Jun. 24, 2021 — Official Gesuit Provincial of Britain; “Reflecting on the ‘Ignatian Year’ in the wake of the pandemic [Catholic Ecumenism]”
“As the two systems, the good and the evil, a developed Christianity and a matured Popery, come together, so, too, did the two men who were to stand at the head of these respective systems. Luther came first into the world, Loyola arrived only three years later. Their births, so near in point of time, were separated by a vast social distance. Luther was a miner's child, and drew his first breath in a humble cottage on the Thuringian Plain. Loyola, whose proper name was Don Inigo Lopez de Recaldo, was the son of a Spanish grandee, and first saw the light in the castle of Loyola, on the shores of the Bay of Biscay, where his father kept court, with the customary ceremonial, of the feudal barons of these days. This was in the year 1491. Nature had endowed these two men with qualities not unlike. Both felt the stirrings of a great enthusiasm, the miner’s son under the cold sky of Germany not less than the young grandee in the warm and impulsive air of Spain. But the renown which the future was to bring them was to be of a kind, and achieved in a way wholly different from that which either pictured to himself. It was through darkness, discipline, and great suffering that both were to come to the fulfilment of their early dreams.
There are few contrasts in history so striking and instructive as that which is seen in the lives of these two men. Its study would repay a longer consideration than we can here give it. It places us beside the fountain heads of the two mighty movements—the Reformation and Jesuitism—which continue to this day, beyond all other influences, to mould the condition of the world. Far separated by distance of place, and totally unaware of the existence of each other, as were these two men, there was, nevertheless, a secret link establishing a certain relationship between them, and a Power shaping for both an apparent similarity of destiny. Their careers were wonderfully alike, up to a certain stage, when they diverged—diverged not for time only, but for the eternities also.
To begin, each chose that particular path of life that fell in with his genius. Wisdom, or what was then reputed wisdom in the schools, had the chief attraction in the eyes of Luther. What more exquisite pleasure could be his than to fathom the depths or soar to the altitudes of the scholastic philosophy, that wondrous product, as he then esteemed it, of the intellect of the past ages. How would his genius revel in this vast field, where each new day would bring a fresh discovery and a richer delight! And then to leave his name inscribed among the teachers of mankind and the lights of the world! This was glory! And compared with such glory how stale was all that riches or rank or conquest could bring him.
Arms was the choice of the young Spaniard. In the battles of the warrior only could he hope to find those fierce delights that should have power to stir his spirit. Spain was then engaged in the effort of expelling from her soil the warlike but infidel Moor. Here was a field which promised to Loyola enough of toil, and tumult, and danger to warm his blood, and afford scope for the display of his military daring. Forsaking the soft delights of Ferdinand's court, at which till now he had lived, he clad himself in armour and went forth to seek adventures. A more fiery and fearless soldier there was not in all the armies of Spain. His feats of valour were the admiration and the boast of his countrymen. The court, the camp, the city resounded with them. Each new battle brought an addition to the laurels with which he was already crowned, and spread yet wider the fame of his name. The aspirations of both—Loyola and Luther—were in course of being fulfilled. Loyola was rapidly rising to the proud position of the first soldier in Spain, and to be the first soldier in Spain was to occupy no second place among the champions of Christendom. And Luther, in like manner, hiving knowledge night and day through the studious years, had gained for himself brilliant distinction in the schools. His was the first name in the university of Erfurt; and now he saw opening to him the gate which led to the offices of the State and the dignities of the Church, where he hoped to leave a name that would shine like a star in the future of his country's history. All was going well with the two. The goal was near; in a little it would be reached, and their dream of earthly glory and happiness would be realised.
“It was at this stage of their career that a hand was put forth, and a sudden arrest was laid on both. Each became the subject of a solemn and awful dispensation, which said to them plain as articulate speech, ‘No farther can you proceed on this path. Henceforward the current of your life must be diverted into another channel.’ As Luther, one day, was returning to Erfurt, from a journey which he had made into the country, the heavens suddenly grew black; an awful tempest broke over him, the thunders rolled through the sky, and flashes of unwonted brightness blazed all round him, and to add to the horrors of the scene, a bolt struck a companion who was journeying with him, and laid him dead at his feet. Luther expected every moment to appear before the great tribunal. Trembling and horror fell upon him, and he stood riveted to the spot. When he emerged from the cloud his whole thoughts and purposes had undergone a change. He had been baptised in the cloud and in the fire.
It was in the battlefield that Loyola underwent his great change. He was fighting at the siege of Pampeluna, the capital of Navarre, and whilst contending against fearful odds he was wounded, and laid senseless, and almost lifeless on the field. He was carried to a hospital to be cured, where he endured months of excruciating pain, relieved by periods of intense mental excitement and visionary rapture, produced by the ‘Lives of the Saints,’ which were given him to read, and which he greedily devoured in the solitude of his chamber. Thus were both men, in the full tide of their success—their honours on the point of blossoming—laid hold upon, and brought in a moment to the grave’s brink.
For some time longer the lives and experiences of the two continued to run in a similar channel. To Luther the contest of the schools shut out, and to Loyola the din of battle hushed, how changed were now their views! The honours of learning and the reward of arms, contended for but yesterday as brilliant prizes, were to-day, the gilding rubbed off, despised as baubles. In the stillness of their cells they were brought face to face with the realities of that eternal world, to the boundary of which they had been so suddenly and unexpectedly brought. If the lightning's bolt or war's missile had strayed but a hair's breadth from its appointed path, as might easily have happened, and they had, in very deed, passed over that boundary, where or what would they have been now—now and for ever? This was the thought that forced itself upon them. They had looked Death in the face. And the image of death had called up the remembrance of sin: and the remembrance of sin had awakened conscience. ‘Oh! now began the tempest in their soul.’ Night, dark night came down upon them. In the blackness of that darkness they could hear the sound of approaching footsteps. As they listened there was something that told them that these were the steps of a Being of unspeakable purity and majesty, and they shrunk with an instinctive dread from meeting Him. Nearer and yet nearer came that awful visitant, whose form they could not see, but whose terror they felt. Conscience spoke and said, ‘It is the footsteps of the great Judge which you hear: it is the living Elohim who is approaching; He bears the sword of justice, and on whomsoever that sword falls it strikes him with eternal death.’ ‘Oh, my sin, my sin!’ we hear Luther exclaim, as he looked round and round, and could see no way to flee, and yet could not abide that awful coming. What shall he do? Where shall he hide himself?
It was not on Luther only that these terrors fell. Though parted from him by wide continents, Loyola was joined with him in this sore agony. The same cry with which the cell at Erfurt resounded, broke from the lips of Ignatius Loyola amid the mountains of Spain. In his cave at Manresa,—how solemnising to think that it was so—did the founder of the Order of the Jesuits experience convictions of sin, and feel the stings and terrors of an awakened conscience. Guilt, like a mountain, lay upon his soul. He descended into that ‘Valley of the Shadow of Death’ where there is no water-spring, no dawning of the day, no living thing, save ‘the worm that dies not.’ He entered into that prison in which even souls on earth may at times be shut up; that abode of dolour and black despair, which none can describe save those who have felt it, and than which there is no more dreadful state under heaven, or in the universe, unless hell itself, and it is more dreadful because it is eternal.
The courage which had never quailed before the embattled hosts of the Moor, melted as wax melts before the fire, at the dreadful things which he now apprehended; and that strong bodily frame which had served him so well on the battlefield, and enabled him to perform such feats of prowess, was disolving under the pressure of his inward anguish. Pale and emaciated he wandered amid the mountains, till at last his failing strength would not permit him to leave his cave, and he was one day found fallen on the earth in a swoon, and taken up half dead, and conveyed to a monastery.
Yet one stage further did Luther and Loyola keep company together. Stricken with the consciousness of sin, and feeling the need of expiation, both set about the work of making themselves holy; neither of them seeing as yet, that the righteousness that justifies, is not within but without, and is the work of another. The scourgings, the fasts, and the penances that Luther underwent in his cell at Erfurt we all know. A similar expiatory course did Loyola prescribe himself. Fleeing from the cheerful light of day, he buried himself in the gloom of the mountains of Manresa. Rags, dirt, and an iron girdle set with prickles, were the staple of his expiations and penitences. To these he added seven hours each day on his knees, and prayers at midnight. On one occasion he passed three days in confessing the sins of his whole past life; and deeming the enumeration not sufficiently full he made a second confession in which he gave a place to all omitted transgressions. He was rewarded with short-lived intervals of peace. Anon his heavens would o'ercast, the thunders and lightnings would return, and the suffering in his soul recommence. Again he betook him to the scourge and the fast, assured that in due time these would open to him the gates of a stable and blessed peace. And as he anticipated so did it happen to him. So at least, did he persuade himself. Awakening one day as from a long and troubled dream, he said to himself, Why should I permit myself to be overcome by vain fears? I will dismiss these terrors. And at the utterance of this strong resolve the black past rolled away, and a future full of sunshine rose upon him.
This marks the point of divergence in the path of these two men. Luther turned to the Word of YHUH. In that Book he saw the righteousness that justifies; not that which the sinner works in himself by the scourge, or earns by floods of bitter tears, but that which the Messiah has wrought for him on the Cross. Seeing this, he went to his Saviour, and laid his sins on Him, and obtained forgiveness, and with forgiveness a new life. The same evangelical road which had been opened to himself, Luther opened to others. Hence the Reformation.
This road Loyola never found. He missed the way to the Cross. He laid his sins on no one. He bore them himself. Other satisfaction he offered not to the law of YHUH than fastings and confessions. When he judged that he had fasted enough, and confessed enough, he then by a fiat of his will banished the remembrance of his sins. But to be rid of the remembrance of sin is not to be delivered from its guilt. To forget is one thing, to be forgiven is another. Forgiveness—that forgiveness which proceeds on the ground of a perfect righteousness and an infinite satisfaction—that forgiveness which remits the penalty to the transgressor because it has been borne by his surety, Loyola knew not, nor cared to know. He was his own sin-bearer. He never looked at the actual realities of his case. He chose to dwell in a world of delusions and fictions. His peace had no solid basis. He never submitted his mind to the teaching of the Word of YHUH. And as he slighted its instructions in the all important matter of his reconcilation with YHUH, turning haughtily away in the pride of his own righteousness, from the great sacrifice of expiation, and by the strength of his own will, not the cleansing virtue of the "blood," compelling peace—delusive peace—so throughout the whole of his future career, he surrounded himself with fancies and self deceptions, and was guided, not by the Scriptures of truth, the alone source of a true illumination of mind, and of right aims, but followed solely dreams, visions, and voices. Hence the monstrous opinions he propagated, the unrighteous ends he pursued, and the revolting and fear fully inhuman means he took to accomplish them.
Luther submitting to the Word of YHUH, which is truth, and filled with the Spirit of YHUH, which is love, led the nations out of their prison-house. Loyola, full of pride and rebellion, and hating the truth, strove by every Satanic device, and by every unholy and cruel weapon to compel the nations to return to their prison, and lie down in their old chains.”
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