Letter XIX. To Francis Borgia

Rome, End of the year 1545.

My lord in Our Lord,

May the supreme grace and eternal love of Christ Our Lord greet and visit your Lordship.

On the last day of October I received the letter from your hand of the 24th of July. It gave me more than great joy in Our Lord to discover in it things derived more from experience and internal conversation than from elsewhere; things which Our Lord, through His infinite goodness, is accustomed to give to souls that take their stand thereon, as the beginning, means, and end of all our good. May His supreme name be ever praised and exalted in all and by all creatures, ordained and created to this so just and fitting an end.

Coming down to some matters which you speak of in your letter, first you ask that I should not forget you in my prayers, and that I should visit you by my letters. As for the first I can assure you that I continue to do so every day, hoping in God Our Lord that if they may win any favour it may come to you wholly from above, descending from His divine goodness, looking as I do only to His eternal and highest liberality, and to your Lordship’s devotion and holy aspirations. And I persuaded myself that by thus seeing you spiritually before me every day I was complying with your second request in regard to the consolation your Lordship might derive from any letters of mine. Considering that all who leave themselves aside and enter into their Creator and Lord, have an abiding proof, insight, consolation, and realization of the way that in all things created the eternal Good is to be found, which has given being to all of them, and preserves them by His infinite Being and Presence, I am easily persuaded that you find consolation in most things, and resignation in all. For those that love the Lord entirely find assistance in all things, and are helped by all things to accumulate greater merit and to come closer to and be united by means of consuming charity with their own Creator and Lord; even though, as your Lordship very rightly says, the creature for its part commonly puts obstacles in the way of that which the Lord desires to bring about in the soul. Nor is this hindering of the creature only before we receive graces, gifts, and relish from the Holy Spirit in our work; but even when they have come and have been accepted, when the soul has been visited and consoled, freed from all darkness and uneasy solicitude, adorned with the spiritual gifts I have mentioned, and made happy and all enamoured of the eternal things which are to last

Google for ever in unending glory, even then it happy ens that we relax by reason of thoughts of little moment, not knowing how to preserve these greW gifts from heaven. So that both before this grace and operation of the Lord comes to us we put ob-\ stacles in its way; and after it has come we do the same, endangering its preservation. Hence, although your Lordship speaks of these obstacles for the purpose of humbling yourself the more before the Lord of all, and in order the more to exalt us who desire only to be humble, and although you say that from what you hear from Araoz in Portugal this Society does not put obstacles in the way when the Lord desires to work in it, I am myself persuaded that I am all obstacles both before and after ( the coming of His grace. Nevertheless on this very account I feel contentment and spiritual joy in Our \ Lord, seeing that I cannot attribute to myself anything that may seem good; feeling sure, though I defer to those of better understanding in these matters, that there are few in this life, nay more, that

( there is no one who can in all things determine or judge how much on his own part he impedes and how much he opposes what Our Lord desires to operate in his soul. However much a man may be versed and experienced in humility and charity, however much he may realize and advert to the very minute thoughts and other small matters that act as obstacles and impediments, although in appearance of little or no importance, nevertheless I can, easily understand that the complete knowledge of all our obstacles and faults is not to be attained in this life. The Prophet asks to be delivered from the faults that he does not know; and Saint Paul, confessing that he does not know them, adds that he is not thereby justified. I earnestly wish in Our Lord, who is to judge me for ever, that while, through His infinite and wonted mercy, you make yourself a scholar in so holy a school (a fact which your Lordship cannot deny, looking as you do and entering into your own soul, as I am satisfied I recognize from your Tetters), you should toil and in every possible way endeavour to associate many scholars with you. Begin first with your servants, to whom one is more bound, in order to lead them to His divine Majesty by the surest and straightest way. And as that way is Christ Our Lord Himself, according to His own words, I give many thanks to His divine goodness because your Lordship, as you give me to understand, receives Him frequently. For besides the many and great graces which the soul obtains through receiving its Creator and Lord, there is this principal and special grace, that it is not allowed to remain in an obstinate state of sin; on the contrary, as soon as it falls into even the smallest sin (though no sin can truly be called small which offends an infinite object, nay more, the Supreme Good), it is lifted up again with yet greater strength, and greater purpose and firmness to pay better service to its Creator and Lord.

I gain merit without earning it from the mere desire I have of imitating your Lordship in the course you follow of gaining over your neighbour and brethren, so making good use of the talent

Google which the Divine Majesty, through His infinite and wonted mercy has given to your Lordship. And since in your letter you express the desire to have some share in the affairs I control, seeing that here I find myself loaded with a great burthen by having had, in accordance with our method of procedure, the government of this Society imposed upon me, whether it be by divine ordinance, or by permission of His eternal goodness by reason of my great and abominable sins, your Lordship, for love and reverence of God Our Lord, might help me, not only by your prayers, but also by deigning to take over the patronage and protection of a house or college which it is desired to establish in your district for the help of scholastics of this Society (no less that of your Lordship, the Lady Duchess, and the Lady Dona Joana, her sister, than ours).* This, at the request and indeed at the command of your Lordship to the great joy of our souls, they have accepted, trusting to the favour and protection which it might seem best in the Lord to your Lordship to bestow, or which you might judge most conducive to His greater glory. And we feel all the greater joy in His Divine Goodness, since a relative of the Lady Duchess is in the community, as your Lordship informs me, and that her Ladyship is pleased that it is so. Asking to be much recommended to Our Lord in her prayers and in those of Dona Joana, I conclude begging of His Divine

Majesty that He may deign to grant us His abundant grace to know His holy will and accomplish it entirely.

From Rome, etc., 1545,

Ignacio.

Notes on the text

• a This is no more than a polite compliment of a kind common in Spanish form. It will be frequently met with in these letters.