Captain refuses Saint Ignatius, saying a saint can walk on water

JAFFA, Ottoman Palestine, October 3, 1523 AD — Saint Ignatius of Loyola had wanted to stay and live in Jerusalem. The Franciscan friars looked after the holy places there, and the friar in charge ordered him to go home with the other pilgrims. Many pilgrims had stayed behind before. Some died and some were taken prisoner, and the friars had to pay to get them freed. St. Ignatius obeyed. He sailed for home without a single coin for the voyage.

St. Ignatius had no money because he would not carry any. He was thirty-two and had been a soldier. The year before, at a shrine of the Blessed Virgin at Montserrat, in Catalonia, he had left his sword and dagger hanging by the altar. Since then he had lived on what he begged.

Early that year, he set off for Barcelona to sail for Italy. He knew neither Latin nor Italian, so his friends urged him to take a companion. St. Ignatius answered that he “wished only three virtues,–Faith, Hope, and Charity.” With a companion, St. Ignatius told his friends, he would look to that man for food when he was hungry and for help when he was worn out. He wanted to depend on God alone. Before he got on the ship, he left five or six coins on a bench on the wharf. People had given them to him.

The pilgrims’ ship from Jaffa reached Cyprus on October 14, 1523 AD. There the pilgrims split up to find places on other ships. Three ships in the harbour were going to Venice. One belonged to Turks, and one was small, old and in bad repair. The third was large, strong and well equipped, and it belonged to a rich Venetian. Winter was the dangerous time to be at sea, and it was close. So most of the pilgrims paid for places on the big Venetian ship.

St. Ignatius could not pay. Some of the pilgrims went to the captain of the Venetian ship. They asked him to carry St. Ignatius for nothing, as an act of charity, because St. Ignatius was a holy man. Many of them pleaded with the captain and praised St. Ignatius to him, but the captain said no.

If St. Ignatius was a saint, the captain said, he could walk on the water as other saints had done before him. The captain said St. Ignatius would not sail on this ship. The same pilgrims then went to the captain of the small, old ship, and he said yes without any trouble.

The storm on the first evening

The three ships left together at daybreak at the start of November. A good wind was behind them, and for some hours they sailed well. Toward evening a violent wind came up. It raised a heavy sea and drove the three ships apart.

The big Venetian ship, the one that had refused St. Ignatius, was driven back onto the coast of Cyprus. It broke apart there. The people on board were saved. The Turkish ship sank in the same storm with everyone on it.

The small ship, old and leaking, was battered by wind and waves for a long time. It stayed afloat. It came to land in Apulia, on the coast of Italy. It was repaired there and then went on toward Venice.

By then it was midwinter, very cold, and snow was falling. St. Ignatius had a pair of short, rough trousers that stopped at the knee and left his legs bare. He also had a black sleeveless jacket torn open at the shoulders, a light cloak made of rough animal hair and a pair of shoes.

St. Ignatius reached Venice in the middle of January 1524 AD, nearly dead from the cold. He had left Cyprus two and a half months before. In Venice he met again a man who had given him a place to stay before he sailed for Jerusalem. The man gave him a piece of cloth. St. Ignatius folded the cloth over many times and wore it against his stomach to keep out the cold.