from the CTS booklet ‘The Soldier who Became a Saint’ by John Gallagher SJ c. 1975

The would-be Jesuit concerns himself with three main points – attraction, aptitude, action.

Attraction deals with the movement not of the emotions, but of the free will. He wishes to become a Jesuit whatever the cost and through his emotions may pull him in the opposite direction. He has a supernatural motive – to please God, or to save his own soul, or to spend himself for supernatural love of others, or for all these reasons.

Aptitude refers to the intellectual, bodily and moral qualities needed to do the work
of a Jesuit. Some talented men are necessary for certain work, but the vast majority require only normal ability. A reasonably successful student would ordinarily be suitable. Good health and physical stamina are indispensable to endure the severe training and long hours of work. Moral qualities demand that the applicant have no continuing habit of sin, that he be developing in the spiritual life, that he have the desire of which Christ spoke, ‘If you would be perfect, go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and come follow me.’ And in order to be more like Christ the incarnate Wisdom, who was mocked and treated with contempt, he should have at least some desire to suffer and be regarded as a fool (without giving cause for
it.)

Action demands that the young man get in touch with a Jesuit priest and make known his desire for the Jesuit way of life. Then the Society carefully examines his suitability and tells him whether his motives are sincere enough and his capacity adequate to accept him into the religious order which St Francis Xavier called, ‘the society of love’. He finds that when he has helped to dispel the clouds of sin God’s light will burst through, and Christ the King will look upon him and love him. ‘Give me thy love and thy grace,’ he begs with St Ignatius, ‘and I’m rich enough and ask for nothing else.’

His new life is a synthesis of discipline and freedom among a company of mystics who have been called to discover their enlightenment in a life and death struggle with the world around them. They will be the cutting edge of the Church, an unprotected situation, opportune alike of initiative, hazard, derision. So the Jesuit pries is made, not born, a mixture of many things – home-made stock, divine call, spiritual grace and guidance, many years of training that requires prayer and asceticism, sustained intellectual work, the stamp and authority of Christ, a spirit of dedication that is unique.

The Jesuits have had a mixed reception. Some censurers have judged them to be among the damned, while admires are convinced they are saints fore-ordained for the kingdom of heaven. ‘It is probably true that the image of no great religious leaders has been more distorted by his enemies than the image of Ignatius Loyola. But it is also true that few have more need of the prayer ‘“save me from my friends”’, wrote the Protestant historian Paul van Dyke. The dictionary enters the word jesuititical as a censure – ‘dissembling, practising, equivocation or mental reservation of truth’
but the name of Jesuit also conveys the history of their fearless dedication to Christ and his Church. One of those profoundly shocked by the Jesuits was the late Joseph Stalin who, in his thirteenth volume writes, ‘The Jesuits are characterised by a systematised tenacity in their determination to arrive at their amoral ends by methods such as espionage, meddling with the human conscience and madness.’

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