Missa “In nomine Jesu” · White vestments
I. Liturgical Context
On the last day of July the Church keeps the feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Confessor and founder of the Society of Jesus, who died in Rome on this very day in 1556. In the calendar of the 1962 Missale Romanum the feast holds the rank of third class, and its Mass is wholly proper — a distinction not granted to every Confessor, and a sign of the singular place this soldier-turned-founder occupies in the Church’s memory. The feast falls this year on the Friday within the ninth week after Pentecost, and the ferial backdrop lends the day its own quiet resonance: the Sunday just past set before us Our Lord weeping over Jerusalem, which knew not the time of her visitation. Against that sorrowful image of graces refused, the Church now raises up a man who, once his hour of visitation came — on a sickbed at Loyola, with nothing to read but the lives of Christ and His saints — refused nothing.
The Mass opens with the Introit from the Epistle to the Philippians: In nomine Jesu omne genu flectatur — “In the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth.” Nothing could be more fitting for the man who placed the Holy Name upon his order itself, and whose whole spiritual doctrine is summed up in the words ad majorem Dei gloriam. The liturgy does not celebrate Ignatius for his own sake; it celebrates the Name before which he bent his knee, his sword, and his will.
II. The Epistle: 2 Timothy 2:8-10; 3:10-12
The Church stitches together two passages from St. Paul’s final letter, written from his Roman chains to his spiritual son. The first: Memor esto Dominum Jesum Christum resurrexisse a mortuis ex semine David, secundum Evangelium meum: in quo laboro usque ad vincula, quasi male operans: sed verbum Dei non est alligatum — “Be mindful that the Lord Jesus Christ is risen again from the dead, of the seed of David, according to my gospel. Wherein I labour even unto bands, as an evildoer; but the word of God is not bound” (2 Tim. 2:8-9).
St. John Chrysostom, preaching on this passage, marvels at the paradox Paul sets before Timothy: the preacher is chained, but the preaching runs free; the Apostle’s hands are bound, and precisely thereby the Gospel is loosed upon the world, for the chains themselves preach (cf. Homiliae in II Tim., PG 62). The golden-mouthed doctor sees in Paul’s imprisonment not an obstacle to the word but its instrument — a lesson Ignatius learned in his own flesh, for it was a cannonball at Pamplona, shattering his leg and his worldly ambitions together, that became the unlikely pulpit from which God first preached to him.
The second passage turns from Paul’s chains to his whole manner of life: Tu autem assecutus es meam doctrinam, institutionem, propositum, fidem, longanimitatem, dilectionem, patientiam, persecutiones, passiones — “But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, love, patience, persecutions, afflictions” (2 Tim. 3:10-11). And then the sentence that the Church applies to every confessor who ever suffered for Christ without the martyr’s crown: Et omnes, qui pie volunt vivere in Christo Jesu, persecutionem patientur — “And all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (2 Tim. 3:12).
Chrysostom insists that Paul offers Timothy not merely precepts but himself — his life laid open as a living text, so that doctrine and conduct might be read together (cf. Homiliae in II Tim., PG 62). This is precisely the pedagogy of the Spiritual Exercises: Ignatius does not primarily argue; he sets the life of Christ before the eyes of the soul and bids the exercitant look, compare, and choose. And the promise of persecution was fulfilled in Ignatius to the letter — imprisoned by the Inquisition at Alcalá and Salamanca, suspected, examined, mocked as an unlettered enthusiast — before ever the Society was approved by Paul III in 1540.
III. The Gospel: Luke 10:1-9
Designavit Dominus et alios septuaginta duos: et misit illos binos ante faciem suam in omnem civitatem et locum, quo erat ipse venturus — “And after these things the Lord appointed also other seventy-two: and he sent them two and two before his face into every city and place whither he himself was to come” (Luke 10:1). Then follows the word that has echoed through every missionary age of the Church: Messis quidem multa, operarii autem pauci. Rogate ergo dominum messis, ut mittat operarios in messem suam — “The harvest indeed is great, but the labourers are few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he send labourers into his harvest” (Luke 10:2).
St. Gregory the Great, in his celebrated homily on this pericope, draws out two teachings that the liturgy surely intends for this feast. First, the disciples are sent two by two because there are two precepts of charity — the love of God and the love of neighbour — and charity cannot exist with fewer than two persons; he who has no charity toward another ought not to take up the office of preaching (cf. Homiliae in Evangelia, Hom. 17). Second, Gregory hears in the Lord’s lament over the scarcity of labourers a sorrow that had not ceased in his own day: the world is full of priests, he says in effect, yet rare is the true labourer in God’s harvest — a word that pierces every generation, and pierced the sixteenth century above all.
For it was into precisely such a famine of labourers that Ignatius and his first nine companions were sent. Venerable Bede, commenting on this same passage, observes that the seventy-two are sent before His face into every place where He Himself was about to come — the preacher prepares the way, but it is Christ who arrives (cf. In Lucae Evangelium Expositio, lib. III). The missioner is a herald, never the substance of the message. Ignatius built this into the very constitution of his Society: the famous fourth vow of special obedience to the Roman Pontiff circa missiones made the Jesuits, by profession, men sent two by two — to Germany and India, to Brazil and Japan — before the face of a Lord who intended to come where they went.
Nor should the instructions of the pericope be passed over: Nolite portare sacculum, neque peram, neque calceamenta — “Carry neither purse, nor scrip, nor shoes” (Luke 10:4). The apostolic labourer travels light. Ignatius, who had once dressed as a courtier and dreamed of glory, begged his bread on the roads of Spain and Italy in a pilgrim’s sackcloth. The detachment the Gospel commands, his Exercises would later systematize under the name of indifference — the readiness to want neither health nor sickness, riches nor poverty, honour nor dishonour, save as they serve the end for which man was created.
IV. Synthesis: The Exitus and Reditus of the Apostolic Man
The Thomistic architecture of exitus–reditus — all things going forth from God and returning to Him — gives this Mass its inner unity. The famous Principio et Fundamento of the Spiritual Exercises is nothing other than this doctrine stated for the individual soul: man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul; all other things on the face of the earth are created for man’s sake, to help him attain the end for which he is created. Creation is exitus; the ordered use of creatures is the road of reditus; and indifference is simply the refusal to let any creature arrest the soul’s return journey.
The Epistle shows the reditus under its costly aspect: the return to God passes through chains, persecutions, afflictions — through conformity to a crucified and risen Lord, of the seed of David, whose own descent into our flesh was the great exitus of God toward man. The Gospel shows the reditus under its fruitful aspect: the soul that has returned to God is sent out again — misit illos binos — not in a second exile but as an instrument of the divine return, gathering the harvest home. The apostolic life is thus a participation in the very rhythm of the Trinity’s works ad extra: sent from the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit, to bring many sons back to glory. Ignatius’s motto, ad majorem Dei gloriam, is the reditus made into a rule of life: every action weighed by whether it carries more or less of creation back to its Source.
V. Devotional Application
Three practical fruits offer themselves from this feast. First, pray the prayer the Gospel itself commands: Rogate dominum messis. Our Lord did not say “recruit labourers” but “pray the Lord of the harvest” — vocations are begged before they are formed. Let the faithful who mourn the scarcity of true labourers in our own day take up this petition daily, and especially on this feast.
Second, make a brief election in the Ignatian manner. Take one concrete attachment — a comfort, an ambition, a grievance — and set it before the standard of the Principio et Fundamento: does this help or hinder the end for which I was created? Ignatius asks not for scruple but for honesty; the question, honestly asked in the presence of God, is already half the victory.
Third, embrace the small persecutions of piety. St. Paul’s promise admits no exception: all who will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. For most of us this means not chains but ridicule, inconvenience, the quiet social cost of fidelity. To accept these gladly, in union with the imprisoned Apostle and the imprisoned Ignatius, is to verify the Epistle in one’s own life.
VI. Oratio: The Collect
Latin: Deus, qui ad majorem tui nominis gloriam propagandam, novo per beatum Ignatium subsidio militantem Ecclesiam roborasti: concede; ut, ejus auxilio et imitatione certantes in terris, coronari cum ipso mereamur in caelis. Per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum…
English: O God, who, to spread abroad the greater glory of Thy name, didst strengthen the Church militant with a new reinforcement through blessed Ignatius: grant that we, fighting on earth by his help and after his example, may deserve to be crowned with him in heaven. Through our Lord Jesus Christ…
The Collect is a small masterpiece of military theology. God Himself is the agent; Ignatius is the subsidium, the fresh reinforcement thrown into the line of the Church militant; and the petition asks not for peace but for a good fight crowned in heaven. The prayer even enshrines the saint’s own motto — ad majorem tui nominis gloriam — within the Church’s public worship, a rare and touching canonization of a founder’s charism in the very words of the liturgy.
VII. Aspiratio
Lord Jesus Christ, at whose Name every knee must bow: send labourers into Thy harvest, and make me indifferent to all but Thy greater glory; that fighting under Thy standard on earth, I may be crowned with Thy servant Ignatius in heaven. Amen.
VIII. For Further Study
Scripture and Liturgy. Read the whole of 2 Timothy in the Douay-Rheims — it is brief, and it is St. Paul’s testament. Compare today’s Gospel with the sending of the Twelve in Luke 9:1-6, and note what is common to every apostolic mission.
Primary sources. The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, especially the Principio et Fundamento, the meditation on the Two Standards, and the Suscipe. His Autobiography (dictated to Gonçalves da Câmara) recounts Pamplona, Manresa, and the pilgrim years in the saint’s own voice.
Patristic commentary. St. Gregory the Great’s seventeenth homily on the Gospels, on the sending of the seventy-two; St. John Chrysostom’s homilies on Second Timothy; Venerable Bede on St. Luke.
Within this series. This feast opens naturally onto the Lives of the Saints path (the first companions — St. Francis Xavier, 3 December, awaits in Advent) and the Spiritual Practices path, where the Ignatian examen and the discernment of spirits merit their own study. The theology of the Church militant in today’s Collect connects forward to the Theology and Doctrine path on grace and free cooperation.
IX. Source Transparency
The liturgical texts above (Introit, Epistle, Gospel, Gradual, Collect) follow the Mass In nomine Jesu as assigned to 31 July in the 1962 Missale Romanum; Scripture is quoted from the Douay-Rheims with the Clementine Vulgate Latin. Patristic material from St. Gregory the Great (Homiliae in Evangelia, Hom. 17), St. John Chrysostom (Homiliae in II Tim.), and Venerable Bede (In Lucae Evangelium Expositio, lib. III) is given by paraphrase with locus, not direct quotation. Biographical details of St. Ignatius (Pamplona 1521, Manresa, the approval of the Society by Paul III in 1540, death in Rome 31 July 1556, canonization by Gregory XV in 1622) rest on the saint’s Autobiography and the standard historical record, and are Tier 1–2 attested. The reading of the Principio et Fundamento as an expression of the exitus–reditus pattern is a theological synthesis proper to this series, offered as interpretation rather than as the letter of the Ignatian text.