Okay, I want to start today with a little mental
exercise. I want you to close your eyes, assuming
you aren't driving, of course, and just picture
a saint, specifically Saint Ignatius of Loyola.
What's the image that pops into your head? Well,
I imagine for most people it's the standard,
you know, the stained glass window treatment.
Right. You see a figure in these flowing robes.
Maybe he's holding a book of rules and he's gazing
serenely up at a beam of heavenly light. Hands
folded in prayer. A halo, obviously. A halo is
a must, yes. Exactly. That's the brand. That
is the statue you see in the garden. Now, I want
you to take that mental image and absolutely
smash it with a cannonball. Tuckling. A very...
Specific instruction. Because the sources we
have in front of us for this deep dive, they
tell a completely, and I mean completely different
story. Right. If you met this guy in his 20s,
you wouldn't be asking for his blessing. Yeah.
You would probably be crossing the street to
avoid getting stabbed. That is a very fair assessment.
The man we are analyzing today, Inigo Lopez de
Onyazi Loyola, did not start out as a holy figure.
Not even close. Not even a little bit. In fact,
our sources, we have a... A pretty wide range
here from his own autobiography to military records
and even a rather gruesome autopsy report. They
paint a picture of a man who was, quite frankly,
a disaster. A disaster. I love that. One of the
sources actually calls him a rough, punkish swordsman.
That's the one. I am obsessed with that description.
Rough, punkish swordsman. So our mission today
is to figure out how that guy. A vain, violent,
tight -boot -wearing soldier transformed into
this master of human psychology who founded one
of the most intellectually rigorous organizations
in history. It's an incredible transformation.
And it all hinges on a single, split -second
event, what you might call the cannonball effect.
Right. The moment physics met ego. A very, very
loud meeting. Very loud indeed. But before we
get to the cannonball, we have to understand
the target. We need to really understand who
Inigo was before the halo. We have to go back.
We have to go back to the Basque Country. Year
is 1491. And we have to understand the context
of his family, the Oñas Loyola clan. He was the
youngest of 13 children born in the family castle
at Loyola. 13 kids. 13! But don't let that word
castle trick you into thinking this was some
refined Disney -style nobility. This was a rough
part of the world. It wasn't a fairy tale. Far
from it. This was the era of what they called
the War of the Bands. Which, despite the name,
was not a musical competition between rival drummers.
No, not at all. This was centuries of just brutal,
feudal, tribal violence in the Basque region.
To give you an idea of the, let's say, the temperature
of the room, Inigo's own grandfather was actually
expelled from the region by King Henry IV. the
king ordered their manor house their castle to
be demolished demolished you mean like we are
tearing your house down because you people are
so completely uncontrollable exactly that specifically
for their depredations that is the word in the
historical records they were i mean they were
essentially terrorizing the countryside Wow.
So violence is the family business. It really
is. So Nego is born into this culture where honor
is solved with steel. Reputation is absolutely
everything. And the family business is, you know,
low level warfare and feuding. And he didn't
exactly break the mold, did he? Not at all. He
fit right in. His mother died shortly after he
was born. So he was actually nursed by the local
blacksmith's wife. So he grows up rough. He grows
up very rough. The sources all agree he was driven
by a desire for fame. Not holiness, not service,
fame. He wanted to be a hero in the classical
epic sense. And he was a reader, which is interesting,
but not of the Bible. No, no. He was completely
obsessed with chivalric romances. You have to
think of the bestsellers of the day, a book like
Amidistagala. What's that about? It's all tales
of knights, damsels in distress, dragons, magic,
and lots and lots of duels. He patterned his
entire personality, his whole way of being in
the world, around this fiction. He wanted to
be the main character of his own story. And he
dressed the part. This is one of my favorite
details in the entire stack of research we have.
It's very telling. Listen to this description
of him as a teenager, serving in the court of
the treasurer of Castile. It says he strutted
about with his cape flying open to reveal his
tight fitting hose and boots, a sword and dagger
at his waist. He's peacocking. It's pure performance.
Total peacocking. He wants everyone to see his
fancy boots and his, you know, well -turned calves.
It's classic overcompensation, really. He wasn't
a particularly tall man, but he was incredibly
vain. The sources are very clear on this. He
was obsessed with his appearance, specifically
his legs and his long flowing hair. And he was
quote, sensitive to insult. Which is a very dangerous
trait when you're carrying a sword and a dagger
at all times. Yeah, that's a bad combination.
And we have to talk about the criminal record
because usually when you read a saint's biography,
they kind of skip the part about the arrest warrant.
Yes, the hagiographies, the official saint's
stories, they tend to gloss over this little
episode. The sources are a bit vague on the specifics,
probably to protect his reputation later on.
But we know that during carnival time in 1515,
Inigo and his brother... who was a priest, mind
you. His brother was a priest. A priest. They
were involved in some nocturnal misdemeanors.
Nocturnal misdemeanors sounds like they were,
I don't know, tipping cows or something. But
it was way worse than that, wasn't it? Oh, it
was violent. It was described as treacherous.
It was significant enough that he was prosecuted
for it. And here is where we see his character
at the time really shine through. How does he
get out of it? He gets out of it by claiming
clerical immunity. Because he had been tonsured
as a boy, you know, the haircut that was a minor
religious rite, it didn't really make him a priest.
But technically, legally, it put him under church
law, not civil law. So he played the don't you
know who I am card. He used a legal loophole
to escape jail. Precisely. So let's just recap
the profile we're building here. We have a violent,
womanizing, fashion -obsessed aristocrat who
uses his privilege and legal loopholes to avoid
the consequences of his actions. He's a brat.
A dangerous, noble brat. That's a perfect summary.
But he must have been competent, right? He wasn't
just a layabout, a trust fund kid. Oh no, he
was very competent. He was known as a servant
of the court. He had charisma. He joined the
military at 17 and served under the Duke of Najera.
He was apparently a very good diplomat and a
brave soldier. But the motivation was all wrong.
The motivation was entirely internal. It was
all about his ego. He wanted the glory. He wanted
people to write songs about his deeds. Which
brings us to the moment that changed absolutely
everything. The inciting incident. May 20, 1521.
The Battle of Pamplona. This is the turning point.
The context here is a French Navarrese expedition
force storming the fortress of Pamplona. Inigo
is one of the defenders. And the odds are terrible.
The odds are terrible. The Spanish force is vastly
outnumbered. Most of the other officers, the
sensible ones, want to surrender. But Inigo,
thinking he's the hero in one of his romance
novels, says, no surrender. Exactly. He convinces
the commander to hold the fortress. He rallies
the troops with this big heroic speech. He's
right in the thick of the defense on the ramparts.
And then the cannon fires. Now, a lot of people
think he took a direct hit from the cannonball,
but that's not quite right, is it? It was a ricochet.
It was a ricochet off the wall, which in some
ways is worse. The physics of a heavy iron ball
spinning at that speed are just unforgiving.
It smashed through his legs. Lural. Both legs.
Both. It fractured his right leg, shattered it.
Really, and badly injured the left one as well.
And just like that, the dancing, the strutting,
the fencing, the fancy boots, it's over. It's
all over. But the injury is really just the prologue
to the horror show that is 16th Century Medicine.
Right. We have to constantly remind ourselves,
and you, the listener. There is no anesthesia.
Zero. There are no antibiotics, no germ theory.
The French soldiers, actually out of respect
for his bravery, didn't take him prisoner. They
carried him back to his family home at Loyola.
A small mercy, I guess. A small mercy, but the
bones had been set poorly in the field. They
weren't knitting together correctly. They were
a mess. And this is where the vanity we talked
about earlier, his obsession with his appearance,
becomes genuinely pathological. The source says
a piece of bone was protruding below the knee.
It was ruining the line of the leg. Think about
that. He's lying there in agony, but his primary
concern is aesthetic. He looked at his mangled
leg and realized he couldn't wear his fashionable
tight -fitting boots with that bone sticking
out. It was a fashion disaster for him. It was
an aesthetic catastrophe. So what did he do?
I mean, what could he do? He told the doctors
to break the leg again. What? She ordered them
to re -break the leg and reset it. And when that
was done, and a piece of bone was still protruding,
he ordered them to saw it off. He voluntarily
had a guy saw off a piece of his own leg bone
while he was awake, just so his boots would fit
better. He did. The sources say he clenched his
fist so hard during the procedure that he didn't
cry out, but the physical toll was just immense.
He nearly died from the shock and the subsequent
infection. They gave him the last rites. They
did. Everyone thought he was going to die, but
he somehow pulled through. It's a level of commitment
to fashion that I... I almost have to respect
it. It's horrifying, but it's impressive. It's
something, that's for sure. But it didn't even
work, did it? Not fully. He survived, which in
itself is a miracle, given the sanitation at
the time. But the leg never healed properly.
One leg ended up permanently shorter than the
other. So he had a limp. A permanent, pronounced
limp for the rest of his life. His military career
was over. His days as a dashing courtier were
over. So the punkish swordsman is effectively
dead. He's now an invalid. He's stuck in bed
at the family castle for months on end. And this
leads to what I think is the most relatable part
of this entire story. The boredom. It is the
boredom that changed the world. It really is.
He is convalescing. He is in pain. He is desperate
for any kind of distraction from his new reality.
So he asks for his books, right? He wants his
romance novels. He wants Amidista Gala. He wants
to disassociate from his pain and just read about
knights and ladies. He does, but the castle didn't
have any. The Loyola Family Library was apparently
very, very sparse. What did they have? They only
had two books in the entire house. The Life of
Christ by a writer named Ludolf of Saxony and
a collection of the lives of the saints, the
Floss Sanctorum. So it's like wanting to binge
watch a big action series on Netflix and finding
out the only thing available is a documentary
on medieval monks. That's a perfect analogy.
He must have been so annoyed. Furious, I'd imagine.
But out of sheer soul crushing desperation and
boredom, he started reading. And because he had
such a vivid imagination, the same imagination
he used to use for his nightly fantasies, he
started daydreaming about what he was reading.
And this is the moment. This is where the deep
dive really pays off. Because he starts to notice
something happening in his own brain that becomes
the foundation of his entire philosophy. This
is the discovery of what he would later call
discernment. It's a psychological breakthrough.
Here's the data point he observes. Inigo noticed
he had two distinct types of data. dreams. Let's
call them Type A and Type B. Okay. Break them
down for us. Type A was the worldly dream. He
would lie there and dream about his old life,
serving the king, winning duels, impressing this
one particular royal lady he was obsessed with.
Fun stuff. The ego stuff. Exactly. The highlights
reel. And the source, his own autobiography,
says that while he was thinking about these things,
he felt very excited. He was delighted. It was
a high dopamine state. Sure. But, and this is
the crucial observation, When the daydream ended,
when he came back to reality in his sickbed,
he felt dry, desolate, dissatisfied, empty. Okay,
so a high peak followed by a low valley. A crash.
A real crash. Then there was type B. He would
read about St. Francis of Assisi or St. Dominic,
and he would daydream about imitating them. He'd
think, what if I walked to Jerusalem barefoot?
Or what if I ate only herbs and lived in a cave?
Which on the surface sounds miserable compared
to court life and duels. It does. It sounds hard
and unpleasant. But he noticed something strange
about the after effect. While the thought itself
might be daunting, when he stopped thinking about
it, he didn't feel empty. He felt peaceful. A
good feeling. A lasting good feeling. He remained
contented, joyful. There was no crash. So the
world dream left him empty, and the holy dream
left him full. It's like the difference between
eating junk food and a healthy meal. That's a
great way to put it. He began to realize that
the immediate emotion isn't the truth. The lingering
state, the aftertaste, is the truth. The aftertaste
of an idea. Yes. He called the feeling of emptiness
desolation and the feeling of peace consolation.
He came to believe that these weren't just his
own moods. He believed they were signals, external
impulses from different spirits, a good spirit
and a bad spirit, helping him navigate his life
choices. It's basically the first documented
case of someone realizing, hey, maybe chasing
clout and trying to look cool isn't actually
making me happy in the long run. In a very profound
way, yes. He's hacking his own spiritual and
psychological reward system. He realizes that
the immediate excitement of vanity was a deception.
And he combines this with another technique he
learned from one of the books, right? From Ludolf
of Saxony's book. Yes. The book suggested a method
of prayer called Simple contemplation. It's said
that when you read the gospel, you shouldn't
just read the words like a textbook. You should
close your eyes and place yourself mentally at
the scene. It's a visualization. Intense sensory
visualization. If you are reading about the nativity,
you should visualize the crib, try to smell the
straw, hear the animals, feel the cold night
air on your skin, be a character in the story.
Ignatius, with his novelist's imagination, latched
onto this. He took his capacity for fantasy,
which he used to use for ladies and swords, and
he completely redirected it, applying it to scripture.
This methodology would later become the core
of his famous spiritual exercises. So he's reprogramming
his entire brain. He eventually heals enough
to walk, though he's got this pronounced limp
now. And he decides, OK, I'm done with the tight
boots. I'm going to Jerusalem. That's his new
quest. He leaves the castle. He rides to the
famous Benedictine monastery of Santa Maria de
Montserrat. And there we get. this incredibly
cinematic scene that the sources call the Vigil
of Arms. This is straight out of the chivalry
books you used to read. It is deeply, deeply
symbolic. In the romance novels, a knight would
stand vigil over his weapons all night before
a great quest or before being knighted. Right.
Nugo does this. He spends the whole night in
prayer before an altar of the Virgin Mary. But
at the end of the night, he hangs his sword and
dagger on the altar. He leaves them there. He
surrenders the punkish swordsman. He's decommissioning
his old self. And the vanity, too. He finds a
beggar outside, gives him all of his expensive
noble clothes, and puts on a rough sackcloth
tunic. He's performing a total identity shift.
You know, I always feel bad for that beggar in
the story. Imagine walking around a 16th century
Spanish town wearing a duke's outfit. He probably
got arrested immediately for theft. It is highly
probable he had a very bad day after having a
very good one. So Inigo walks away in his sackcloth,
and he heads to a nearby town called Manresa.
He only intended to stay for a little while,
but he ended up staying for about a year. And
this becomes known as his cave period. From the
castle to a cave. You can't get more extreme
than that. What was he doing there? He lived
in a natural cave near the river. He begged for
food in the town. He did chores at a local hospital.
And he prayed. He prayed for seven hours a day.
He stopped cutting his hair and his nails. He
became the visual opposite of the well -groomed
courtier he once was. And during this time, the
cave... Things get, well, they get weird. The
source describes him having daylight visions.
Yes, and we need to unpack the serpent vision
because it's absolutely fascinating from a psychological
perspective. Yeah, this sounds pretty trippy.
What did he see? The source, his autobiography
again, says he saw a form in the air next to
him. It was exceedingly beautiful. It seemed
to have the shape of a serpent, and it had many
things that shone like eyes but were not eyes.
A beautiful, shining serpent with fake eyes.
That sounds terrifying, actually, not beautiful.
Well, initially it gave him much delight. He
loved gazing at it. It was mesmerizing. But,
and here he applies his new tool of discernment.
When the object vanished, he felt disconsolate.
He felt bad. The crash again. The bad aftertaste.
Exactly. He eventually interpreted this beautiful
vision as being diabolical in nature. He realized
that not all spiritual experiences are good.
Some are beautiful distractions or deceptions.
So he's refining his system. He's field testing
it. Just because it glows and looks holy doesn't
mean it is. He's learning to trust the lingering
feeling, not the initial flash. So he's in the
cave, battling shiny snake visions, figuring
out his whole theology. He eventually leaves
Manresa, and he actually makes it to the Holy
Land. september 1523 he does he gets to jerusalem
this is the goal he wants to spend the rest of
his life there walking where jesus walked helping
pilgrims but he only stays for a few weeks the
franciscans who were the catholic custodians
in charge of the holy sites sent him back to
europe they kicked him out why was he too intense
for them was he you know, scaring the tourists
with his unkempt hair. It was more political
than that. It was a very dangerous time. The
Franciscans were trying to maintain a very delicate
peace with the Ottoman rulers of the region.
They didn't need a rogue sackcloth wearing Spanish
pilgrim causing diplomatic incidents by trying
to convert people in the streets. So he was a
liability. A huge liability. They essentially
put him on the first ship back and said. Go home.
That must have been a crushing blow. Yeah. He
gives up everything, has this massive spiritual
transformation, walks across Europe, and gets
fired from his own pilgrimage after just a couple
of weeks. It was a huge reality check. He realized
that zeal wasn't enough. Piety wasn't enough.
If he wanted to really... help souls, as he put
it. He needed credentials. He needed authority.
He needed to be a priest. And to be a priest.
He needed an education. But he's 33 years old
at this point. In the 1500s, that's practically
middle age. Yeah. And he doesn't have the basics.
He barely knows Latin, the language of all scholarship.
So we get this incredible image of Inigo, the
former soldier, the man of the world, sitting
in a free public grammar school in Barcelona.
Children. Squeezed into a bench alongside 10
-year -old boys chanting Latin conjugations.
That requires a total death of the ego. I mean,
the guy who had a piece of his own bone sawed
off to look cool in boots is now the oldest kid
in first grade. It shows an incredible amount
of determination. He's willing to do whatever
it takes. He eventually learns enough Latin to
move to the University of Alcalá to study theology.
But he runs into trouble again. The Inquisition.
You can't have a good 16th century Spanish saint
story without the Inquisition showing up eventually.
Indeed. Ignatius, or Inigo, as he was still known,
he wasn't just studying. He was also preaching
on the street. He was teaching people his method
of prayer and discernment. And strange things
started happening. The source mentions women
in his prayer groups experiencing ecstatic states,
fainting, convulsions. Correct. It says one fell
senseless, another sometimes rolled about on
the ground. The Inquisition got very suspicious.
Why? There was a group at the time called the
El Embrados, the Illuminated Ones, who were considered
heretical. They claimed direct inspiration from
God, bypassing the church hierarchy. And the
authorities thought Inigo might be one of them.
It makes sense from their perspective. He's not
a priest. He has no theology degree. But he's
got these crowds of women rolling on the floor
in religious ecstasy. That's a massive red flag
for the religious establishment. So what did
they do? He was interrogated and jailed briefly.
They examined his teachings and eventually released
him, finding no heresy. But they told him to
stop teaching complex theology until he had a
degree. They basically said, finish school first,
then you can talk. So he decides to go to the
big leagues. He decides to go to the intellectual
capital of Europe at the time, the University
of Paris. And this is where the squad comes together.
This is a pivotal moment. He moves to Paris.
He studies at the Collège de Montague and Collège
Saint -Marne. And he starts gathering roommates.
The most historically significant roommates of
all time, perhaps? He gathers six companions
around him. And looking at the list of who they
were, the diversity is really interesting for
the time. So who do we have on the team? Well,
you have Francis Xavier, who was another Basque
nobleman like Ignatius. You have Peter Faber,
who was a sabayard from the French Alps. Then
you have Alfonso Salmeron, Diego Lanas, and Nicolas
Bobadilla, who were all Spaniards. And Simone
Rodriguez, who was Portuguese. It's a multinational
team, a European project. And Francis Xavier.
He goes on to become a massive deal on his own
right, a saint in his own right. A huge deal,
one of the most prolific and famous missionaries
in history. But interestingly... He didn't like
Ignatius at first. Really? Not at all. Xavier
was young, handsome, athletic, ambitious. He
was everything Ignatius used to be. He looked
at this older, limping, ragged student and thought
he was an embarrassment. So how did Ignatius
win him over? He used psychology. He didn't preach
at him. He helped Xavier with his practical problems,
finding him students to tutor for money. He praised
his athletic ability. And then once he had his
trust, he would just hit him with the question
from the Gospels. What does it profit a man to
gain the whole world and lose his soul? That's
a heavy question to drop on your roommate. It
worked. Eventually, the squad formed around Ignatius'
spiritual direction. This is also where he changes
his name, right? From the Basque Inigo to the
more Latin Ignatius. Yes. He started using Ignatius
consistently in Paris. It wasn't really a formal
name change so much as a translation, a universalizing
of his name. Ignatius was more recognizable and
acceptable in the international academic worlds
of France and Italy. He's branding. He's making
his brand more accessible to a wider market.
In a very practical sense, yes. And it works.
This group of students, led by Ignatius, decides
to formalize their bond to make a commitment
together. This brings us to August 15. 1534.
A very famous date. They go to the crypt of Saint
-Denis in Montmartre, a little chapel on a hill
outside Paris. A crucial moment. They meet in
this small chapel, and a priest, Peter Faber,
who was the only one ordained at the time, said
mass, and then they all took solemn vows together.
What were the vows? Poverty, chastity, and a
vow to travel to the Holy Land. Standard monk
stuff so far. Pretty standard. But later, when
their clans to go to the Holy Land were blocked
by war, they went to Rome to offer their services
to the Pope. They officially formed the Society
of Jesus the Jesuits in 1539 and got official
approval from Pope Paul III in 1540. And that's
when they added something unique. The fourth
vow. The fourth vow. And this is what makes the
Jesuits fundamentally different from, say, the
Benedictines or the Franciscans. Okay, so let's
unpack the fourth vow. What is it and why is
it so important? Most religious orders take vows
of poverty, chastity, and obedience to their
superiors within the order. The Jesuits added
a special fourth vow of obedience directly to
the Pope, specifically regarding missions. Regarding
missions. What does that mean in practice? It
means they are, in essence, a papal rapid response
force. If the Pope says, I need learned men to
go debate Protestants in Germany, the Jesuit
goes. If the Pope says, go to India and found
a mission, the Jesuit goes. If he says, go to
the New World, they go. So they aren't tied to
a single monastery. Exactly. They aren't required
to stay in one place and pray together in choir
stalls every few hours like monks. They are designed
to be mobile, adaptable, and ready to be deployed
anywhere in the world at a moment's notice. This
connects directly back to the military background,
doesn't it? Ignatius is basically building a
spiritual special ops team for the church. The
military influence is undeniable. Ignatius was
elected the first superior general of the order,
and he emphasized this mobility and readiness.
The motto they adopted sums it all up. Ad Maiorum
Dei Gloriam. For the greater glory of God. And
then there's that famous phrase he used in a
letter to Francis Xavier, who was about to leave
for Asia. Ait. Inflamate Omnia. Go set the world
on fire. That is such a high energy slogan. It's
not go pray quietly. It's set the world on fire.
It implies action, energy, transformation. But,
and here's the fascinating paradox of Ignatius
and his spirituality, to achieve this high energy
external... output, he demanded an internal discipline
that he described with a very, very stark image.
The corpse. The principle of perinde akadavr.
Which means, as if a dead body. Yes. In the Jesuit
Constitutions, which Ignatius spent years writing,
he describes the ideal of obedience. A Jesuit
should be like a corpse or a staff in an old
man's hand. It can be moved anywhere without
resistance. That sounds, well, a little creepy,
to be honest. Be like a dead body. So passive.
It sounds incredibly harsh to modern ears. But
in his context, what he meant was a radical selflessness.
A corpse has no ego. A corpse doesn't say, you
know, I'd rather not go to India. It's too humid
there. A corpse has no personal will that conflicts
with the mission. He wanted his men to be completely
available instruments of what he saw as divine
providence. So on the outside, set the world
on fire. But on the inside. Be as disciplined
and ego -free as a corpse. Precisely. That tension
between total active energy in the world and
total passive obedience to the mission is the
engine that drove the Jesuit order. Yeah. And
it worked. It seems like it worked incredibly
well. They spread like wildfire. They did. And
they focused on two main things. Missionary work,
sending people like Xavier to the ends of the
earth, and education. All right. Education became
their hallmark. Yeah. The source mentions they
started opening colleges and seminaries all over
Europe almost immediately. Yes. They became known
as the schoolmasters of Europe. Ignatius had
this insight that to influence society for the
long term, you have to educate its future leaders.
So they built this incredible network of schools.
So Ignatius spends his final years in Rome. He's
the general of this growing global army. He's
writing the constitutions, managing it all from
a small room. But the body of that punkish swordsman
is finally starting to break down. His health
failed pretty significantly by 1553. The sources
talk about stomach ailments, fevers. He spent
his last years in Rome managing this massive
global network through thousands of letters,
but he was in constant pain. He died on July
31st, 1556. The source lists the official cause
as Roman fever, which is a catch -all term for
a type of severe malaria. But the autopsy, oh
man, the autopsy report is something else. The
autopsy is incredibly revealing. It was performed
by a leading anatomist of the day named Mateo
Colombo. And what he found inside Ignatius' body
is just shocking. Read us the details. They're
pretty graphic. Colombo wrote, I have taken out
innumerable stones with my own hands. And he
lists where he found them. Found in the kidneys,
in the lungs, in the liver, and in the portal
vein. Wait. Stones in the lungs and the portal
vein? How is that even possible? And it gets
worse. He also found stones in the gallbladder
of various shapes and colors. Innumerable stones.
The guy was basically a walking quarry. The modern
medical speculation is that he had severe chronic
nephrolithiasis, which is kidney stones, and
cholelithiasis, which is gallstones. But the
stones in the veins and liver suggest something
more systemic, possibly even calcified tuberculosis
or a malignant gastrointestinal growth. The pain
must have been excruciating. unimaginable and
that's the great irony i think we need to highlight
here here is a man who taught thousands of people
how to find mental and spiritual peace how to
discern the movement of spirits how to find consolation
in god and yet physically he was living in a
state of absolute constant agony it adds another
layer of toughness to him He wasn't just sitting
in a garden meditating peacefully. He was grinding
through crippling pain every single day to build
this organization. And he worked until the very
end. He died in Rome, his body was dressed in
priestly robes, and he was buried. But his legacy,
that cannonball effect, just kept expanding and
expanding. Let's talk about that legacy for a
minute. The most obvious thing is the universities.
Oh, absolutely. Loyola University, Maryland.
Loyola, Chicago. Loyola, New Orleans. Loyola,
Marymount in L .A. The Ateneo Universities in
the Philippines. Loyola College in Chennai, India.
The name Loyola is synonymous with high -quality
education all over the globe. And the shield.
I never knew the story behind the Loyola family
crest until I read the source. It's got wolves
in a pot on it. It's the combined Onyas Loyola
family crest. One side is for the Onyas family.
It has seven maroon bars on a gold field representing
bravery in battle. The other side is for the
Loyola family. And that's the one with two rampant
gray wolves flanking a cooking pot. Wolves in
a pot. What on earth does that mean? It symbolizes
generosity. The legend in the family was that
the Loyolas were so generous, they always fed
their soldiers and retainers so well that even
the wolves had enough to feast on the leftovers
from the cooking pot. That is a serious flex.
We have so much food, even the local wolves are
full. A classic medieval noble flex. And now
that symbol is on university campuses all over
the world, which is just incredible to think
about. It really is. It's funny, looking back
at the big themes we started with, we have the
Basque bad boy. who just wants fame. He gets
hit by a cannonball which shatters his leg and,
more importantly, shatters his ego. He gets bored
and accidentally discovers psychology. He lives
in a cave and has visions. He goes back to school
with 10 -year -olds. He builds an army of spiritual
corpses and tells them to go set the world on
fire. And he dies full of stones. It is a remarkable
arc. It is the perfect story of the transformation
of energy, the aggression of the soldier, that
intense drive. It didn't go away. It was channeled.
It was redirected. He stopped fighting for the
Duke of Najra and started fighting for what he
believed was the greater glory of God. And he's
the patron saint of soldiers, which makes total
sense. But the source also says he's the patron
saint of. Accidents and injuries. Laughs. Yes.
Given the whole cannonball incident, I think
he earned that patronage, honestly. Absolutely.
St. Ignatius, pray for me, I just stubbed my
toe on the coffee table. Or St. Ignatius, pray
for me, a cannonball just completely ruined my
favorite pair of tight boots. Exactly. So what
does this all mean for us, for you, listening?
What's the takeaway? I think it has to come back
to the cannonball, the randomness of it, the
sheer chance. If that cannonball had been six
inches to the left, it just misses him. It misses
him. Inigo stays a soldier. He probably dies
in some other pointless battle or grows old as
a bitter, vanity -obsessed courtier telling rid
of stories at the local tavern. And there are
no Jesuits, no Loyola universities, no Pope Francis,
who is the first Jesuit pope. History changes
completely. But because of that one random, violent,
painful moment, that shattering, he was forced
to stop. He was forced to be still. He was forced
to be bored. And in that silence, he was forced
to look inward and found something entirely new.
It's a powerful reminder that sometimes the worst
thing that happens to you, the thing that breaks
your leg and completely ruins your life's plans,
might actually be the beginning of your real
story. That is the lesson of his life, I think.
The shattering is often the necessary prerequisite
for the building. You have to be broken down
before you can be built back up into something
stronger. So here is our final thought for you
to chew on today. We all have our plans. We all
have our own version of tight boots that we want
to look good in, the image we project to the
world. But what is the cannonball moment in your
life? What is the unexpected injury or failure
or interruption that forced you to change direction?
And did you fight it or did you use it like he
did to find a new kind of discernment, a new
way forward? Something to think about. Thanks
for diving deep with us today. Until next time.