Almost every morning, from Monday to Friday, me and the other first year novices, met up the master to read and comment on Autobiography. This is the story of God’s experience lived by Ignatius of Loyola. It is a short work, but it allows several interpretation. I’ve read it four times so far, the first in Bologna. I was in a Jesuit community for a time of discernment. I read it with the desire to know better Ignatius as a chronological story of her life. What a mistake! It is the story and the drama of his relationship with the Lord rather than a historical reenactment!

The second during the Ignatian pilgrimage from Loyola to Barcelona this summer. The program was simple: in the morning one of the guides commented on a paragraph, followed an hour of silent prayer. It was interesting. Along with meditation I experienced the experience of visiting, touching the sites of Ignatius.

The third time during the Exercises last July in Naples.

I discovered a different Ignatius, which I did not know before. I met the saint and man: the work of God and humanity on the way. He was a saint, one of the founders of the Company, the inspiration for a great project, that’s true: it’s all true. But it was first of all a man with the potentialities and fragility, with the need to grow one step at a time. Like all. The hagiography that tells an angel Ignatius is useless. He was a man. A certain person, obstinate, who has received a great love for the Lord. Like all.

The hagiography that tells Ignatius as an angel is useless. He was a man. An obstinate person who has received a great love for the Lord. He was precise, authoritarian, perhaps even unpleasant. He needed time to guide his own humanity toward God. At the beginning of the path of faith he was disarmed, without instruments of discernment. The rules often quoted came later, he experienzed them before to write them. You can find Ignatius a travel companion or a father. Her experience can help me and enlighten mine.

What has lived may somehow have resonance in my novice life. Ignatius stops sitting on the throne and walks beside me. So autobiography becomes a gift to be tasted.