two friends was, for him, a manifestation of God’s gift of encouragement. The more we are aware of God’s presence in our lives, the more grateful we become—and the more we desire to praise and serve him at every moment and in every circumstance.