The day before the Feast Day of St Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, is World Friendship Day. For many readers the joining of these two days may seem strange. In an earlier historiography that focused attention on the Protestant Reformation Ignatius was often seen as an avatar of the Catholic Counter Reformation – a hard and driven man, like a military general in his gift for organisation and strategy, a formidable foe to heretics and rebels, and a leader who demanded strict discipline in his followers. A man associated with loyalty, esprit de corps and comradeship, certainly, but not – at least at first sight – with the softer gift of friendship.
And yet in a divided and fractious world, friendship that is strong enough to be undisturbed by differences of gender, race, nationality, politics, religion, wealth and football teams is never more threatened and needed. In this context reflection on the place of friendship in Ignatius’ equally fractured world may be illuminating.
The theme of World Friendship Day this year is Celebrating Bonds Across Borders. Such bonds are challenging. In any society we put pressure on friendship when we cross boundaries. It is hard to develop a romance when we live in different countries. If we have little access to the internet, it is even more difficult. If our nations are at war, that adds yet another level of difficulty. When we are separated, we need to work at friendship.
Ignatius’ life was full of crossing boundaries, parting with friends and dealing with religious hostility. We know little about his early life as page, courtier and soldier, but we do know that he dreamed of a noble romance. Few of the friendships of that time, however, seem to have survived his break with family and his remaking of himself after being wounded in battle, converted to faith and spending solitary and introspective time in a cave. When he went as a solitary preacher through Spain and travelled to Palestine in the steps of Jesus, he seemed to have related easily to people, especially to women, but not to have made lasting friendships. His attention was wholly on winning people to conversion to Christ. This was true also of his first attempt to form people together in a group to do God’s work, and it may also have been part of the reason why the people whom he invited to join him drifted away.
Only when he studied at the University of Paris did he make close friends among students, who came from different regions and kingdoms. He was some years older than his companions, a significant factor in the quality of their friendship. It was defined by his opening to them the Spiritual Exercises, by shared commitment to prayer, and shared service of the poor. Their friendship was deepened as the group came together to share meals and to talk together.
When the companions decided to go together to the places of Jesus’ life in Palestine and, when that proved impossible, to offer themselves as to the Pope as a group of Religious available for different missions, they saw themselves as ‘friends in the Lord’, whose friendship would not be broken by difference of nationality, distance or circumstance.
Ignatius’ friendship with his early companion Francis Xavier was certainly deep. Francis kept the autographs of his early companions with him when he went to India and to the edge of China. The tears he shed when a letter from Ignatius arrived after having been posted a year before testifies to the depth of the friendship and also to the pressures that availability for missions at such a distance put on it.
One of Ignatius’ early companions described him as walking with one foot raised. The image sums up the challenge and his way in which he and his followers were to meet it. The raised foot is always discerning, always ready to go where needed. The grounded foot is firmly planted in friendship.
'Those who met him, men and women, spoke of the invitation to friendship that shone in even a brief encounter. He also showed unfailing generosity and concern to his companions who grew difficult with age.'
In his early letters to his companions Ignatius referred to them as friends in the Lord. As he led a fast growing and religious order with all the tensions that went with diversity of origin and upbringing, his letters necessarily became more formal and focused on the call of Christ who had brought them together. Even so, those who met him, men and women, spoke of the invitation to friendship that shone in even a brief encounter. He also showed unfailing generosity and concern to his companions who grew difficult with age.
Ignatius was born into a Catholic culture. He saw and experienced the relationship between friendship and calling or career through the lens of faith. He was, however, a man of the modern world in facing a challenge to hold together friendship and a public commitment to a life of service. In our world, many people work in organisations that serve others whether in education, nursing, aged care, prisons, social work or other ways. If such organisations are to be life-giving to those within them, they must first ensure that the values of respect, generosity and care expressed in their mission statements are actually embodied in the relationships between members of staff and the people whom they serve. They must also ensure that these values are embodied in the relationship between the members of the frontline staff, and between staff and management. Where these relationships are aligned they release great energy. Any description of the spirit of the organisation must include a reference to friendship.
For the early Jesuits the phrase ‘friends in the Lord’ integrated the mission to help people with friendship. The claims mission and friendship made were not those between rivals. They were complementary. To live fruitfully with the tension between them was challenging in Ignatius’ day. It continues to be challenging in our own.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street, and writer at Jesuit Social Services.