On 31 July, the feast day of St Ignatius of Loyola, Father General Arturo Sosa presided at Mass at the Church of the Gesù in Rome. The church was packed full with young people from all over the world who are visiting Rome for the Jubilee of Young People taking place as part of the activities of the Jubilee Year 2025. During the homily, Father General drew from the life and legacy of Saint Ignatius and invited everyone to share in the Christian hope that does not disappoint. Here is the full text of Father General's homily below.

Feast of St Ignatius of Loyola 2025
Church of the Gesù – Rome

Homily

I will bless the Lord at all times;
His praise is always in my mouth.
My soul glorifies the Lord,
Let the humble hear and be glad (Psalm 33:2-3)

Celebrating this feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola does not mean exalting a man who became a pilgrim on the path that leads to humility, from which one arrives at familiarity with God, listening to him, following him with joy, and giving him thanks for all the good received.

We celebrate to remember the invitation to conversion that each of us has received. Like the prophet Jeremiah, the Lord seeks to seduce us. He invites us to become pilgrims who follow Jesus, poor and humble. If we allow ourselves to be seduced, we choose to collaborate in his redemptive mission, that is, as it says in the Meditation on the Two Standards (SpEx 136-147), to become a laughingstock of the world, to receive insults and contempt for the sake of Christ. At the same time, the power of the Lord who seduces us becomes that inner fire which, once lit, cannot be extinguished.

In this Jubilee Year 2025, the Church invites us to become pilgrims of hope that does not disappoint (Rom 5:5). Many people are responding to this call to renew their Hope and set out on the path following in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus. One example is the tens of thousands of young people who are flooding the city of Rome these days, who have made a pilgrimage to give us a testimony of Hope in the midst of the turbulence of a changing era that hides its signs from many and puts them on the slippery slope of despair.

As we celebrate the feast of St Ignatius of Loyola, we remember the charism that the Lord has given to the mission of the Church through his spiritual experience. Hope that does not disappoint is one of the constitutive dimensions of the charism shared by those who inspire their lives with the spirituality of the Spiritual Exercises, those who participate in apostolates whose identity stems from that spiritual experience and from the consecrated life that follows its way of proceeding. The Society of Jesus was born precisely from the desire to give shape to a religious and apostolic lifestyle founded on this specific gift of the Lord to His Church.

We often associate Hope with a phrase that we use without thinking much about it: “we are in God's hands”. Sometimes we use it as an expression of resignation in the face of what seems unattainable, beyond our control, or inevitable. However, we are not “puppets” moved from outside by other hands. God has created us free, capable of making decisions. We are not “robots” that follow the program designed by those who build and set them in motion. As free beings, we can choose the path to follow. We can choose to place ourselves in his hands, that is, seduced, allowing ourselves to be guided by his Spirit. The Meditation on the Two Standards reminds us of the first step on this path: poverty, through which we overcome all attachment, become indifferent, and are able to accept insults and contempt until we attain the humility that makes us like Jesus. It also reminds us that there is another path, the first step of which is to place wealth and the pursuit of honors that lead to pride at the center of our lives. There are many pressures from our environment to make this the path of choice.

St Paul proposes that we imitate him as he imitates Christ. He insists on the path that, starting from poverty and humility, leads us to do all things for the greater glory of God. For those of us who share the Ignatian charism, the expression “for the greater glory of God” sounds very familiar. It is the motto stamped not only on the walls of our houses or on our coat of arms, but also in our grateful hearts that beat for that love freely received.

Receiving the Ignatian charism enables us to become disciples of the poor and humble Jesus, putting everything else aside or, rather, ordering the relationships that constitute us as human beings, the bonds of blood and culture, from the one and only vital relationship with the Lord, in whose hands we choose to place ourselves, because we recognize in Him the source of Life that makes possible and accompanies our concrete lives as individuals, communities, peoples, cultures...

Experiencing the Lord as the one who gives us life and accompanies our steps is the condition for choosing from Faith (trust) and Hope in Him. Hope is the certainty, against all appearances, of the possibility of living as brothers and sisters in a just and peaceful world, because that is the will of the Father, made a promise to humanity. When we choose to place ourselves in His hands, that is, to place all our Hope in God, we accept to carry the cross, to walk the path of Jesus who promised nothing else but to share His fate, to be rejected, persecuted, unjustly arrested and judged, tortured to the point of giving His life... waiting for the resurrected life.

Following the charism of St Ignatius of Loyola, we begin to live as we hope that the world will be one in which the promise of the Kingdom of Justice, Peace, and Love has been fulfilled. Like Jesus, we become signs of contradiction, walking against the tide, proclaiming with our lives and work that which seems impossible or improbable.

May Our Lady of the Way make us sharers in her trust in the grace of the Lord, for whom nothing is impossible.

Happy feast day of Saint Ignatius of Loyola!