The Feast of St. Ignatius Loyola: July 31
An excerpt from The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything:
Iñigo of Loyola was 30 years old when his leg was shattered by a cannonball during the siege of a castle by the French military in Pamplona in 1521. This pivotal incident, which might have been merely a tragic setback to another person, marked the beginning of his new life.
After Ignatius stayed in Pamplona for several days, his French captors, who treated him "with courtesy and kindness" brought him back to his family’s castle, where the doctors reset the bone. To do so they had to break the leg. "This butchery was done again," he writes in his Autobiography. His condition worsened and those around him, worried that he was about to die, arranged for him to have the last rites.
Finally he recovered. Yet Ignatius noticed something troubling: the bone below one knee had been poorly set, shortening his leg. “The bone protruded so much that it was an ugly business.” Now his vanity took over. "He was unable to abide it," he wrote, "because he was determined to follow the world." He couldn't abide the idea of being thought unattractive.
Despite the pain involved, he asked the surgeons to cut away the bone. Looking back, the older Ignatius recognized his foolishness. "He was determined to make himself a martyr to his own pleasure," he wrote.
During his subsequent convalescence, Ignatius was unable to find books on what he most enjoyed reading: adventure stories and tales of chivalry. The only things available were a life of Jesus and the lives of the saints. To his surprise, he found that he enjoyed the tales of the saints. Thinking about what the saints had done filled him with a sense that they would be "easy to accomplish."
Read the total history:
http://americamagazine.org/content/all-things/feast-st-ignatius-loyola-july-31