Ignatius looks for persons who are well versed in secular learning and in a variety of expressions of human culture as well as in doctrinal and spiritual matters. The great and urgent challenges facing the world and Church today require persons in whom these means are thoroughly integrated. Otherwise there is danger of imprecise thought and ineffective action, as well as of being at the mercy of ideologies. He urges us to work for the greater glory of God because the world desperately needs men and women of competence and conscience who generously give of themselves for other. For Ignatius, the test of effective love is to be found in deeds, not words.
Real love involves self-sacrafice.
Thus what we do becomes the litmus test of our verbal assertions of love. This eventually led to the foundation of the Society of Jesus. But Ignatius also encouraged many other men and women to come together the better to live and to serve. That he should do so is not surprising, for the experience of God and his saving power and of intimacy with Jesus Christ leads naturally to the desire to share the experience with others and to bear fruit in real life. The example of Ignatius invites us to reflect on the usefulness that more structured forms of lay association may have for the achievement of our aims.