Robert_Wild_-_Catherine_Doherty_Servant_of_God

the people in the world.” (Ibid. 148–49) It was the beginning
of her association with the Jesuits.
I read once that, for centuries, Russians called all
Catholic priests “Jesuits.” Catherine the Great had given
the Jesuits sanctuary after their Order had been dissolved
in the 18th century. (She didn’t pay much attention to
Papal statements.) They ran educational institutions in
Russia. Perhaps they were the only Catholic priests most
Russians ever met or knew about. She said St. Ignatius was
present on every retreat she ever made.
When she seriously entered upon a spiritual life she
often choose Jesuits for directors. One of the first was Fr.
Filion, the superior general of the English Jesuits in
Canada. Ignatius taught her how to achieve strength of
soul, and how serious it is to offend God by sin. Ignatius
was her guide through the purgative way: “He shows me
the delights of the rugged path. It is he who fashioned the
staff of my will, he who shod my feet with the sturdy sandals
of clear faith, he who gave me the warm habiliments
of penance and mortification.” (Ibid. 149)
Significantly, many pages of her early diaries are filled
with the Ignatian exercise approach to daily meditation: a
reading, reflection, prayers in response, and resolutions.
These diaries are an inexhaustible mine of insight into
Catherine’s spiritual journey. Ignatius was her master in
laying the firm foundations of her spiritual life.
A surprising—for me—man in her life, when I first
read this Chapter in her book, was the gentleman she met
on the eve of fleeing Russia. It was during one of those
gray and anxious days when spiritual darkness was
descending on Russia. Catherine was listless, restless. She
went into her father’s library and reached for a familiar
book. But it turned out to be another, a new, unfamiliar
one, The Confessions of St. Augustine. She read for four
hours non-stop. “He tore off the veil of his soul for me. He
revealed the battles that went on in it against the world,
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