Man of Different Mettle

Dear Father Ignatius, I am not patient enough to count how many years ago you had left this beautiful world, but I can only say that it was more than 450 years ago, but your memory is still fresh in my mind. Because there is something in me which I can proudly claim to be Ignatian (see how easily you have become a type, like Aristotelian, Hegelian, Marxian…), and the world around me is only happy to see me as belonging to your ‘type’. Sometimes people do frown at me, because there is a trace of idiosyncrasy, and who today is not idiosyncratic, tell me?

But jokes apart, after going through 16 years of training (the world outside calls it grilling, drilling and brain-washing), I could not help become quite similar to you to a certain extent. But I wish I were more like you, so that I can have the fire to enflame everyone I come in touch with. The world today is too lazy, complacent, too nervous to take risk, and too calculative in its moves, too frightened to dream big, too comfortable in their little ghettoes. The world today needs more men who can fight and yet not heed the wounds.

When I first heard how you left the comfort of your cozy life in the palace, the dreamgirl you could have possibly won, after that wretched setting of the knee bones without local anasthesea, I was quite alarmed. How you dared to leave all, and don the sack-clothes of a mendicant! No, it is not possible for me to do the same today; your world was quite different, and in today’s world, I need to count each of my steps, or else I may be down in the gutters.

You had no shame! Thank God for it, you were able to sit in the company of small children and study, and slowly move to heights to even complete your MA in the prestigious University of Paris. You had experienced what a prison life is, having yourself stayed there twice, for the mistakes you did not commit. We are too self-conscious, and safeguard our sanctity as if our lives depend on it. If we are able to drop all shame and dare to walk before God , there can be no better security than this.

I marvel your indomitable courage to even rise up against the mighty empires, kings and popes. And strangely no one ever dared to oppose you, because they all knew you were a man made of a different mettle, and they cannot compete with you. The guts you had made men and women of your times to tremble, and the God you believed in had blessed you with a spirit which cared for no human appreciations and applause. I take my hats off to you, Father Ignatius. If only people can see in me the Lord you so lovingly served all your life, I need no better blessing on your feast day.