Peter Faber, the Spiritual Exercises and living the 'Magis'

(from Partners - Chicago Jesuits' magazine)
Fr. Edward W. Schmidt, SJ

Jesuits typically live and work in cities. Not always, of course. And not by design. Retreat centers, in fact, usually want a more remote location. But in the piazzas and at the crossroads of European cities the early Jesuits began their preaching. This reality may reflect a restless energy in the ministry of early Jesuits, a desire to maximize their impact by preaching where crowds gathered. Here one found the rich and the poor, the old and the young, the sinner and the saint, all together. Here one could reach more people in the shortest time. A Jesuit shorthand word that expresses our desire to serve where the need is greatest is magis, which is Latin for “more.” What more can we do to serve God’s people? Where is God’s greater glory? Magis found a natural home in the city. In the US cities where Catholic immigrants from Europe settled, Jesuit churches were usually downtown. There too the high schools and universities grew up. Most Chicago Province Jesuits work in Chicago, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, or Lexington or in surrounding suburbs. Most US Jesuit schools are in major metropolitan areas. (Once, when Bishop Simon Bruté in Indiana wanted to give the Society of Jesus a piece of property at the south bend of the St. Joseph River in Indiana, superiors considered the location “too remote”: no school could be successful there.)

This urban thrust does not, however, reflect the founders’ places of origin. Loyola—ancestral home of St. Ignatius— was a remote castle up a lonely river valley in northern Spain not far from the rocky Atlantic coast. Xavier—where St. Francis was born—was only slightly less remote near a road that crossed the Pyrenees between Spain and France.

Bl. Peter Faber, however, the third founder we honored in the Jesuit Jubilee Year, must take the prize for remote place of origin. His birthplace, Villaret, lies high in an Alpine valley, where the roads disappear into surrounding mountains whose tops merge with the clouds and whose flanks are home to very content sheep.
Peter tended these sheep in his early years, but his active mind wandered far over the mountains. He found a way to attend primary school and in 1525 made his way to the University of Paris, where he met Ignatius and Francis and the other men who were the nucleus of the Society of Jesus. A few years later in Rome, they set the structures and gained papal approval for this new religious order.

The Church needed reform, and the Reformation needed these scholars from Paris with their energy and new ideas. Pope Paul III sent Peter to the Catholic-Protestant dialogues in Germany, and Ignatius sent him to Spain and Portugal, where he introduced the new Society of Jesus. The pope sent him to the Council of Trent, but his years of walking from city to city in service of his mission had worn him out. He died in Rome in 1546 before he could set off for Trent.

We remember Peter especially for his deep spirituality and insight into how God works in our world. One of the great gifts of St. Ignatius to the Church was his Spiritual Exercises, the basis for a retreat in which one strives to find God’s will and to follow it. Peter Faber learned the Spiritual Exercises from Ignatius and became a great director of them. Peter was also gentle: in an era of fierce polemic his quiet voice preserved every person’s dignity.

In 1997 we celebrated some other Jesuit anniversaries. With three other Chicago Jesuits, I visited the places where two Jesuit saints were buried. (One of these was St. Peter Canisius, whom Peter Faber drew to the young Society of Jesus.) And though Villaret is not, as I noted above, really close to anywhere, we were able to visit there without too much detour.
The Jesuits in Geneva phoned down to a woman who keeps the keys to Faber’s baptismal church. We drove the modern roads that breach the ancient mountain valleys. We found her farmhouse, and she led us to the church close by. In English quickly translated from French prayer books, we celebrated the Eucharist in this holy place. Afterwards, the kind woman served us a light lunch and some wicked mountain brew.

I remember the prayer and the fellowship of that day. I remember the roads. But mostly I remember that valley—green, rich, deeply alive. This valley nourished the soul of Peter Faber and sent him forth to learn and to teach and to proclaim God’s love. He brought his raw, gentle mountain strength to the noise and the vibrant clutter of Europe’s cities and taught them what life can mean.

We can find God anywhere, and—more impor-tant—God finds us anywhere. Peter Faber taught this by who he was and by what he did. And if he is, as Jesuit scholar John Padberg argues, “a saint too little known,” he endures like his mountain valley, richly reliable and gently inspiring.

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Fr. Edward W. Schmidt, SJ, is the provincial of the Chicago Province of the Society of Jesus.