When God calls you for his service, He has His way and time and plan for calling. And even if he who is called, does not listen, because he is committed to his service, God’s call prevails.

That’s how it was for Ignatius of Loyola. His dream, and it was a compelling dream in his youth, to become a man of great fame and name and then, an inevitable part of his youthful dream, was to marry a beautiful princess, and live happily ever after.

Battles he dreamt, battles he led, and battles he fought. And in one such battle on May 20, 1521, at Pamplona in Spain, when Ignatius was leading the attack against the French army, a French cannonball shattered his right leg.

The doctors set his leg wrong. So he had his leg broken and set again. He endured the horrific pain without the benefit of anaesthesia or proper medication just to be able to walk normally and fight in battles to win the fame he craved.

To pass the time during his convalescence at his Loyola Castle, he asked for books of chivalric romances. That is when God intervened.

Instead of the romances he craved, he was given the Lives of Saints and the Life of Christ!

He was deeply touched by the stories he read. The transformation of his life had begun. God had given the call and Ignatius was ready to listen.

He now felt something different and new: that God loved him unconditionally; and his spontaneous response was to offer his unconditional surrender to God to follow only His will. With his inner eyes opened, he now saw everything in the light of God who is Love.

And so it was that he decided to love and serve God in every person and everything in obedience to God’s will. This was his real transformation:

“Do Thou direct and govern all and sway,

do what Thou will, command and I obey.

Only Thy grace and love on me bestow,

possessing these, all riches I forgo….”

It was now Ignatius’s experience to share his epiphanic experience with others that they could also transform and be inspired to love and serve God. To this end he spent the next 11 years in studies, regardless that his fellow students were so much younger than himself.

At the University of Paris in the College of St. Barbara where he studied, God gave him six passionately committed companions, one of whom was Francis Xavier. He motivated these companions to love and serve God without stint.

It is with them that Ignatius in 1540 founded the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in Rome. Later, these first Jesuits would travel to the ends of the earth affecting a transformation in many others, fulfilling the will of God wherever they went.

The first to leave Europe was Francis Xavier. He reached India in 1542 landing on the shores of Goa. For the next 10 years he travelled through southeast Asia, after which he headed to Japan.

Everywhere he went, he zealously carried the message that God loves all unconditionally and that we need to love and serve one another in the same manner. He faced enormous difficulties and obstacles during his travels and sea voyages, but he always told himself: “I have heard God’s call and I must answer that call, whatever be the cost!”

Francis Xavier was a great pioneer of education, believing that education was a powerful instrument of both personal and social transformation. In 1542, he opened the first Jesuit college in India, St Paul’s College.

This was the beginning of the Jesuit commitment to education in India which has, since those early years, seen the establishment of many schools throughout the country and in south Asia, so many of them bearing his name as well as that of Ignatius.

Today, the Jesuits run 839 schools and 61 higher education institutions, which include universities, autonomous and non-autonomous colleges, research centres, management institutes, BEd colleges, engineering and law colleges and colleges of theology and philosophy.

Jesuit higher education inculcates in students values based on the vision and mission of Ignatius and Xavier. These values are specific in nature:

Cura Personalis, meaning development of the whole person, of one’s spirit, heart, mind, body;

United in Minds and Hearts, which is the unity in diversity of those who go forth to change the world with the Ignatian Vision;

Men and Women for and with others, a principle which embodies the spirit of placing others before self, and of serving and bringing justice especially for the poor, and the marginalised;

Contemplatives in Action, which is one’s ability to reflect and pray to strengthen one’s inner life that guides all actions;

Finding God in all Things, which is seeking and finding God at all times and circumstances of life;

Magis, which is the thread running through all these, which means discerning the greater good in any situation to serve God and all better, and so aiming at human excellence.

The dream of Ignatius and Xavier “to find God in all things and persons so as to bring greater glory to God”, continues to be fulfilled by the Jesuits through the systematic and precise planning and execution of the transforming vision and mission given by Ignatius and Xavier.

While education is the primary instrument of dissemination, the dream continues to be fulfilled also by committing to other spiritual, pastoral and social services.

In addition, the Jesuits provide counselling and guidance, youth formation, social communication, service for migrants and refugees and for protection and preservation of ecology and the wonders of Creation.

All this to spread the message of God’s love and concern for every person on earth.

To ensure that the Jesuits fulfil their mission, we seek guidance from God, and pray for courage and hope through the intercession of St Ignatius and St Xavier, to love and serve God in all persons and all things so as to bring greater glory to God and happiness to all.

Rev. Fr. Dr. Dominic Savio SJ is the principal of St Xavier’s College (Autonomous), Kolkata