The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [108]
The three met at the Collège Sainte-Barbe at the University of Paris, then Europe’s leading university, in 1529. By the time they met Ignatius, Peter and Francis were already fast friends who shared lodgings. The two had studied for the previous few years for their master’s degrees; both were excellent students. And both had heard stories about Ignatius before meeting him: the former soldier was a notorious figure on campus, known for his intense spiritual discipline and habit of begging alms. At thirty-eight, Ignatius was much older than Peter and Francis, who were both twenty-three at the time. And Ignatius’s path to the university was more circuitous. After his soldiering career, his recuperation, and his conversion, he had spent months in prayer trying to discern what to do with his life.
Ultimately, he decided that an education was required. So Ignatius went to school, taking elementary grammar lessons with young boys and, later, studying at the universities of Alcalá and Salamanca. His studies provide us with one of the more remarkable portraits of his newfound humility: the once-proud soldier squeezed into a too-small desk beside young boys in the classroom, making up for lost time.
Several years later, he enrolled at the University of Paris, where he met Favre and Xavier. There, in Favre’s words, the three shared “the same room, the same table and the same purse.”
Ignatius’s commitment to a simple life impressed his new friends. So did his spiritual acumen. For Favre, a man troubled all his life by a “scrupulous” conscience, that is, an excessive self-criticism, Ignatius was a literal godsend. “He gave me an understanding of my conscience,” wrote Favre. Ultimately, Ignatius led Peter through the Spiritual Exercises, something that dramatically altered Favre’s worldview.
This happened despite their very different backgrounds. And here is one area where Ignatius and his friends highlight an insight on relationships: friends need not be cut from the same cloth. The friend with whom you have the least in common may be the most helpful for your personal growth. Ignatius and Peter had, until they met, led radically different lives. Peter came to Paris at age nineteen after what his biographer called his “humble birth,” having spent his youth in the fields as a shepherd. Imbued with a simple piety toward Mary, the saints, relics, processions, and shrines, and also angels, Peter clung to the simple faith of his childhood. Ignatius, on the other hand, had spent many years as a courtier and some of them as a soldier, undergone a dramatic conversion, subjected himself to extreme penances, and wandered to Rome and the Holy Land in pursuit of his goal of following God’s will.
One friend had seen little of the world; the other much. One had always found religion a source of solace; the other had proceeded to God along a tortuous path.
Ultimately, Ignatius helped Peter to arrive at some important decisions through the freedom offered in the Spiritual Exercises. Peter’s indecision before this moment sounds refreshingly modern, much like the indecision of any college student today. He wrote about it in his journals:
Before that—I mean before having settled on the course of my life through the help given to me by God through Iñigo— I was always very unsure of myself and blown about by many winds: sometimes wishing to be married, sometimes to be a doctor, sometimes a lawyer, sometimes a lecturer, sometimes a professor of theology, sometimes a cleric without a degree—at times wishing to be a monk.
In time, Peter decided to join Ignatius on his new path, whose ultimate destination was still unclear. Peter, sometimes called the “Second Jesuit,” was enthusiastic about the risky venture from the start. “In the end,” he writes, “we became one in desire and will and one in a firm resolve to take up the life we lead today.” His friend changed his life. Later, Ignatius would say that Favre became the most skilled of all the Jesuits in giving the Spiritual Exercises.
Ignatius would change the life of his other roommate,