AD MAJOREM DEI GLORIAM

Memorial of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Priest
Lk 14:25-33

Today is the memorial of St. Ignatius of Loyola. I am particularly biased to this memorial. I consider it special because I spent more than a third of my life studying under the Jesuits, the religious congregation founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola. Today, I thank all my Jesuit mentors for sharing with me the Ignatian spirit.

Ignatius of Loyola lived during the time of the Reformation. There was then a great call to renewal in the spiritual life of the Church. Ignatius, with companions he gathered, launched a crusade different from that of the Middle Ages. Instead of fleeing the world, he and his followers embraced the world without being worldly. The Society he founded was not confined in monasteries. It walked and worked with men in the world, emphasizing the call to find God in all things and do all things “ad majorem Dei gloriam” (“for the greater glory of God”). Thus, its members were not only priests and brothers but are also practicing professionals while devoted religious priests and brothers at the same time. Today the Philippine Church is blest with Jesuit missionaries who are not only priests and brothers but are also known men in their particular fields. Fr. Nebres, a constitutional commissioner, and Fr. Intengan, once the youngest Filipino neuro-surgeon, are only two of them. Renowned bishops and priests of the Philippine Church are also Jesuit-trained and are, therefore, extensions, as it were, of the Ignatian charism: Bishop Teodoro Bacani, Jr., a constitutionalist himself, Bishop Luis Antonio Tagle, a member of the International Theological Commission of the Holy See, and Manila’s Archbishop, Gaudencio B. Cardinal Rosales are among them.

Let us find God in all things and do all things for the greater glory of God. That is best way to reform and renew the Church.