As we step away from the life of Ignatius, what view, personality characteristic, or aspect of his life did you identify with the most? Did you see any of yourself in him? Did you learn anything from him that you can apply to your own life?

Having learned Ignatius life, his mysticism is the first thing that comes up to my mind when i think of him. I identify myself with this characteristic because, like everyone else, I have goals we want to reach. Ignatius had the goal to help save souls and become the best saint and he followed his desire for these ambitions by doing the magis. I have a lot of goals, short term and long term. For short term I have to graduate and to get into graduate school. For long term I have to finish graduate school. But what am I going to do to get there? Like Ignatius, i have to be a mystic, in the sense that I see myself as capable of accomplishing my goals. This is easier said than done because I can have all the confidence in the world but I also need to work for my goal. It sounds corny , but by being a mystic I can believe in myself and do everything possible to work for my goal. This means doing the magis, never settling for the mundane. Being a mystic and doing the magis are not only for my benefit, but also for the community. With all the work I can do, It is only fair that I give back to the community in some way.

I have had these goals in mind since before I knew about Ignatius. But the story of Ignatius directed me to know exactly how to achieve my life goals. Ignatius’s life taught me that by having a goal and doing the magis I can achieve my goals. Being a mystic and doing the magis is not only for the sake of accomplishing life’s goals, but for the sake of becoming a person who works for that they want.

Man in the Red Bandana

The story of “The Man in the Red Bandana” is not what everyone’s first thought is when they think of the word hero. In a way, Wells can be compared to Ignatius, he wanted something, and seized it, he made a difference in people’s lives, and he is still remembered and honored by the people he has touched.

Wells, wanting to be a firefighter, enrolled as a cadet in the New York Fire Department. After graduating college, he got a desk job but it was not quite what he wanted to do. During the attack, Wells used his firefighter training to escort around twelve people to safety. He did not stop at the first few people, he kept trying to help as many as he could. He was fulfilling his dream. He can be compared to Ignatius in this way because Ignatius was a soldier at first. After Pamplona and being out of commission, he found out what he actually wanted to do, become the best saint there was. He established Los Compañeros de Jesus. Both Ignatius and Wells followed their dream.

The way Ignatius impacted peoples lives is different from the way Wells did it, but having an impact on someones life is a positive thing no matter how it is done. Ignatius showed people that God can be found in a ones experiences. On another note, Wells saved lives during a time of need. He did not give up. Those people have him to thank for being where they are today.

Today, 521 years since Ignatius was born, and 11 years since September 11, everyone remembers these two individuals who changed peoples lives for the best. We have Ignatius, Basque saint whose goal was to help save souls and we have Wells, lacrosse player, business men, and firefighter, a hero who gave his life to help others no matter the circumstances.

Response to the reading on Heroic Leadership

The first reading on this book taught me a good amount of who Jesuits are. Although it takes a business point of view on the matter, I see how it can relate to Jesuits. I learned that they were a group of ambitious people who had a goal and worked for it with haste, all in the name of God.

Like Ignatius, the author had an epiphany. The epiphany lead to him writing this book. The book would show people what it is to really be a leader by using the Jesuits as an example. He says Jesuits have revolutionary leadership principles and that these principles should not be limited to Jesuits, but applied to every-day life: “We can be leaders in everything we do” (5). An example of this said leadership applied by the Jesuits is that they were founded in 1540 by ten men, and within a decade they had more than thirty colleges established under their name.

The author says that now-days leadership is a superficial thing, whereas the Jesuits would use a more deep leadership style that could be defined as the four pillars of success: self-awareness, ingenuity, love, and heroism. These four pillars basically mean that a leader must: understand his/her strengths and weaknesses, adapt to the world, engage others in a positive attitude, and motivate others and themselves through ambitions.

In this chapter the reader finds out that you do not need to follow all these steps on how to become a leader to be one. People are leaders every day, in small or bigger things. The most important thing to take from this chapter is that you cannot talk about being a leader to be one, you have to live leadership.