Vigils Reading -St Ignatius Loyola

THE FIRST TRIAL OF

IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA

From The Autobiography of St Ignatius

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On the Vigil of the Annunciation in 1522 he set out at nightfall, as

discreetly as possible, to find a beggar. Stripping off his clothes he gave them to

this pauper and dressed…in the garb for which he had longed. Then he went and

knelt before the altar of our Lady, where, staff in hand, he spent the whole night,

now kneeling, now standing, and after receiving the Blessed Sacrament left at

day-break <for Manresa>, in order not to be recognized.

It was while he was living at the hospital at Manresa that the following

strange event took place. Very frequently on a clear moonlight night there

appeared in the courtyard before him an indistinct shape which he could not see

clearly enough to tell what it was. Yet it appeared so symmetrical and beautiful

that his soul was filled with pleasure and joy as he gazed at it. It had something

of the form of a serpent with glittering eyes, and yet they were not eyes. He felt

an indescribable joy steal over him at the sight of this object. The oftener he saw

it, the greater was the consolation he derived from it, and when the vision left

him, his soul was filled with sorrow and sadness.

Up to this period he had remained in a constant state of tranquility and

consolation, without any interior knowledge of the trials that beset the

spiritual life. But during the time that the vision lasted, sometimes for days,

his soul was violently agitated by a thought that brought him no little

uneasiness. There flashed upon his mind the idea of the difficulty that

attended the kind of life he had begun, and he felt as if he head some one

whispering to him, “How can you keep up for seventy years of your life these

practices which you have begun?” Knowing that this thought was a

temptation of the evil one, he expelled it by this answer: “Can you, wretched

one, promise me one hour of life?” In this manner he overcame the temptation,

and his soul was restored to peace. This was his first trial.