Memorial of Saint Vincent de Paul, Priest
St. Ignatius Loyola drafted a small document, the so-called Five Chapters, that expressed the identity of the group of men that was being formed around him. This document was translated into Latin and presented to Pope Paul III in 1539. The following year, on September 27, the pope gave written confirmation of the newborn Jesuit order in an apostolic bull entitled Regimini militantis ecclesiae (to the government of the Church militant). Therefore, today marks the 484th birthday of the Society of Jesus.
That little document that St. Ignatius wrote has chapters on the purpose of the Jesuit order, its obedience to the Pope, its poverty, its internal government, and various other points. The Five Chapters has very little to say about prayer and spirituality, but what it does say is worth considering. It says that all Jesuits who are priests are obliged to recite the divine office, which is the official daily prayer of the Roman Catholic Church, consisting principally of psalms and scripture readings, but also with hymns and lives of the saints and sermons from the fathers of the Church.
Praying the divine office makes a contribution to the spiritual treasury of the Church. It nourishes those who pray it, even if they find it tedious or repetitive. It also unites the entire Church in prayer, those living and those deceased, those in monasteries, those in cathedrals, those in oratories, those in chapels, those in their bedrooms. The divine office is an important, but under-appreciated, component of Ignatian Spirituality.