25 May 2023
Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter/ Optional Memorial of St. Gregory VII
St. Ignatius Loyola was a reformer, and the early Jesuits were seen as a congregation of reformed priests. The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius include meditations to assist in “the reformation of one’s way of living in his state of life” (SpEx 189).
The Roman calendar today holds up another great reformer: St. Gregory VII. He was a monk who became pope in 1073 and brought changes to a Church that was not in the mood to be reformed. He cut back on the buying and selling of ecclesiastical offices. He cut back on sexual abuse by priests and bishops. He cut back on civil interference with ecclesiastical government. His reforms were not universally welcomed. His enemies tried to depose him from office, to take the papacy away from him. They failed. Only after Gregory’s death was there wide-spread appreciation of his reforms.
Cutbacks are painful but necessary for reform, and, like it or not, each one of us needs to be reformed from time to time. Let us have the courage, like St. Ignatius or St. Gregory, to cut back whatever stands in the way of our own interior reform. These cuts are really just pruning. God prunes every branch that bears fruit so that it may bear more fruit. May we always abide in Jesus Christ, the true vine, and bear fruit that will remain.