14 November 2022
Jesuit Memorial of Saint Joseph Pignatelli, Priest
As we enter into the final two weeks of Ordinary Time and come to the end of the liturgical year, we hear in the first readings from the very end of the Bible: the Book of Revelation, visions of Christ at the end of time seen by John. After the opening vision, John is given letters to send to seven of the earliest Christian communities. Each letter shines the light of divine judgment upon the Church in that city, revealing both their virtues as well as where they have fallen and need to rise once again in the Christian life. The Church in Ephesus is proven to be hard-working, clever enough to detect false apostles, and patient in afflictions. However, their toughness needs to be balanced, and they also need to repent. “Yet I hold this against you: you have lost the love you had at first.” (Revelation 2:5)
St. Joseph Pignatelli lived to see the Suppression of the Society of Jesus in the late 1700’s. As a young man, he had joined the Jesuits and became a great priest. However, in his early thirties, political forces (largely nationalist politicians suspicious of this international religious order with special devotion to the Holy Father) worked together to pressure the Holy See to disband the Society of Jesus. Jesuits were forced to choose between becoming diocesan priests or joining another religious order, or simply forced to go into exile. Thousands were sent from Latin America and elsewhere throughout the world to the Papal States in Italy. Young and old waited on ships for months as port after port refused to let them land and seek a new home. It was a time of great trial for the last of the Jesuits.
St. Joseph Pignatelli could have given into despair and bitterness as he watched his brothers suffer. Instead, he became a man of action. He began to work with anyone he could to start finding homes for these priests and brothers trapped on those ships. He did massive fundraising to make sure that the elderly Jesuits had the care they needed to live out the last of their days, even though they were far from their homelands. More than this, St. Joseph sought to continue to be a man of the Church. He did heroic fundraising for a number of charitable causes that had nothing to do with the plight of his brother Jesuits, remaining devoted to the causes of the same Holy See which had ordered the Suppression. Patient in affliction, St. Joseph Pignatelli held on to the love he had at the beginning of his vocation. The Lord rewarded his patient hope and love, and in the last ten years of his life St. Joseph got to see the Holy Father begin to welcome men to live out the call of the Society of Jesus once more in Parma and Naples. The Society of Jesus was restored around the world in 1814, just three years after St. Joseph Pignatelli died. May he pray for us that we may be patient and charitable, especially in difficult times!