Saint Ignatius of Loyola taken from "Defenders of
the Faith."
Ignatius discovers God in a cave
Ignatius discovered a dark cave, virtually unknown
because it was so overgrown with brush. There, he
would spend hours, sometimes all through the night,
praying without interruption, except for the
occasional sounds of God's four-legged and winged
creatures calling out to one another. The cave at
Manresa was a battlefield, a lonely battlefield,
with Ignatius battling one temptation, winning that
battle only to be put to the test with another
temptation and another battle. Among other
struggles, he imagined himself guilty of all types
of sins, mistaking venial sin for mortal sin,
battling alleged scruples and scrupulosity to the
point of near desperation. He did not know where to
turn; it seemed to him that God had deserted him.
Then, he remembered hearing that God would come to
his aid, if he fasted until his petition was
granted. He fasted from Sunday to the following
Sunday. His Spiritual Director seeing him
dangerously weakened by this excessiveness, near
death, ordered him to eat some food or he would deny
him absolution. Ignatius obeyed and his melancholy
left him!
Temptations of one kind or the other persisted until
his trial over, his doubts and anxieties were also
at an end. It had been one of the severest duels of
his life; it seemed as if he were fencing with the
prince of darkness himself, with the devil thrusting
and him parrying, Ignatius, God's holy knight
falling, appearing at times to be down for the last
time, mortally wounded; but with the force of the
Holy Spirit Who never left him, he would rise again
to fight another battle. This time in the cave of
Manresa would fill a spiritual well with teachings
from which not only Jesuits would draw lifegiving
water of knowledge and strength but those who in the
future would read the Spiritual Exercises and follow
Ignatius and his experiences to a deeper life with
God.
He had fought! The lessons, received from both the
powers of Heaven and hell would serve to form the
vessel which God was shaping for His purpose. But it
was not easy for Ignatius to follow what he called
the "Finger of God!" He would say "that God had
treated him as a wise master does a child, to whom
He gives little to learn at a time, and before whom
He does not place a second lesson until he has well
understood the first."...
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