Showing posts with label Biographies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Biographies. Show all posts

Wednesday 2 February 2022

Fr. Constantine Joseph Beschi, SJ (8 November 1680 – 4 February 1747)

In 2022 on February 4th, in addition to the martyrdom of St. John de Britto, we also celebrate the 275th death anniversary of Fr. Constantine Joseph Beschi (8 November 1680 – 4 February 1747) known in Tamil Nadu as Veeramamunivar.

Beschi  died at Ambalakaadu in Thrissur, Kingdom of Cochin (now a part of the state of Kerala), and is buried at St. Francis Xavier's Church, Sampaloor, where his tomb can be seen. In 1968, the State of Tamil Nadu erected a statue for Beschi on the Marina beach in Chennai in recognition of his contribution to Tamil language and literature.

Friday 28 January 2022

4 lessons from Rutilio Grande, priest, prophet and martyr by Ana Maria Pineda

Courtesy: AMERICA magazine

Residents of El Paisnal, El Salvador, sit below a mural depicting Rutilio Grande, S.J., following a Mass marking the 25th anniversary of his death on March 12, 2002. (CNS photo by Edgar Romero)Rutilio Grande, S.J., and his two traveling companions, 15-year-old Nelson Rutilio Lemus and 72-year-old Manuel Solórzano, had been driving to the small town of El Paisnal in El Salvador to celebrate the novena for the town’s patronal feast of St. Joseph when they were gunned down on the road on March 12, 1977, in Aguilares, El Salvador. Decades after the murders, the Vatican announced on Feb. 22, 2021, that it would recognize the three as martyrs.

The news of Father Grande’s beatification was welcomed by many Salvadorans, who claim Father Grande as one of their own. Outside of El Salvador, Father Grande is primarily remembered as a close friend of Archbishop Oscar Romero. Often overlooked is the fact that at the outset of the civil war in El Salvador, Father Grande was the first priest killed. Indeed, he was the first-born of the martyrs of this new era. His prophetic stance and his solidarity with the poor of his native country led directly to his death. His influence on the church of El Salvador and those who followed him on the road to martyrdom merits profound consideration.

What precisely can be learned from how he lived his life? What might it inspire us to do with our own lives? Father Grande’s personal contributions to the poor of his beloved country, his commitment to the church and the Jesuit community, his love for the people that he generously served, his love for his many friends and family all resonate in the commitment that led to his martyrdom.

1) A life’s value is not determined by one’s net worth.

Rutilio Grande was born on July 5, 1928, in the impoverished hamlet of El Paisnal, El Salvador. His childhood was marked not only by poverty but by the trauma of his parents’ separation and the death of his mother. Her death and his father’s absence required his five older brothers to struggle to provide economic support for young Rutilio and his paternal grandmother. Despite the hardships, Rutilio never lost sight of his humble beginnings or forgot the religiosity taught to him by his grandmother: a people’s faith. The simple joys of interacting with the people of the town and being part of the religious and cultural festivities remained with him throughout his life. He took pride in being Salvadoran. As an adult, Rutilio often described his mestizo identity as a “cafe con leche,” a mixture of coffee with milk.

As he always carried himself with dignity, he demonstrated that being born into poverty did not determine a person’s worth. From personal experience, he understood not only the suffering of the poor, but also the hopes and aspirations they cherished for themselves and their families. This profoundly personal history became foundational for his priestly ministry. It shaped his teaching of the Gospel and resonated in his embrace of the teachings of the Second Vatican Council. Although Father Grande’s priestly formation occurred prior to Vatican II, its spirit captured his ministerial imagination.

2) Holiness can be found in the everyday.

During several periods early in his priestly life, Father Grande was assigned to minister in the seminary of San José de la Montaña in San Salvador.  Encouraged by his studies at Lumen Vitaea renowned catechetical and pastoral institute in Brussels, Father Grande transformed the traditional formation of the seminary by following the directives of Vatican II. He profoundly believed that future priests had to come into direct contact with the realities people were living. To increase the pastoral sensibilities of the seminarians, he organized trips for them to visit families in the surrounding towns. There the young men had the opportunity to experience firsthand how ordinary men and women were living.

Later, as pastor of the parish of Our Lord of Mercies in the town of Aguilares, Father Grande led a team of Jesuits in an innovative pastoral endeavor, one similar in spirit to the one he had created for the diocesan seminarians. His visionary pastoral innovations included a collaborative team approach and a preferential option to minister in rural areas among peasant workers. The goal of the pastoral activity was to evangelize men and women who in time would become agents of their own human destiny. In this, Father Grande’s vision echoed the opening words of Vatican II’s “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World”: “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ.”

His own humble beginnings sustained and nourished his zeal for this new vision. Despite the many opportunities for higher education he had as a Jesuit, he never distanced himself from the town or people who shaped his life. Even long after his death, people remembered Father Grande’s humanity and the ways he showed them a new example of priesthood. He would often say that God was not to be found in the clouds, but rather firmly present on earth in the lives of the people. In fact, Father Grande’s pastoral approach was paving the way to the creation of a new model of church in El Salvador.

3) We all have a missionary call.

Just as Father Grande had earlier adopted an innovative approach to the formation of seminarians, when he was assigned to the parish in Aguilares he invested his energies and efforts into new approaches to the formation of lay men and women. He sometimes said: “Now we’re not going to wait for missionaries from the outside. Rather, we must be our own missionaries.” In this effort, the young pastor and his Jesuit teammates began to visit people in both the rural areas and the towns. In time, their personal approach drew people to the celebration of the Eucharist, the sacraments and Bible study, resulting in a vibrant community of Christians who were actively engaged in the life of the parish.

Father Grande’s ministerial approach was so effective that within a year he had 362 “delegates of the Word” participating in the evangelization efforts of the parish. Some of the lay men and women actively joined the team of Jesuits to collaborate in actualizing the pastoral plan for the parish; others assumed pastoral tasks that matched their newly discovered talents and skills. The evangelizing method in Aguilares was bearing much fruit, and the Gospel was engendering the formation of committed Christians.

Gradually, as men and women who had little formal education reflected on the Gospel, they began to question the injustices they suffered. Campesinos were discovering the liberating spirit of the Word of God and learning how to incorporate it into their lives. Newly enlightened, the people sought out ways to organize themselves in order to demand what was justly theirs. Father Grande did not discourage them; rather, he continued to make them aware of the Gospel message, and of the truth that God had not destined people to live in poverty.

At the same time, he was clear in how he understood his priestly ministry.  He would often tell the people: “I don’t belong to one political party or another. What I am doing is preaching the Gospel.” But as the people gained greater understanding of their rights as human beings, they began to look for ways to secure those rights. It was inevitable that they would become politically involved.

Parallel to the formation of the laity, Father Rutilio gave special attention to a liturgy transformed by the spirit and directives of Vatican II. His childhood engagement in the popular religiosity of his hometown of El Paisnal gave him great insight into and respect for how the faith was lived out by ordinary people. He felt that popular practices that the clergy had previously dismissed as misguided forms of religiosity should be recognized as authentic expressions of faith. In fact, Father Grande insisted that the popular religiosity of the ordinary people be honored and respected and kept as a central part of the pastoral plan of the parish.

For him, prayer, popular expressions of faith and liturgy were integral to the real lives of the Salvadoran people. Consequently, he guided people in reclaiming the values inherent in their devotions and cultural celebrations. Having taught courses on the constitution of the Republic of El Salvador in the minor seminary, he often incorporated that material in his sermons and eucharistic celebrations, linking constitutional rights to the Gospel message. He understood that salvation history in the context of the modern world required that prayer and good works be integrated. All of these pastoral efforts inspired by Vatican II led the way in creating a new way of being church within the contemporary realities of El Salvador.

4) God transforms our wounds.

Amid celebrations of the beatification of Father Grande, those who knew him in life consider that, of Rutilio Grande’s many contributions to the church in El Salvador, the most notable was his work in aligning the church with the actual life of the people. But we are also led to reflect on another contribution he made: showing us what it means to be a saint, to be holy in the modern world. Early in life, Father Grande had suffered a catatonic episode from which he gradually recovered, but which had long-lasting effects on his health. Few people knew just how fragile his health was as an adult, when he dealt with ongoing bouts of depression and self-doubt.

His superiors in the Society of Jesus noted in his personal file: “At the beginning of his religious life, he manifested a clear nervous weakness…. He had psychological depressions and it was feared for his mental health…. He was aware of that limitation, suffered for it, but he did not let it control him. He accepted it.  He worked to dominate it and he overcame it.” Father Grande learned to live with his condition by placing his trust completely in God, and by taking steps to help himself. Every day until his death, he placed himself with utter simplicity in the hands of God.

Even in his fragility—or perhaps through it—this beautiful son of El Salvador accomplished great things for the universal church, the church in Latin America and especially the church in El Salvador, by living and giving his life for the faith. His fragility may have been a difficult cross to bear, but it highlights the beauty of his holiness, his saintliness.

In the final moments of his life, Father Grande rendered his complete surrender as the faithful son of El Paisnal and the church as he said: “Let God’s will be done.” Just as the people of El Salvador will celebrate the beatification of one of their own on Jan. 22, their beloved “Father Tilo,” let us join with them in crying out “¡Presente!”

Ana Maria Pineda

Ana María Pineda, R.S.M., is an associate professor of religious studies at Santa Clara University. A native of El Salvador, she is the past president of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians in the United States. Her latest book, Rutilio Grande, Memory and Legacy of a Jesuit Martyr, was published in January.


Fr. Rutilio Grande - A sign post for the Church

 One more Jesuit Blessed

Different Jesuit sources give different numbers  of Jesuit Saints and Blessed. Approximately there are 52 Jesuit Saints and 146 Blessed (these numbers are subject to correction. Once I get the official information from Rome, I will let you know) leaving aside a great number of Jesuit Venerables and Servants of God.

Today on 22nd January 2022, one more will be added to the list of Jesuit Blessed.  Fr. Rutilio Grande (05 July 1928 – 12 March 1977) was murdered along with his 70 years old sacristan Manuel Solórzano and 15 year old Nelson Rutilio Lemus on 12th March 1977 by El Salvador Army. All three of them and the Italian Franciscan priest Cosme Spessotto (shot dead on 14th June 1980) will be beatified. Here below the life sketch of Fr. Rutilio Grande is given. It is written by Fr. Martin Maier SJ

Pratapananda Naik, SJ

A signpost for the Church  by Fr. Martin Maier SJ

The beatification of Rutilio Grande in San Salvador comes at a time of transformation in the Latin American Church similar to the upheaval that followed the 1968 Medellín conference

Beatifications and canonisations can be pointers to the way the Church is moving. On 22 January 2022 in the Plaza Salvador del Mundo in El Salvador’s capital, San Salvador, the Jesuit Rutilio Grande, who along with his lay companions, Nelson Rutilio Lemus and Manuel Solórzano (murdered on 12 March 1977) and the Italian Franciscan priest, Cosme Spessotto (shot dead on 14 June 1980) – will be beatified. 

They represent the new start the Church made after the Second Vatican Council. They represent a missionary Church that has gone to the social and existential peripheries. They represent a persecuted Church, which has produced numerous martyrs for faith and justice.

Rutilio was born on 5 July 1928, the youngest of seven children, into a poor family in the village of El Paisnal in El Salvador. In 1945 he joined the Jesuits. He followed the order’s normal training in philosophy and theology in Venezuela, Ecuador, Spain, France and Belgium. 

Until 1972 he taught in the national ¬seminary in San Salvador, where he tried to include in formation the spirit of the Second Vatican Council and the second conference of the bishops of Latin America at Medellín in 1968, which had recognised that the level of poverty on the continent “cried out to Heaven”. In the same spirit, in 1975 the Jesuit order redefined its mission in the world as both preaching of the faith and struggling for justice. Rutilio put the preferential option for the poor at the centre of a new concept of a missionary rural ministry. His aim, Rodolfo Cardenal wrote after his death, “was to train priests who would be at the service of the people and not clerical bosses”.

Rutilio was not appointed rector of the seminary. Instead, in autumn 1972 he switched to parish work in Aguilares, a community which included his birthplace. Here, with a team of Jesuits and women Religious, Rutilio began to put his ideas into practice. The overwhelming majority of the people in the community lived in the harshest poverty. The land was in the possession of a handful of wealthy owners. Grande often said in his sermons: “God is not far away in Heaven lying in a hammock; he is in our midst. For God it matters whether the poor are in distress or not.” His approach reflected the “popular theology” developed in Argentina by Lucio Gera, a distinct position within liberation theology that was also to be a strong influence on Rutilio’s fellow Jesuit, Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Rutilio realised that popular piety needed to be freed from magical elements and evangelised. And by reviving the November maize festivities, he showed respect for the ancestral indigenous trad¬itions while inculturating Christian faith. But the heart of Rutilio’s pastoral approach was the base communities, in which laypeople read the Bible together in small groups. They connected the Word of God with people’s lives by following the three-step “See-Judge-Act” process associated with the Young Christian Workers. Rutilio trained men and women to be “delegates of the Word”, ¬messengers of the Word who in turn created new groups. 

Things began to happen. When the peasants of Aguilares saw the lives they lived in the light of the Word of God, they realised that injustice and oppression are a recurring theme in the Bible, and that, through the prophets and through Jesus, God took the side of the poor. Rutilio encouraged the peasants to organise in unions and to demand their rights to a decent life and just wages. Other priests followed this example. But the shift to a preferential option for the poor taken at Medellín was far from being accepted by the whole Church in Latin America. The landowners saw these priests as a threat to their interests, and foreign priests – and Jesuits in particular – were accused of stirring up unrest and promoting Communism. At the beginning of 1977, the first priests were tortured and expelled, among them the Colombian-born Mario Bernal, the parish priest of Apopa, near Aguilares.

On 13 February 1977 there was a protest demonstration in Apopa against the expulsion of Mario Bernal. Over 6,000 people took part. At the end Rutilio celebrated Mass, and delivered a fiery sermon. “It is dangerous to be a Christian around here!” he said. “It is dangerous to be a real Catholic! It is prac¬tically illegal to be a genuine Christian in our country.” He quoted statistics to illustrate the injustice and extreme poverty in El Salvador. Then he went on: “But we dress all this up with false hypocrisy and lavish constructions. Woe to you hypocrites! You go around outwardly getting a reputation as Catholics, but within you are filthy evil! You are Cains and crucify the Lord when he goes around under the name of Manuel, under the name of Luis, under the name of Chabela, under the name of an ordinary rural worker!” 

Rutilio concluded with the image of Jesus returning to El Salvador: “Very soon the Bible and the gospels will not be allowed to cross the border. All that will reach us will be the covers, since all the pages are subversive ... So that if Jesus crosses the border at Chalatenango, they will not allow him to enter. They would accuse him, the man-God … of being a revolutionary, a foreign Jew, of confusing people with exotic foreign ideas, anti-democratic ideas … ideas against God. … they would undoubtedly crucify him again.”

This sermon was Rutilio Grande’s death sentence. On 12 March 1977, as he was travelling to a liturgy with his sacristan, 70-year old Manuel Solórzano, and 15-year-old Nelson Rutilio Lemus, he was murdered in an ambush by members of the National Guard, acting in alliance with the large landowners. The three bodies were wrapped in cloth and laid in front of the altar in the church of Aguilares. Late that night the newly appointed Archbishop of San Salvador, Óscar Romero, arrived. Even though Rutilio Grande was a friend of Romero’s, Romero had been somewhat critical of his pastoral approach in Aguilares: there is a remark to this effect in one of his reports to the Pontifical Commission for Latin America in Rome. But as he stood before Rutilio Grande’s corpse, Romero was shaken to the core. He asked to see the priest’s simple room and muttered to himself, “he really lived in poverty”. He decided to celebrate a Mass in the middle of the night. He took these words as the text for his sermon: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). 

Romero announced that he would not take part in any official government event until the crime of Rutilio’s murder was solved. He decided that on 20 March only one Mass would be celebrated across the whole archdiocese, in front of San Salvador’s cathedral. It was a tense situation. Fearing the large crowds who would attend, the military government did all it could to prevent the Mass. The papal nuncio, too, was against the idea. Romero was not to be swayed. Over 100,000 people gathered for the Mass, which was broadcast on radio. Romero thought that the murderers might be listening. “Brother criminals, we love you,” he said, “and we ask God to move your hearts to repentance, because the Church is incapable of hatred; the Church has no enemies.”

The murder of Rutilio and his companions brought about a profound change in Romero, which some have described as a “conversion”. A timid, conservative bishop became a prophetic defender of the poor. Romero himself later said: “If they killed him for what he did, then I have to follow the same path. Rutilio opened my eyes.” In popular tradition, Romero’s change of heart is described as “Rutilio’s miracle”. The beatification of Rutilio Grande is particularly important for Pope Francis, as was the canonisation of Óscar Romero in 2018. As provincial of the Argentine Jesuits, he had followed their -stories carefully. In an address to the Central American bishops during the World Youth Day events in Panama in 2019, he proposed Óscar Romero – who gave his life for his flock – as the model of a bishop. He knew the life of Rutilio Grande from the biography Rodolfo Cardenal began writing shortly after his -murder. In 2015, when he met Cardenal in Rome, Francis echoed the popular phrase: “Rutilio Grande’s greatest miracle is Archbishop Romero.”

Rutilio Grande’s beatification comes at a time of new movements and changes in the Church of Latin America and the Caribbean, comparable with the transformation of the Church that followed the historic conference in Medellín in 1968. At their fifth conference in Aparecida, Brazil, in 2007 the bishops called for a new missionary impetus. The drafting of the final document was co¬ordinated by the then Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio. It was at Aparecida that Bergoglio first became aware of the significance of the Amazon region and its indigenous population, and the threats they faced. In 2019 the Amazon synod was held in Rome; its vision of a Church with an Amazonian face ¬suggested “new paths for the Church and an integral ecology”.

A new kind of event took place in Mexico in November 2021. A sixth general conference of Latin American and Caribbean bishops was due, but the Pope suggested instead an assembly that would include priests, Religious and laypeople, and it was preceded by a wide-ranging consultation process. The assembly showed that the old hierarchical structures in the Church may have outlived their usefulness; for the Church to survive, laity and especially women must take responsibility for the Church’s mission. Much of what is today on the renewal agenda of the Church in Latin America was anticipated by Rutilio Grande. In his rural ministry in Aguilares, he called for a new emphasis on mission, for the greater involvement of the laity, for respect for indigenous traditions, and for a prophetic contribution to political and structural change. The beatifications of Rutilio, his companions, and of Fr Spessotto are a signpost for the Church on its road to social, cultural, ecological and synodal conversion.

Martin Maier SJ worked as a country pastor in El Salvador for two years after his ordination and has taught at the University of the Jesuits (UCA) in El Salvador. He has written a number of books on liberation theology and Óscar Romero.

For more information and photos -

https://www.jesuits.global/2022/01/19/fr-rutilio-grande-together-with-two-lay-companions-is-beatified-in-el-salvador/

WE NEED A RUTILIO GRANDE TODAY!

 WE NEED A RUTILIO GRANDE TODAY! By Fr Cedric Prakash, SJ

22 January 2022

Jesuit Fr. Rutilio Grande and his two lay associates 72-year-old Manuel Solorzano and 15-year-old Nelson Rutilio Lemus (and Italian Franciscan missionary Fr Cosme Spessotto who was also martyred) will be beatified in San Salvador.

For the people of El Salvador, 22 January 2022 will be more than just a red-letter day. Three of their sons, Jesuit Fr. Rutilio Grande and his two lay associates 72-year-old Manuel Solorzano and 15-year-old Nelson Rutilio Lemus (and Italian Franciscan missionary Fr. Cosme Spessotto who was also martyred) will be beatified in San Salvador. The first three were assassinated by the death squads of Salvador’s then-ruling regime on 12 March 1977. On that fateful day, the three had been driving to the small town of El Paisnal to celebrate the novena for the town’s patronal feast of St. Joseph when they were gunned down. Their brutal murders brought universal condemnation.

Among the first to openly condemn this heinous crime was Archbishop Oscar Romero. He was appointed the Archbishop of San Salvador just three weeks earlier. For years, Romero and Rutilio were good friends but poles apart in their thinking, very particularly in their responses to the terrible realities which gripped the poor Salvadoreans. As a young priest and later as a Bishop, Romero was known for his conservative thinking. He never wanted to rock the boat by disturbing the ‘status quo’. He was afraid to be on the wrong side of the powerful and other vested interest groups of El Salvador. In Spite of a long-standing friendship with Rutilio, he refused to be drawn into the latter’s line of thinking.

Rutilio, on the other hand, was steeped in the faith-justice mandate of the 32nd General Congregation of the Society of Jesus and the vision of Vatican II. The poor and exploited of the country were his major concern. Rutilio wrote, preached and spoke with passion and clarity about the injustices suffered by the rural population and he stood with them as they organised to seek land reform and social development. He left no stone unturned to highlight the sufferings of his people and to make their struggles his own. Unlike Romero, Grande did not hesitate to take up cudgels against the powerful. The landowners came to see Rutilio’s pastoral programmes as a great threat to their interests. In doing so he made several enemies from the most powerful of his country!

When he preached, Rutilio did not mince words. His most famous sermon was the one he gave on 13 February 1977 at Apopa; many people consider that sermon to have provoked his death. 

In the sermon, Rutilio proclaims the equality of the children of God and criticizes the Salvadoran government for deporting a priest, Mario Bernal. Rutilio Grande uses the metaphor of the communal table to declare the love of God’s kingdom and that God has created the material world for everyone to share. In addition, he reminds us that the Gospel message of truth and justice is often considered subversive, especially when surrounded by unjust and oppressive social structures.

He said, “It is dangerous to be Christian in our midst! It is dangerous to be truly Catholic! It is practically illegal to be an authentic Christian here, in our country! Because out of necessity the world around us is rooted in an established disorder, in front of which the mere proclamation of the Gospel becomes subversive. That’s the way it must be, it cannot be otherwise! We are chained by disorder, not order! What happens is that a priest or a simple Christian who practices his faith according to the basic and simple guidelines of Jesus’ message, must live faithfully between two demanding pillars: the revealed Word of God and the People. The same people, the great majority, the marginalized, the sick who cry out, those who are enslaved, those on the margins of culture – 60 percent illiterate- those who are alienated in a thousand ways, those who have been living in a feudal system for centuries.” That sermon given more than forty years ago is still very valid today.

In his powerful biography, ‘The Life, Passion and Death of Jesuit Rutilio Grande’, Fr Rodolfo Cardenal SJ says that, “Rutilio Grande was arguably the first Jesuit to be martyred after the Society of Jesus had proclaimed its commitment to the service of faith and the promotion of justice as two inseparable elements of the Jesuit mission. He preached and embraced the struggle for faith and for justice not in an academic, theoretical context but among and alongside the poor parishioners of Aguilares, with all the difficult issues and contradictions that such a ministry involved. 

Like Archbishop Oscar Romero (1917–1980), he did not quit; he accepted his probable fate knowingly, even with fear and trepidation. His example provides for Christians today an extraordinary model of a parish priest who, without naivety and with Ignatian discernment, made an authentic option for the poor and oppressed.”

Grande’s death was a terrible shock to Romero. In a powerful homily ‘the Motivation of Love’, at the funeral, Romero said, “We speak of the motivation of love, sisters and brothers. There should be no feeling of vengeance among us. As the bishops stated yesterday, we do not raise our voices for revenge. We are concerned about the things of God who commands us to love him above all things and to love others as we love ourselves (Mark 12:30-31). Yes, it is true that we have asked the authorities to investigate this criminal act, for they have in their hands the instruments of this nation’s justice, and they must clarify this situation. We are not accusing anyone, nor are we making judgments beforehand. We hope to hear the voice of an impartial justice because, even with the motivation of love, justice cannot be absent. There can be no true peace and no true love that is based on injustice or violence or intrigue”.

For good measure, Romero added, “The government should not consider a priest who takes a stand for social justice as a politician or a subversive element when he is fulfilling his mission in the politics of the common good.” He also said openly and emphatically, “Anyone who attacks one of my priests, attacks me. If they killed Rutilio for doing what he did, then I too have to walk the same path”. The death of his friend was a turning point in the life of Romero. From that day onwards, he wholeheartedly worked for the rights of the exploited and the excluded. He was assassinated three years later, on 24 March 1980. Today he rejoices with his dear friend in heaven!

 In a letter (3 January 2022) addressed to the whole Society of Jesus, on the occasion of the Beatification, Jesuit Superior General writes, “The growing awareness of the need to promote a transformation of the inhuman circumstances of life of the peasant majority, a situation caused by the unjust structures of Salvadoran society, sparked the social and political struggles of this convulsive period in the history of this Central American country. Many members of the ecclesial communities participated actively in the social and political struggle. For Father Rutilio, his team, and his close collaborators, who were committed because of their faith to the struggle for the justice of the Gospel, there was a clear distinction between pastoral work and partisan political militancy. However, for the minorities who felt their power to be under threat, Rutilio was seen as an obstacle to be removed. The Church, in recognizing the martyrdom of Rutilio, Manuel, and Nelson, judges that their lives were taken because of the faith that gave their lives meaning, the faith to which they gave witness by shedding their blood.”

Rutilio is Salvadoran, a Catholic and a Jesuit! The likes of him, however, cannot be contained by history, time and space. His life and his message serve as an inspiration to all and transcend narrow confines. Given our grim realities, the context and the cries of the people, the Church in India and in fact the entire country desperately need a Rutilio Grande today! Will there be one?

The Author: Fr Cedric Prakash, SJ is a human rights, reconciliation and peace activist/writer.

Wednesday 20 October 2021

SAINT ISAAC JOGUES

 

Saint Isaac Jogues
Death: 10/18/1646
Nationality (place of birth): France

Isaac Jogues (1607-1646) became well known in France when he returned after escaping from slavery among the Mohawks in Canada with his hands badly mutilated from torture. Despite his sufferings, he returned to the missions where he was eventually martyred. Jogues was born in Orleans, France on Jan. 10, 1607 and entered the Jesuits at Rouen when he was 17 years old. Two months after celebrating his first Mass Feb. 10, 1636, he was on his way to the Jesuit mission in New France. He wrote his mother of his great joy when he landed in Quebec and saw native Americans waiting on shore. After only a month and a half, he set out on his first mission to the Hurons, traveling the 900 miles to Ihonatiria by water. The party spent 19 days paddling and carrying the flotilla of canoes around obstacles. During the voyage, the Hurons gave Jogues the name ""Ondessonk"" (""bird of prey"").

Jogues met his hero, Father John de Brébeuf at Ihonatiria, and began learning the Huron language. The first problem arose when a smallpox epidemic broke out in the settlement and people blamed the missionaries for bringing the disease. When the epidemic passed, the settlement was abandoned and Jogues moved first to Teanaustayé and then on to Sainte-Marie, a thriving enterprise where missionaries had taught people how to cultivate the land and raise cattle, pigs and fowl. A group of Chippewas who had come to Sainte-Marie admired the prosperous settlement and invited the Jesuits to establish a mission among them. Jogues visited them in September 1641 and found them eager to hear about God, but the small number of Jesuits made it impossible to expand to new tribes at that time.

During the winter and spring of 1642, Jogues prepared neophytes at Sainte-Marie for baptism on Holy Saturday; one of the 120 adult converts was Ahtsistari, the tribe's greatest war chief. Although the French missionary felt contented that Christianity was beginning to take root, he wanted to convert the whole Huron nation and offered himself in prayer as a sacrifice to make that happen.

In June Jogues accompanied a group of Hurons back to Three Rivers, near Quebec, for supplies. The voyage was hazardous because the Iroquois were at war with the French. Jogues tried to get more Jesuit priests for the mission, but none were available. The provincial suggested he take René Goupil, a layman who was a surgeon and had promised to work with the Jesuits, remain celibate and obey the Jesuit superior. Jogues, Goupil and the Hurons set out Aug. 1 to return to Sainte-Marie, but were attacked one day into the voyage by a war party of 70 Mohawks who took three Frenchmen and 20 Hurons as prisoners. The Mohawks tortured Jogues by partly mutilating his fingers. Goupil asked Jogues to accept him into the Society of Jesus as a brother, given the peril they faced, and Jogues accepted his vows en route.

The Mohawks headed back to their home village passing through the St. Lawrence, Lake Champlain and into Lake George. Finally on August 14 the flotilla arrived at Ossernenon (which today is Auriesville, New York) on the bank of the Mohawk River. The prisoners endured the torture of running the gauntlet between two lines of warriors who beat the captives as they staggered by. Jogues and Goupil had to endure other torments; a woman cut off Jogues' thumb. Then the two Frenchmen became slaves of the chief who had captured them. Goupil was killed on Sept. 29, 1642 when someone saw him make the sign of the cross over a child, but Jogues remained a slave even while ministering to the Hurons who had been captured with him. When he accompanied several Mohawks on a trading trip to the Dutch settlement of Fort Orange (Albany), the Dutch tried unsuccessfully to ransom him. Finally they suggested he try to escape. After some hesitancy, Jogues hid in one of the Dutch ships where he remained for six weeks until his captors' anger at losing him subsided. Eventually he made his way to New York and then back to Europe.

He landed in Brittany on Christmas morning and made his way to Rennes where his Jesuit brothers received him as a hero. Jogues' only regret was his inability to celebrate Mass because of his mutilated hands: on the left hand the index finger was nothing but a stub and the thumb was missing while the thumb and index finger of the right hand were badly disfigured. He was unable to hold the host correctly, but Pope Urban VIII granted him a dispensation to celebrate Mass. Jogues visited his mother in Orléans but was eager to return to the missions so he set sail in May, arriving at Three Rivers in time to attend the July peace conference between the French and the Indians representing the Iroquois federation. The final treaty needed the approval of the Mohawks; Jogues was chosen as an envoy to obtain their consent. He surprised his former captors by arriving as the ambassador of the powerful French nation and offering them that government's gifts. They accepted the terms of the treaty, and Jogues offered pastoral care to the Christian Huron prisoners remaining there. Then Jogues returned to Three Rivers on July 3 where he was supposed to remain.

In September the Hurons asked the Jesuit missionary to accompany them on an embassy to the Mohawks who had invited their former enemies to arrange details of the treaty. Jogues took along another layman as his assistant, John de La Lande, an experienced woodsman who had settled in New France before offering to help the Jesuits. The small party left Quebec Sept. 24, 1646. A few days into the trip they learned the Mohawks were on the warpath again. Only one Huron volunteered to continue with Jogues and La Lande. Meanwhile, the Mohawks in Ossernenon had suffered a crop failure and an epidemic, blaming it on the chest of vestments and books that the Jesuit had left behind him when he visited them as French ambassador. Warriors set out in search of some Frenchman to kill and were delighted when on October 17 they captured Jogues and his two companions.

The captors were beaten on their way back to Ossernenon where people cut strips of flesh from the neck and arms of the Jesuit. Some of the clans were friendly toward the missionaries and wanted peace with the French, but the war-like Bear Clan wanted to kill Jogues, which they did the next day when he was struck down as he entered a lodge. La Lande was advised not to leave another lodge where he was under protection, but he tried to slip out at night and was immediately killed by some warriors who were waiting to ambush him. The bodies of the two Frenchmen were thrown into the river while their heads were exposed on the palisades protecting the village.

Originally Collected and edited by: Tom Rochford,SJ

SAINT JOHN DE BRÉBEUF

Saint John de Brébeuf

Death: 03/16/1649
Nationality (place of birth): France
John de Brébeuf (Jean de Brébeuf, 1593-1649) was the first Jesuit missionary in Huronia (1626) and a master of the Indian language. He founded mission outposts, converted thousands to the faith and inspired many Jesuits to volunteer for the missions of New France. Massive in body, gentle in character, with the heart of a giant, he was known as the apostle of the Hurons.

Brébeuf was born in Normandy, France and entered the Jesuits after he finished his university studies. In a spirit of humility, he asked to be a brother, but his superior convinced him to study to be a priest. He taught at a secondary school-level college in Rouen and then was ordained a priest on Feb. 19, 1622. That same year he became the treasurer of the college. The tall, rugged Jesuit responded to an appeal made two years later by the Franciscan Recollects who asked other religious orders to help evangelize the native peoples of North America. Along with four other Jesuit companions, Brébeuf arrived in Quebec June 19, 1625. While Brébeuf waited for the Hurons to arrive, he joined a group of Montagnais in a hunting expedition that lasted from that October until the following March. The young French priest learned to accommodate himself to the native way of travel and diet.

When summer came a group of Hurons came to Cap de la Victoire to barter for trade goods. Brébeuf, another Jesuit and a Franciscan went to meet them and asked to accompany them back to their homelands. The Hurons were willing to take the first two, but not Brébeuf who towered over them and was much too big for their canoes; they were afraid he would be too much work to carry. The missionaries offered enough gifts to overcome reluctance, and Brébeuf was permitted into a canoe on the condition he would not move. On July 26, 1626 Brébeuf began his journey to Huronia. When the travelers came to cascades or places where they had to carry the canoes and all the gear overland, Brébeuf's great strength won his hosts' admiration. They named him, ""Echon"" (""the man who carries the load"").

The party arrived in Huronia in late August, and the missionaries settled in Toanché, a village of the Bear Clan of the Huron nation. Brébeuf first had to learn the Huron language, which he devoted two years to studying, along with the people's customs and beliefs. He had a talent for languages and wrote a Huron grammar, translated a catechism and prepared a phrase book. His success with language did not carry over into converting adults; the only converts he made during the winter of 1628 were the dying whom he baptized.

Brébeuf's missionary efforts were cut short when he was sent back to France after the French and English ended their war. An English blockade had kept the French from resupplying the colony, so Brébeuf took 20 canoes loaded with grain to Quebec on July 17, 1629. Two days after he arrived, the French capitulated and he was expatriated with other missionaries to France.

For two years Brébeuf resumed his work at the college in Rouen, but returned as soon as possible to Canada when it was restored to France by a treaty with the English. He arrived in Quebec in May 1633, but could not get back to Huronia until the following summer when the Hurons came with a small flotilla of 11 canoes rather than their normal one of more than a hundred. They had suffered from an epidemic and did not want to be burdened carrying missionaries back with them, but Brébeuf and Father Anthony Daniel prevailed upon them. The two were separated from their hosts during the journey but found the Hurons at a village named Taendeuiata. They welcomed Brébeuf back, delighted that he had kept his word to return. The Jesuits constructed a cabin just outside the village to house the three priests and five lay helpers who made up the missionary community. Brébeuf taught the others the Huron language and customs. Finally in 1635, he and Daniel began their missionary work, working with children during the day and adults at night. After a year of hard work, they had baptized twelve people, four infants and eight adults just as they were dying.

Competition between Christianity and native religion was a constant fact of life. When drought hit the land, native religious leaders blamed it on the crucifix on the priests' cabin; the Jesuits countered with a novena and a procession around the village. When which rain the prayers, the Jesuits interpreted this as an answer to their prayers. When Father Isaac Jogues arrived in 1636, a smallpox epidemic broke out among the Jesuits and their helpers and then spread to the Hurons. The epidemic lasted all winter; during that time the Jesuits baptized more than a thousand people, all at the point of death. Some Hurons accused the Jesuits of causing the epidemic in order to make conversions. When Brébeuf started a mission at Ossossané, the council of village chiefs blamed him for the disease that lingered on there and decided he should die. That same conclusion was reached for all the Jesuit missionaries during a council of the Huron nation which met in March 1640.

Brébeuf then moved to the mission headquarters, Sainte-Marie, and started working with another tribe, the Neutrals, but he had to flee to Quebec after he was accused of plotting with Hurons' enemies, the Seneca Clan of the Iroquois, to betray his hosts. From June 1641 to August 1644 Brébeuf took care of getting supplies for the mission. Finally he was able to return to Sainte-Marie, but the danger from the Iroquois was escalating. Fathers Isaac Jogues and Anthony Daniel had already been martyred. In September 1648 Father Gabriel Lalemant joined the mission. He and Brébeuf left Sainte-Marie for their weekly tour of the missions on March 15, 1649 and spent the night at Saint Louis village. The Iroquois attacked a nearby village during the night, so the Hurons sent their women and children to hide in the forest. The two Jesuits chose to remain with the men, who were mostly Christians. At dawn the next day, Iroquois swarmed over the palisades and took the Hurons who remained as captives. A renegade Huron among the attackers let the Iroquois know that they had captured the mighty Echon, most powerful of the Jesuit medicine men.

After some preliminary torture, the Jesuits and the Huron captives were forced to run naked through the snow to a nearby village where others waited. The captives had to run the gauntlet and then the two Jesuits were led to two posts where they were to be killed. First the captors heated a string of hatchet blades and then placed the red-hot iron on Brébeuf's shoulders. He did not yell for mercy, so his tormentors covered him with resinous bark which they set aflame. He continued encouraging his fellow Christians to remain strong. Then the Jesuit's captors cut off his nose and forced a hot iron down his throat to silence him; they poured boiling water over his head in a mockery of baptism and then successively scalped him, cut off his feet and then tore out his heart. He was 46-years old and had spent 20 years in New France.

Originally Collected and edited by: Tom Rochford,SJ

Monday 2 August 2021

St. Peter Faber

Saint Peter Faber
Saint Peter Faber

Death: 08/01/1546

Nationality (place of birth): France

St. Peter Faber, SJ, a founder of the Society of Jesus, died  in 1546. Faber was a theologian and a gifted preacher who worked tirelessly for the reform of the church in Germany and Portugal. An active participant in the controversies of the Reformation, he counseled Catholics to maintain good relationships with Protestants: If we want to be of help to them we must be careful to regard them with love, to love them in deed and in truth, and to banish from our own souls any thought that might lesson our love and esteem for them. We have to win their good will so that they will love us and readily confide in us. The man who can speak with [Protestants] on a holy life, on virtue and prayer, will do far more good for them than those who, in the name of authority, set out to confound them by sheer weight of theological argument. —In The Quiet Companion , Mary Purcell

 Pray St. Peter Faber’s prayer for detachment: Cast from me every evil that stands in the way of my seeing you, hearing, tasting, savoring, and touching you; fearing and being mindful of you; knowing, trusting, loving, and possessing you; being conscious of your presence and, as far as may be, enjoying you. This is what I ask for myself and earnestly desire from you. Amen.

The text is copied from "An Ignatian book of days" written by Jim Manney

Following is the letter of Fr General Adolfo Nicolas written in 2013

With profound pleasure I am writing to the whole Society on the occasion of Pope Francis’ proclamation that Peter Faber, “the silent companion” of the first generation of Jesuits, is a saint. On day coinciding with his birthday, our Holy Father wanted to present to the universal Church a gift that is very significant and precious to him.

The canonization of Peter Faber happens to coincide with another great event of our time – a Jesuit Kairos: the Bicentenary of the Restoration of the Society (1814). Without any doubt our beloved Savoyard companion can provide us incentive and drive for a dynamic restoration of our lives as Jesuits, personally as well as corporately, lives which are never complete for we are always on pilgrimage. That transparent, spontaneous, and childlike faith that Faber showed can help us persevere as “companions in His Company,” convinced in an Ignatian way that “it is the Lord who does all things in us, and for whom all things operate, and in whom they all exist” (Memorial, 245).

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Peter Faber chose this beginning verse of Psalm 102 to humbly open the door of his heart in his Memorial. It sums up in a few profound words the essential stance of Faber before life and before God: blessing, memory, and gratitude.

Although the human and religious stature as well as the great deeds of some of his Jesuit companions (Ignatius, Xavier, Laínez, Borgia, or Canisius) may have led us to overlook or even ignore the person and accomplishments of Faber, today we recognize in his life and legacy a way of proceeding that is genuinely Ignatian and profoundly rooted in the person of our Lord; Faber was truly a companion of Jesus.

On the first day of August 1546 Faber passed away in Rome, barely forty years of age. He was the second of the First Companions of Paris to die, following Jean Codure who had died in August 1541. Faber had arrived in the Eternal City from Coimbra a few days before, arriving exhausted by the long and hard journey. Although his friends Laínez, Salmerón, and Le Jay were waiting for him in Trent with hopes of seeing him, word began to spread in Europe: “Master Faber is now found at a better Council, because he passed away from this life on the first of August” (Monumenta Lainii I, 52).

What does “Master Faber” continue to teach us almost 470 years after his death in that manner so much his own, a pedagogy in a soft voice? And what can we personally learn if “we open our heart and let Christ occupy its center”? (Memorial, 68)

Providentially, at the end of September 1529 three university students came to live together on the third floor of the Collège Sainte-Barbe as students of the Arts: Peter Faber, Francis Xavier, and Ignatius of Loyola. After five years of course work and shared experiences, at Montmartre on the 15th day of August 1534, Faber presided at a Eucharist at which the first seven “friends in the Lord” fixed their eyes and hearts on the same desire: Jerusalem. It was the beginning of an unanticipated project, the Society of Jesus, which continues with vitality and surprises today.

When Ignatius left for Azpeitia, his birthplace, in March of 1535, “Master Faber” remained “as our elder brother” (Lainez to Polanco, FN I, 104), overseeing the welfare and growth of the group. What type of leadership did Peter Faber exercise at that time? Thanks to his attention and friendship, the “least Society” did not cease to grow in number and virtue. By means of conversation and the Spiritual Exercises he first incorporated Claude le Jay, Jean Codure, and Paschase Broët in the group. In later years Francis Borgia and Peter Canisius joined the Society. The fire that was already burning in his heart began to light other fires. In Faber we recognize the brother who watched over and cared for the “union of souls,” the conservation and the growth of the body, the construction of the building that would be his beloved “company of Jesus,” for which he constantly desired “a birth in good desires of holiness and justice” (Memorial, 196).

In 1577, near the end of his life, Simon Rodriguez remembered Peter Faber who had died thirty one years earlier: “he had the most charming gentleness and grace that I ever saw in my life for dealing and conversing with people…. With his modesty and charm he won for God the hearts of those he dealt with.” Faber is for us a Master of the rhetoric of the divine, someone who “in whatever subject and without disturbing anyone found material for thinking and talking about God” (Monumenta Broetii, 453). At the beginning of 1534, he made the Spiritual Exercises with Ignatius in the neighborhood of Saint Jacques in Paris. From that time on, as no one else, Faber penetrated the inner understanding of this method of conversation between the Creator and the creature, which he so delicately and accurately shared with others. Ignatius said of him that “he had the first place in giving the Exercises” (Luis G. de Câmera, Memorial, FN I, 658). In Faber we recognize a man of the Ignatian charism, molded by the method of the Exercises, disposed to look for and find God in all things, and always creative when the opportunity arose for “providing a method and order” for prayer to quite different people in the most diverse situations.

His conversation bore fruit because it sprang from an inner life inhabited by the presence of God. Getting inside Faber we discover the mystic in history and in the world, rooted in time but living from the gift that always and in all things “descends from above” (Spiritual Exercises, 237). For Faber any circumstance, place, or moment was an occasion for an encounter with God. Master Faber was, above all but without claiming to be so, a Master of prayer. He understood that his friendship with Jesus was based on the mysteries of the Life of Christ, “lessons of the Spirit” for his vocation and his Christification, which he contemplated piously and from which he knew how “to reflect on so as to obtain some benefit.” Faber prayed in constant colloquies with Jesus and Mary, with the angels and the saints, with the martyrs and his “private saints,” among whom he counted his great tutor and master of his youth, Peter Veillardo, whom he considered a saint. He prayed about the elements of nature or the passing of seasons, about obstacles, about infirmity. He prayed for the Church, for the Pope, the Society, for heretics and persecutors. He prayed with his body and his senses. He was a believer in continual prayer, in a life infused by Mystery; he was convinced that God had made him a temple, and he remained in constant dialogue with Him.

Perhaps it is in this spirit, rooted and grounded in Christ, that his apostolic activity, so varied and fruitful, makes sense: teaching catechism to children, preaching in court, giving colloquies in Germany, founding colleges in Spain (Alcalá, Valladolid) and Germany, teaching lessons of theology in Rome. Faber was given the experience and desire for being what another companions would later call a “contemplative in action.”

Among his other activities, Faber stood out as a Master of Reconciliation. Ignatius knew Faber’s extraordinary gifts for conversation and did not hesitate to send him to the very center of a Europe in conflict. His was one of the most significant examples of that ministry to which the first Jesuits gave themselves so generously: “reconciling the estranged” (Formula of the Institute, 1550, 1). Similar to the spirit of our last General Congregation, Faber worked hard to maintain unity and to establish peace in a Europe that was theologically convulsed and challenged by religious questions and political-ecclesial conflicts: Worms (1540) and Ratisbon (1541) were some of the places where Faber sought understanding and harmony, which he saw with sorrow becoming ever more distant. And Faber united piety and erudition so naturally – a wise and discreet spiritual manner of expressing a deep theological foundation– that he was able to make the appropriate gesture or “say the right word.” He carried deep within himself one of the guiding principles of the Exercises: “to try hard to save the proposition of one’s neighbor” (Spiritual Exercises, 22): “whoever would like to help the heretics of this time should have much charity towards them and love them truly,” communicating “with them familiarly” (Monumenta Fabri, 399-402). At the Society’s origin, Faber’s manner expressed our contemporary vocation of being present at the frontiers and being bridges of reconciliation.

Following the footsteps and example of his beloved companion in Paris, Faber was also a Pilgrim who embodied the mysticism of travel so proper to the first Jesuits. “It seems that Faber was born to never remain still in any one place,” wrote the Secretary of the Society (Monumenta Ignatiana, Epistolae I, 362). He traveled thousands of miles throughout the Europe of his time, a sign of his abnegation, availability, and obedience. He was frequently found engaged in “so many travels and exiles” (Monumenta Fabri, 419-420) that as a “perpetual stranger… I will be a pilgrim wherever the will of God leads me as long as I live” (Monumenta Fabri, 255), a will to which Faber spontaneously bound himself with his sense of obedience, making himself an echo of those words of the Centurion to Jesus: “come and he comes, go and he goes” (Mt 8:9). “For Him alone – for Jesus – have I changed houses many times […] not infrequently have I gone to stay in places contaminated and dangerous for my body,” there was cold, fatigue, intemperate weather, and poverty, but Faber always knew how to maintain his contemplative outlook: “may he be blessed forever who protected me and all those who were in the same situation I was” (Memorial, 286).

Today, with serene happiness and “internal joy,” we have reason to continue to see in Peter Faber our “elder brother.” His manner of being present is a blessing for us; he is a reminder to be humble and to constantly return to our “least Society;” staying close to him, we distance ourselves from temptations to empty triumphalism or the powerful forces of arrogance. Faber is a call to a life of “having before our eyes first of all God our Lord,” looking always to do His will in this His Institute (cf. Formula of the Institute, 1). Faber is a call to the care and attention to the Body of the Society, a call to dialogue and unconditional openness, of obedient availability and confident surrender. With Faber nearby, judgment is enlightened; “You have given all to me – to You, Lord, I return it.”

On the occasion of the canonization of this humble “friend in the Lord,” we once again recognize, with “true happiness” (Spiritual Exercises, 329) and grateful wonder, the nearness of God to his Society of Jesus. Today his Infinite Goodness reaches and blesses us with the memory and presence of Peter Faber among us.

The current season of Advent is a call to make level the ways of the Lord and prepare his coming. May the Lord Himself give us light to bring to action the best we are for the generous service of the Church.

Sincerely yours,

Adolfo Nicolás, S.I. Superior General

Rome, 17 December 2013

Tuesday 22 June 2021

St Aloysius Gonzaga

 Who was the real St. Aloysius Gonzaga?

James Martin, S.J.

The Vocation of Saint Aloysius (Luigi) Gonzaga,ca. 1650 Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Met Museum

June 21 is the Feast Day of one of the most misunderstood saints in the Catholic church: St. Aloysius Gonzaga.  A little history, then, may be in order to help us begin to understand this complex and holy young man, today one of the patrons of youth.  One must, in a sense, recover the real Aloysius, and the true Luigi.

Aloysius Gonzaga needs rescuing from the hands of overly pious artists. On holy cards and in countless reproductions, the young Jesuit is usually depicted clad in a jet black cassock and snowy white surplice, gazing beatifically at an elegant crucifix he holds in his slim, delicately manicured hands. For good measure, he is sometimes portrayed gently grasping a lily, the symbol of his religious chastity.

There is nothing wrong with any of those images per se, except when they obscure what was anything but a delicate life and prevent young Christians (and older ones, for that matter) from identifying with someone who was, in fact, something of a rebel.

On March 9, 1568, in the castle of Castiglione delle Stivieri, in Lombardy, Luigi Gonzaga was born into a branch of one of the most powerful families in Renaissance Italy. His father, Ferrante, was the marquis of Castiglione. Luigi’s mother was lady-in-waiting to the wife of Philip II of Spain, in whose court the marquis also enjoyed a high position.

As the eldest son, Luigi was the repository of his father’s hopes for the family’s future. As early as age four, Luigi was given a set of miniature guns and accompanied his father on training expeditions so that the boy might learn, as Joseph Tylenda, SJ, writes in his book Jesuit Saints and Martyrs, “the art of arms.” He also learned, to the consternation of his noble family and without realizing their meaning, some salty words from the soldiers. So anxious was Ferrante to prepare his son for the world of political intrigue and military exploit that he dressed the boy in a child-sized suit of armor and brought him along to review the soldiers in his employ. By the age of seven, however, Luigi had other ideas. He decided that he was less interested in his father’s world and more attracted to a very different kind of life.

Aloysius Gonzaga needs rescuing from the hands of overly pious artists.

Nevertheless, Ferrante, mindful of Luigi’s potential, remained enthusiastic about passing on to his son the marquisate. In 1577, he sent Luigi and his brother Ridolfo to the court of a family friend, the grand duke Francesco de’Medici of Tuscany, where the two were to gain the polish needed to succeed in court. But again, rather than being fascinated with the intrigue and (literal) backstabbing in the decadent world of the Medicis, Luigi withdrew into himself, refusing to participate in what he saw as an essentially corrupt environment. At ten, disgusted by his situation, he made a private vow never to offend God by sinning.

It was around this time that Luigi began the serious and often severe religious practices that strike contemporary observers as prudish at best and bizarre at worst, especially for a child. It is certainly the main reason that the life of St. Aloysius Gonzaga sometimes repels even devout Catholics today. He fasted three days a week on bread and water. He rose at midnight to pray on the stone floor of his room. He refused to let a fire be lit in his bedchamber even in the bitterest weather. And he was famously concerned with keeping his chastity and safeguarding his modesty. Butler’s Lives of the Saints notes that from as early as age nine, Luigi maintained “custody of the eyes,” as spiritual writers say. “We are told, for instance, that he kept his eyes persistently downcast in the presence of women, and that neither his valet nor anyone else was allowed to see his foot uncovered.”

These practices, so admired by earlier generations, are what turn some contemporary believers away from Gonzaga and what appears to be his almost inhuman piety.

There is nothing wrong with any of those images of St. Aloysius, except when they obscure what was anything but a delicate life and prevent young Christians (and older ones, for that matter) from identifying with someone who was, in fact, something of a rebel.

But when considering these aspects of his life, one must remember three things. First, the prevailing Catholic piety at the time, which warmly commended such practices, obviously exerted a strong influence on Luigi. The young nobleman was, like all of us, a person of his times. Second, Luigi adopted these practices while still a boy. Like some children even today, Luigi was given less to mature moderation and more to adolescent enthusiasm. Third, and perhaps most important, without any religious role models in his life, Luigi was forced, in a sense, to create his own spirituality. (There were no adults to say, “That’s enough, Luigi.”) Desperate to escape the world of corruption and licentiousness in which he found himself, Luigi, headstrong and lacking any adult guidance, went overboard in his quest to be holy.

Yet, in later years, even he recognized his excesses. When he entered the Society of Jesus, he admitted as much about his way of life. “I am a piece of twisted iron,” he said. “I entered religious life to get twisted straight.” (This famous saying of his, according to the Jesuit scholar John Padberg, may also have referred to the twisted character of the Gonzaga family.)

In 1579, after two years in Florence, the marquis sent his two sons to Mantua, where they were boarded with relatives. But unfortunately for Ferrante’s plans, the house of one host boasted a fine private chapel, where Luigi spent much time reading the lives of the saints and meditating on the psalms. It was here that the thought came to the marquis’ son that he might like to become a priest. Upon returning to Castiglione, Luigi continued his readings and meditations, and when Charles Cardinal Borromeo visited the family, the twelve-year-old Luigi’s seriousness and learning impressed him greatly. Borromeo discovered that Luigi had not yet made his first communion and so prepared him for it. (In this way a future saint received his first communion from another.)

Yet these honors only strengthened Luigi’s resolve not to lead such a life. While in Madrid, he found a Jesuit confessor and eventually decided to become a Jesuit himself. His confessor, however, told him that before entering the novitiate, Luigi needed first to obtain his father’s permission.In 1581, still intending to pass on to Luigi his title and property, Ferrante decided that the family would travel with Maria of Austria, of the Spanish royal house, who was passing through Italy on her return to Spain. Maria was the widow of the emperor Maximilian II, and Ferrante saw an excellent opportunity for his son’s courtly education. Luigi became a page attending the Spanish heir apparent, the duke of Asturias, and was also made a knight of the Order of St. James.

When Luigi approached his father, Ferrante flew into a rage and threatened to have Luigi flogged. There followed a battle of wills between the fierce and intransigent marquis of Castiglione and his equally determined sixteen-year-old son. Hoping to change his son’s mind, the marquis brought him back to the castle at Castiglione and promptly sent Luigi and his brother on an eighteen-month tour around the courts of Italy. But when Luigi returned, he had not changed his mind.

Worn out by his son’s persistence, Ferrante finally gave his permission. That November, Luigi, at age seventeen, renounced his inheritance, which passed to his brother Ridolfo, a typical Gonzaga with all the bad habits thereof. His old life over, Luigi left for Rome.

Aloysius’s determination to enter religious life, even in the face of his father’s fierce opposition, filled me with admiration when I was a Jesuit novice.

On his way to the novitiate, Aloysius (as he is most often called today) carried a remarkable letter from his father to the Jesuit superior general, which read, in part, “I merely say that I am giving into your Reverence’s hands the most precious thing I possess in all the world.”

There is a colossal painting by Guercino hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (pictured above) that shows, in allegory, the moment of Luigi’s decision. From contemporary portraits we know a little of what Luigi looked like, and the painting depicts him with the long nose and slim face of the Gonzaga family. Covered by a marble arch and standing under a canopy of lute-playing cherubim and seraphim, Aloysius, in a black Jesuit cassock and white surplice, looks intently at an angel, who stands in front of an altar and points to a crucifix. Far in the distance under a blue Italian sky is his father’s castle. At Aloysius’s feet lies the symbol of chastity, a lily. Behind him, on the ground, is the crown of the marquis, which Aloysius has relinquished. A cherub hovers in the sky, holding above the young man’s head a crown of another kind, the crown of sanctity.

Aloysius’s determination to enter religious life, even in the face of his father’s fierce opposition, filled me with admiration when I was a Jesuit novice. When I first announced to my parents my own intention to leave the corporate world and enter the novitiate, they too were, at least for a time, upset, and they hoped that I would not join the Jesuits. (They did not, however, threaten to have me flogged.) After a few years, they came to accept my decision and cheerfully support my vocation. But in that interim period, when I was determined and so were they, Aloysius became my patron.

In his single-minded pursuit of God, and especially his willingness to give up literal riches, Aloysius perfectly emblemizes a key meditation of the Spiritual Exercises called the “Two Standards.” In that meditation, St. Ignatius asks the retreatant to imagine being asked to serve under the banner, or “standard,” of one of two leaders—Christ the King or Satan. If one does choose to serve Christ, it must necessarily be by imitating the life of Jesus, choosing “poverty as opposed to riches; . . . insults or contempt as opposed to the honor of the world; . . . humility as opposed to pride.” There are few who have exemplified this as well as Aloysius. So to me he has been a great hero.

Because of the severe religious practices that Aloysius had already adopted, the Jesuit novitiate proved surprisingly easy. As Fr. Tylenda writes, “He actually found novitiate life less demanding than the life he had imposed upon himself at home.” (The disappearance of the constant battles with his father must have given him some relief as well.) Fortunately, his superiors encouraged him to eat more regularly, pray less, engage in more relaxing activities, and in general reduce his penances. Aloysius accepted these curbs. In an essay entitled “On Understanding the Saints,” Richard Hermes, SJ, noted that though Aloysius’s single-minded pursuit of God’s will had led him to embrace some of these extreme penances, “it was the same single-minded obedience which led him to moderate these practices as a Jesuit.”

“There is little to be said about St. Aloysius during the next two years,” says Butler's Lives, “except that he proved to be an ideal novice.” He pronounced his vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in 1587 and the next year received minor orders and began his theology studies.

At the beginning of 1591, a plague broke out in Rome. After begging alms for the victims, Aloysius began working with the sick, carrying the dying from the streets into a hospital founded by the Jesuits. There he washed and fed the plague victims, preparing them as best he could to receive the sacraments. But though he threw himself into his tasks, he privately confessed to his spiritual director, Fr. Robert Bellarmine, that his constitution was revolted by the sights and smells of the work; he had to work hard to overcome his physical repulsion.

At the time, many of the younger Jesuits had become infected with the disease, and so Aloysius’s superiors forbade him from returning to the hospital. But Aloysius—long accustomed to refusals from his father—persisted and requested permission to return, which was granted. Eventually he was allowed to care for the sick, but only at another hospital, called Our Lady of Consolation, where those with contagious diseases were not admitted. While there, Aloysius lifted a man out of his sickbed, tended to him, and brought him back to his bed. But the man was infected with the plague: Aloysius grew ill and was bedridden by March 3, 1591.

Aloysius rallied for a time, but as fever and a cough set in, he declined for many weeks. He had an intimation in prayer that he might die on the Feast of Corpus Christi, and when that day arrived he appeared to his friends better than on the previous day. Two priests came in the evening to bring him communion. As Fr. Tylenda tells the story, “When the two Jesuits came to his side, they noticed a change in his face and realized that their young Aloysius was dying. His eyes were fixed on the crucifix he held in his hands, and as he tried to pronounce the name of Jesus he died.” Like Joan of Arc and the Ugandan martyrs, Aloysius Gonzaga died with the name of Jesus on his lips.

He was twenty-three years old.

His unique sanctity was recognized, especially by his Jesuit confrères, even during his life. After his death, when Robert Cardinal Bellarmine would lead the young Jesuit scholastics through the Spiritual Exercises in Rome, he would say about a particular type of meditation, “I learned that from Aloysius.”

Aloysius Gonzaga was beatified only fourteen years after his death, in 1605, and canonized in 1726.

It was in the novitiate that I was introduced to Aloysius Gonzaga. Actually, it would have been impossible to miss him there: he is one of the patron saints of young Jesuits and is, along with St. Stanislaus Kostka and St. John Berchmans, part of a trio of early Jesuit saints who died at a young age. Frequently they appear together as marble statues in Jesuit churches: Aloysius carrying his lily, John holding a rosary, and Stanislaus clasping his hands and looking piously heavenward.

As a novice, I found it natural to pray to the three—since I figured all of them understood the travails of the novitiate, of Jesuit formation, and of religious life. St. John Berchmans, in fact, was quoted as saying, “Vita communis est mea maxima penitentia”: Life in community is my greatest penance. Now there was someone to whom a novice could pray.

On the other hand, as Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ, once commented, “Well, I wonder what the community thought of him!”

But it wasn’t until two years after the novitiate, when I started working with refugees in East Africa, that I began to pray seriously to Aloysius. Even at the time I wondered why: my sudden devotion came as a surprise. Sometimes I think that one reason we begin praying to a saint is that the saint has already been praying for us.

In any event, I found myself thinking about Aloysius whenever life became difficult in Nairobi—which was frequently. When I was frustrated by a sudden lack of water in the morning, I would silently say a little prayer to St. Aloysius for his intercession. When the beat-up jeep I drove failed to start (once again), I would ask St. Aloysius for a bit of help. When burglars broke into our community and stole my shoes, my camera, and the little cash I had saved up, I asked St. Aloysius to help me hold on to the slender reed of my patience. And when I was stuck in bed for two months with mononucleosis and wondered what I was doing in Kenya, I sought his intercession and encouragement. I figured he knew something about being sick. During my two years in East Africa, I had a feeling that St. Aloysius was in his place in heaven looking out for me as best he could. At the very least, I was keeping him busy.

Courtesy: From My Life with the Saints of Fr Jim Martin SJ

Thursday 7 January 2021

Fr Angelo Secchi (1818 – 1878), Jesuit and Scientist

The year 2018 marked 200 years since the birth of the Jesuit Fr. Angelo Secchi (Reggio Emilia, June 28, 1818 – Rome, February 26, 1878). He was an astronomer, geodesist and founder of spectroscopic astronomy.

From the year 1849 he directed the Observatory of the Roman College, completely rebuilding it with the construction of the first astrophysical observatory in Europe: for this he is considered the founder of stellar and solar astrophysics.

Tuesday 5 January 2021

Fr Antonio Maria Platey, SJ (1672-1719) / Poojya Rajendra Swami of Chikka Arasinakere

Poojya Rajendra Swami aka Antonio Maria Platei, SJ (1672-1719)
An Italian Jesuit priest who worked in the erstwhile Mysore Kingdom is the epitome of inculturation and evangelization. His close rapport with the king made people call him Rajendra Swami. He administered to the people under his care with utmost dedication from 1703 to until his death in Chikkaarasinakere in 1719. Having learnt Kannada and Tamil, Fr Platei worked tirelessly in bringing people to Christ with the support of the then King of Mysore Kantirava Narasaraja Odeyar. Many miracles are attributed to his intercession. Today a shrine has come on his tomb, with regular Masses and devotions. Irrespective of religion, class, or caste people flock to the shrine to pray and get the blessings. In 2019, Pope Francis declared him the Servant of God.

schedario in the Roman Archives of the Society of Jesus

Name:  Antonio Maria Platey
Province Ven.,( Veneto) then Goa
Birth Date:25 November 1672
Born at Veneto
Entrance to the Society:  28 Jan 1690 at Novellara in Veneto
Studies at Collegio Parmensi: 1700 May
He was the Professor of Grammer and Humanities and Literature in Veneto Province
Sent to India: 1703
He pronounced his Final vows ( 4 vows)  2 Feb 1708 in Residence Mamangala Mysore
He did his theology at Maximus College at Goa
He was the minister at Maximus College at Goa for some months
He was sent as a Missionary to Mysore Mission
He became the Superior of the Mission
 Died on 8 Oct 1719.

According to the Catalogue of the Departed of Goa Province 1720-21, Fr Antonio Platei (aka Pujya Rajendra Swamy) after arriving in India in 1703, was for a time Theology professor and House Minister in Goa, then for 14 years laboured strenuously in the Mysore Mission, serving successfully both Christians and others. A man of extraordinary virtue and constant austerity, after bearing patiently the ailments that tried him severely, died peacefully on 18 October 1719. He was buried in Chikkarasinakere. This year (2019) marks the 3rd centenary of his death. The bishop of Mysore has declared the place as a shrine of the Diocese. The Holy See has declared him Servant of God. 

Contact details of the Shrine

Chikkarasinakere Poojya Rajendra Swamy Punyakshethra
In charge of the Shrine: Fr William Pinto, Parish Priest
Holy Rajendra Swamy Shrine
K. M. Doddi
Chikkarasinakere Post
Maddur Taluk
Mandya Dist. - 571 422