St. Ignatius began his Autobiography like so: “Until the age of twenty-six, he was a man given to the vanities of the world.” His readers tend to assume that he was referring to his age when he was wounded by the cannonball that launched his spiritual conversion.
Yet historians are reasonably sure that Ignatius was wounded at the age of thirty. The probable explanation for the discrepancy is that Ignatius simply got it wrong when he told his story. And that is entirely plausible, because in the 16th century, Europeans did not take birthdays as seriously as we do today. Many did not know exactly how old they were.
But there is another possibility. Something did happen at age twenty-six that turned Ignatius’s life upside-down: his beloved foster-father died suddenly and in disgrace. Juan Velásquez de Cuellar, the royal treasurer, had taken Ignatius into his home to live with his own twelve children after Ignatius’s biological father died. For the next ten years Ignatius had the time of his life, while tutors taught him courtly etiquette, dancing, horseback riding and swordfighting. Then it all came crashing down.
I suspect that Ignatius was alluding to this in his memoirs. Reading the memoirs, we easily get the impression that his life turned on a dime after the cannonball: that he went from sinner to saint within several weeks. It makes for a dramatic story, but I’m not sure how realistic it is, nor how well that it speaks to the experience of most people today.
I like to think that the death of Velásquez compelled Ignatius to rethink the meaning and direction of his own life. He had his real conversion then, but he lacked the courage to act on his desires for another three years, until a cannonball gave him little choice. God needed to push him, hard, not once, but twice. And perhaps even more than that. Now there’s a story that sounds familiar.