Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Iñigo's Mule



From The Life of St. Ignatius of Loyola:

He had decided that he wanted to go to Jerusalem to live where our Lord had spent his life on earth. As a first step he began his journey to Barcelona. Though he had been converted completely from his old ways, he was still seriously lacking in the true spirit of charity and Christian understanding, as illustrated by an encounter he had with a Moor on his way.

The Moor and he came together on the road, both riding mules, and they began to debate religious matters. The Moor claimed that the Blessed Virgin was not a virgin in her life after Christ was born. Ignatius took this to be such an insult that he was in a dilemma as to what to do.

They came to a fork in the road, and Ignatius decided that he would let circumstances direct his course of action. The Moor went down one fork. Ignatius let the reins of his mule drop. If his mule followed the Moor, he would kill him. If the mule took the other fork he would let the Moor live.

Fortunately for the Moor, Ignatius' mule was more charitable than its rider and took the opposite fork from the Moor.

2 comments:

crystal said...

Nice link - I haven't seen that page before. Almost every night I go to Mark Mossa's blog and read the posts he made some time ago of the life of Ignatius ... he posted excerpts from the autogiography. I'm at the part where he's just leaving by ship for Jerusalem. It's really interesting.

Jeff said...

Hi Crystal,

I don't like the translation as much, but I like the images in this one from Fairfield.