St. Ignatius waved his hat until a crowd came over

VICENZA, Republic of Venice, September 1537 AD — A man of forty-six climbed onto a bench in a busy square. He gave a great shout, and waved his hat above his head until people came over. At that same hour, three of his friends were doing the same thing in three other squares of the city. The city was Vicenza. The man on the bench was Saint Ignatius of Loyola, and he had been a priest for ten weeks.

The walk from Paris

Nine of them had walked all the way from Paris to Venice, through a winter of war. They got there on January 8 of this year. They moved straight into two hospitals and took the lowliest work there, looking after poor people who were sick.

St. Ignatius and his companions had made a vow at Paris to go to Jerusalem. But the Republic of Venice was at war with the Turkish Sultan Suleiman. The sea was shut, and no ship left Venice for the East this year. On June 24, seven of the companions were ordained priests at Venice. St. Ignatius was one of them. A month after that they gave up the voyage.

They had permission to preach and teach anywhere the Republic of Venice ruled. But they had no parish and no church of their own. So they split into twos and threes across the lands Venice ruled. Vicenza went to St. Ignatius, to Saint Peter Faber and to James Laines.

A house with no door

At Vicenza the three of them were given an empty house outside the city. It had no door and no windows. They slept on a little straw they had carried in with them.

Two of the three walked into the city morning and evening to beg, and the third stayed behind to bake. What came back was barely enough to feed them, and what they ate was bread, mostly boiled. Most of the baking fell to St. Ignatius. His eyes had grown weak from crying so much, and he could not go out. Forty days went by like that, with nothing in them but prayer.

Four squares at the same hour

At the end of the forty days a fourth man, Jean Codure, arrived from Treviso. That made four of them, and the four decided to preach. That is when they picked their four squares, climbed up, and shouted.

Their Italian was not very good. They spoke it with a foreign accent, and sometimes they used foreign words instead. Plenty of the people who stopped to watch were struck to the heart, and hurried back to hear them again. The other companions, spread through the towns round about, started doing the same in their own market places.

The sermons set the city talking, and a number of townspeople began to live more devout lives. And after that day, more food came in to the four men in the house with no door.

The Mass St. Ignatius did not say

Several of the companions got ill from all the preaching and the hard life, Simon Rodrigues worst of all. St. Ignatius set out to see him at once with St. Peter Faber. St. Ignatius had a fever. He walked so fast that St. Peter Faber fell behind and had to be waited for on the road. They found Rodrigues glad to see them, and before long he was better.

At the end of this month the companions who had not yet said a first Mass said it at Vicenza. St. Ignatius did not. When he was ordained in June, he had decided to wait a year before saying his first Mass. He wanted to prepare better, and to ask the Blessed Virgin Mary to place him near her Son. At Vicenza he decided to keep to the year.