Renewing The Face Of The Earth: The Living Legacy Of St. Ignatius Of Loyola

Who runs Loyola School here in our city? Who started XLRI, one of the finest management schools in the country? The answer to both questions is the same. It was the Jesuits, the priests and brothers of the Society of Jesus, and their whole story begins with one man, St. Ignatius of Loyola. Today, the thirty-first of July, is his feast day, and all over the world students, teachers and old boys and girls of Jesuit schools pause to remember him. It is a good moment to ask a simple question. What can a saint who lived five hundred years ago teach a busy modern city? The answer, it turns out, is a great deal.

Ignatius was not always a saint. He was born around 1491 in the Basque country of Spain, and as a young man he was a soldier who loved fine clothes, fame and the thrill of battle. Everything changed in 1521, when a cannonball smashed his leg during a fight at Pamplona and left him in bed for months. To pass the time he asked for adventure stories, but there were none in the house. All he could find was a life of Christ and a book about the saints, and as he read them he began to notice something within himself. Dreams of worldly glory excited him for a short while and then left him empty, while thoughts of following Christ left him with a deep and lasting peace. Learning to notice this quiet difference inside himself became the heart of what Jesuits call discernment.

After he recovered, Ignatius spent long hours in prayer in a cave at Manresa, and there he wrote a small book called the Spiritual Exercises, a guide to reflection and good decisions that is still used today by people of many faiths and even by business leaders. He then went to study at the University of Paris, where he gathered a few close friends whom he called Friends in the Lord. In 1540 the Pope approved their little group as the Society of Jesus. When Ignatius died in Rome in 1556 he left behind about a thousand companions and some thirty-five schools, and from that small beginning grew one of the greatest movements in the history of education. The first Jesuit school opened in Messina, Italy, in 1548, and today there are more than three thousand seven hundred Jesuit schools around the world teaching close to two and a half million children, along with over two hundred colleges and universities.

India has been at the very centre of this work. The Jesuits reached our shores in the sixteenth century with St. Francis Xavier, one of the first companions of Ignatius, and today India has more Jesuit schools than any other country in the world. Here at home the Jesuits now run about five universities of their own, such as St. Xavier's University in Kolkata, St. Joseph's University in Bengaluru, Xavier University in Bhubaneswar and St. Aloysius in Mangaluru, along with more than fifty colleges of arts, science, commerce, law, engineering and management, and more than two hundred high schools, besides many primary schools. Their work does not stop at the classroom door, for they also run social action centres, research institutes and retreat houses that serve the poor, protect the land and help people to pray. Many of the names are familiar to every parent, from St. Xavier's in Kolkata, Mumbai and Ranchi to Loyola in Chennai and St. Joseph's and St. Aloysius in the south, and, closest to us, XLRI and Loyola School in our own Jamshedpur. It is a small but lovely fact that the very first classes of XLRI were held in a borrowed room inside Loyola School before it grew into the campus we know today.

So what sort of man inspired all this, and why does he still speak to us? A few qualities stand out. The first is what Ignatius called the magis, a Latin word that simply means the more, the habit of always asking how a good thing can be done a little better, for the glory of God and the good of others. The second is care for the whole person, which the Jesuits call cura personalis, the conviction that a student, a worker or a customer is never just a number but a full human being to be respected and helped to grow. The third is discernment, that same honest attention to the heart that Ignatius first learned on his sickbed, which Jesuits practise every day in a short evening review called the Examen, gently asking where they did well and where they went wrong. The fourth is to be, in his own words, a contemplative in action, keeping a calm and prayerful centre even in the middle of a busy and noisy life. These are not ideas meant only for the chapel, for they send Jesuits out to stand with people who have no one else.

It may surprise you to learn that the business world studies these very same Jesuit habits. The best known example is a book called Heroic Leadership by Chris Lowney, who once trained to be a Jesuit and then spent years as a senior banker at J.P. Morgan, and who calls the Society of Jesus a four-hundred-and-fifty-year-old company that changed the world. Lowney found four secrets behind its long success, and they match the character of Ignatius almost exactly. There is self-awareness, the fruit of honest reflection; there is ingenuity, the courage to adapt to any situation; there is love, treating people in a way that draws out their best; and there is heroism, aiming high and caring deeply about excellence. Leading writers in journals such as the Harvard Business Review, among them the talent expert Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, keep repeating that self-knowledge and honest reflection matter more in a leader than clever technical skills, and the Jesuits were quietly teaching exactly this five hundred years ago.

That is why Ignatius still matters. In a world of fast machines and constant change, when so much can now be done by artificial intelligence, his life asks a question that no computer can answer for us. What are we living for, and whom are we serving? He took the restless ambition of a young soldier and turned it toward God and toward other people, and from that one change of heart came schools, universities and generations of what the Jesuits love to call men and women for others. On this feast day his invitation is the same for all of us, whether we share his faith or simply admire it from a distance. Notice what stirs in your heart, choose the greater good, care for the person in front of you, and in your own small corner of the world take up the hopeful task that XLRI still carries as its motto, to renew the face of the earth.

About the Author: This article has been written by Dr. (Fr.) Mukti Clarence, SJ, Administrator, XLRI, Jamshedpur.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the publisher. While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information, the publisher is not responsible for any errors or omissions, or for the results obtained from the use of this information.