Wednesday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time
Today marks the anniversary of the death of a famous Jesuit intellectual, a Spaniard, named Francisco Suarez, who died in 1617. Although Suarez is neither a canonized saint nor a doctor of the church, he remains an object of study for philosophers and theologians even to this day. Let us make him also the object of our study as we strive to appreciate all aspects of Ignatian spirituality.
St. Ignatius Loyola strongly recommended scholasticism (cf. The Spiritual Exercises section 363). Suarez took this recommendation to heart and directed his intellectual energies towards the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. Suarez wrote De Fine Hominis largely as an amplification of Thomas Aquinas. For example, in De Fine Hominis disputation 4, section 3, Suarez affirms that beatitude is man’s final end (idem autem est finis ultimus et beatitudo), and adds that beatitude is obtained by the vision, the love and the enjoyment of God (Dei visio, et amor ac fruitio). There are, admittedly, other types of happiness, but they turn out to be temporary and, therefore, not fully satisfying.
It is characteristic of Ignatian spirituality to seek constantly for true beatitude, and to reject those apparent delights that draw me away from it, whether those delights be sinful in themselves, or even only occasions of sin. Furthermore, each individual voluntarily denies certain pleasures, either to grow in self-discipline or to make reparation for faults or to imitate Jesus Christ who chose to suffer so that we might be truly happy.