Journeying with St Ignatius

Day 2: St Ignatius: beginning of my relationship!


It did not take much time to find out what would be the novitiate life like. In a very simple term, ‘it was sort of intense life- withdrawing oneself almost from the rest of the world and fully immerse in spirituality, meditation, prayer, personality growth, community building and so on’. I would rather avoid narrating my novitiate life at this stage!

Right from the beginning of our Novitiate, Father Master kept on telling us the incidents related to St Ignatius. He would often say St Ignatius wanted his followers to be like…their attitude should be…their mission should be…their spirituality should be…I do remember reading two books related to St Ignatius (the way of pilgrim and ablaze with fire (not sure of the names)). I must admit at this point that I did not understand every single sentence of those books as my English was ‘very weak’. I understood the story of St Ignatius and that was enough for me those days.

What inspired me most was his zeal to work for the God’s Kingdom. He left behind a very promising career and followed the path of Saints Dominic, Francis of Assisi and overall his master Jesus Christ. We would often reflect on his conversion, his days in Paris and Manresa, meetings his first companions and finally in Rome, leading the Society of Jesus. Our Novice master would point out to us the different approaches of St Ignatius, which were considered as revolutionary at his time. The simple example is the name of the Order he founded, ‘Society of Jesus’, and the first one to take the name of Jesus for a Religious Order.

As I read and listened to my novice master, I desire kept on growing deep within. All I felt and wanted is that I wanted to be his son, his follower. And finally at the end of two years noviceship I said ‘YES’ . Ever since St Ignatius is my ‘FATHER’….