Jesuit historian John O’Malley reflects on the observations of one of St. Ignatius of Loyola’s contemporaries:

 

Luis Goncalves da Camara, for instance, left behind a kind of diary, written over the span of about six months in 1555, in which he jotted down his observations about Ignatius, with whom he had almost daily contact. The text has recently been published in an excellent English edition with the title Remembering Inigo.

From da Camara’s admiring pages emerges an image of a typical medieval saint and religious superior – a person of deep prayer and of almost inscrutable spiritual wisdom. This Ignatius was much concerned with the discipline of the community and with testing the virtue of those who would profit by the trials he imposed. He was so spiritual that he ate his meals almost as if not eating them and the like. Although Remembering Inigo opens our eyes to aspects of Ignatius not everyone will find appealing, there is nothing surprising here for a reader of medieval hagiography.

Da Camara’s is, of course, a valuable historical document, and though we might sometimes question the interpretation he puts on his experience of Ignatius, there is no reason to doubt the basic accuracy of his account. What he misses, however, is perhaps more important than what he sees.

He misses what did not fit the mold. Looked at from a distance of four and half centuries, Ignatius in many regards seems more significantly to have defied the received image of sanctity than confirmed it. What da Camara missed, in other words, is perhaps what makes Ignatius most relevant today. Ignatius redefined the traditional basis of saintliness, that is, “contempt of the world.” Is it too far amiss to describe him as a worldly saint?

In our day few pursuits seem more worldly than orchestrating public relations, yet Ignatius was an adept practitioner of public relations. He instructed Jesuits not to be shy about their accomplishments when they wrote to him. He told missionaries in distant lands to write back not only about their ministries but about quite secular topics like “how long the days of summer and winter are,” about “plants and animals” and about “anything that seems extraordinary.” He wanted to show these letters around to win interest in his society and good will for it.