THE IGNATIAN YEAR

From May 2021 until July 2022, the Jesuits and the Ignatian family celebrate an Ignatian Year.

What is an Ignatian Year? May 20, 2021 marks the 500^th anniversary of the beginning of St. Ignatius’ enormous change of life — that fateful day when Ignatius the soldier, struck by a cannonball, began his transformation into Ignatius the pilgrim.

"For Ignatius, a life of poverty was an expression of intimacy with Jesus... More than words, his poverty was a sign of his interior transformation, of his growing indifference to preparing himself to follow God’s will, of his sense that everything came down from above as a gift."

— Fr. Arturo Sosa, SJ, Superior General of the Society of Jesus

What does this mean for Santa Clara University?

As a Jesuit university, we are being invited to consider what we might learn by meditating on this important moment in Ignatius’ life. Perhaps we might ask: How might we as individuals and as a university family learn to recognize and embrace those “cannonball moments?” How might the cannonballs in our lives be shattering obstacles that stand between us and true freedom? And how might these cannonballs be showing our university the way of Jesus, that of downward mobility, that way that embraces poverty, humility and even rejection?

Additional Resources

The Ignatian Year | 2021-2022

THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE IGNATIAN YEAR 2021-2022 - Letter from Fr. Arturo Sosa, SJ, Superior General of the Society of Jesus

The Cannonball Moment | 500 Years