Ignatius of Loyola's cannonball
Conversion of the Jesuit founder
Five months after Luther burned the papal bull in Wittenberg — December 10, 1520 — Iñigo López de Loyola is standing on the walls of Pamplona defending the fortress against a French army.
He is a Basque nobleman and soldier, vain, ambitious, fond of women and dueling, not particularly religious. He is also brave to the point of recklessness — when the other defenders want to surrender the obviously indefensible fortress, Iñigo refuses.
A cannonball passes between his legs, shattering one and badly wounding the other.
The surgery is brutal and unsuccessful. The bone is badly set and will have to be rebroken. Iñigo submits to the second surgery without complaint — he is proud and cannot allow himself to limp. He lies in bed at the family castle in Loyola, bored and in pain, asking for books.
The only books available are a Life of Christ and a collection of lives of the saints.
He reads them. And then reads them again.
He notices something: when he fantasizes about returning to court and military glory, he feels excited while fantasizing but empty afterward. When he reads about the saints and imagines following their example, he feels joy both during and after. The consolation lasts.
This observation — the different aftereffects of different thoughts — becomes the foundation of Jesuit discernment. He writes it down. It becomes the Spiritual Exercises.
“What if I did what Saint Francis did? What if I did what Saint Dominic did?”
— Ignatius of Loyola, reflecting during his convalescence, c. 1521 AD
“Also delight yourself in the LORD, And he will give you the desires of your heart.”
Ignatius noticed the difference between thoughts that produce lasting consolation and thoughts that produce excitement followed by emptiness.
This is the beginning of Ignatian discernment — the practice of paying attention to what is happening in your interior life as a guide to what God is doing and where he is leading.
Not every desire is from God. But the desires that produce lasting peace — that leave you more alive and more yourself rather than more depleted and less centered — these have a quality that the others lack.
Ignatius developed this into a systematic method for making decisions. The core is simple: pay attention to the aftereffects. What leaves you more fully alive? What leaves you emptier than before?
What desires in your life produce lasting consolation? And what do you desire that produces excitement followed by emptiness? The difference is Ignatius's question.