Today, Jesuit churches celebrate another one of our own: Saint Joseph Pignatelli (1737–1811), a Spanish-born Jesuit priest who lived during the difficult period of the Suppression, a time when Jesuits were expelled from various kingdoms in Europe and eventually suppressed worldwide, when in 1773 Pope Clement XIV gave in to pressure from different monarchs and issued a decree that dissolved the Jesuits everywhere. For forty years, Pignatelli lived as an exile, becoming a shepherd to his ex-Jesuit companions and working toward the restoration of the Society—which occurred three years after his death, in 1814.
For many, the suppression of the Jesuits must have felt like an episode from today’s Gospel: As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the Son of Man; they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage up to the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. The Jesuits were teaching and laboring one day, and the next they were exiles, and soon after, they were not even Jesuits anymore. But through the grace of fidelity, Father Pignatelli and his companions persevered; rather than return to what was left behind, they chose to walk forward with Christ.
Let us ask the intercession of Joseph Pignatelli and all the saints that, when we are faced with unexpected calamity, we may remain faithful to Christ and thus be saved.