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.

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

SJ Confiscation Day - 20 OCT 1873

At Rome, all of the Society's houses, including the Gesu' and the Curia, were seized by the Government. Fr. General, Peter Jan Beckx, (1795-1887) left the house at an early hour to be spared the trial of appearing before the Commission of Suppression.  

Fr Beckx was fifty-eight years old, a Belgian, who had previously been Rector of the Jesuit college at Louvain. As Provincial of Austria, Beckx attended the General Congregation in 1853, called to elect a successor to Fr. Jan Roothaan who had died in March. In July, Beckx was elected the Superior General of the Society of Jesus. Four Assistants were also elected. The Congregation also expressed concern at the renewed attacks made against the Jesuits, and advised prudence and tact in defending the Society against its detractors. Those were difficult years for the Jesuits. They were expelled from Spain in 1854 and 1858, from Naples-Sicily in 1859, from Germany in 1872 from France and French colonies in1880 and Rome during which time Beckx shifted his headquarters in Fiesole, near Florence, where the 'Curia Generalizia' remained till 1895.

Konknni speaking Malankara Orthodox Christians

 In the following video New Star Brass Band, Brahmavar, Udupi district of Karnataka presents “Axirvad Zôddlølo’ in honour of St. Roche Lopez Noronha (1847-1936).  The trumpet solo is by Winston Suares, the troupe leader. Who is this St. Roche L. Noronha? To know him you must read the following brief historical note:

Konknnis (Konknni speakers) migrated from Goa to coastal Karnataka and Kerala from 13th century onwards for various reasons. Catholic Konknnis migrated from Goa to Coastal Karnataka 1570 onwards. They were under the Goa Archdiocese and served by the clergy of Goa. Goa archdiocese was under the jurisdiction of Padroado, namely, the Portuguese King or queen appointed the bishop and supported the maintenance of the clergy. 

Brahmavar is a small town located in the Udupi district in the State of Karnataka in India. The town is 13 kilometres away from Udupi. In the year 1678, a Roman Catholic Church dedicated to Our Lady of Milagres was established in Kalyanpur by the Padroado Missionaries who were under the authority of the Portuguese king or queen. The Church was destroyed by Tippu Sultan in 1784, but was reconstructed in 1806.

In 19th century a few prominent Catholics residing in Mangaluru city wrote to Propaganda Fide of Vatican and complained that diocesan priests from Goa have neglected and not rendering their service to local Catholics who are inhabitants in Coastal Karnataka. Rome intervened and segregated the Coastal Karnataka areas from the jurisdiction of Padroado and brought them under the Propaganda Fide and began to appoint bishops and priests. Local Catholics who were used to the clergy from Goa, wanted to be under the Padroado jurisdiction. But finally, most of the parishes accepted the jurisdiction of Propaganda Fide. 

The power struggle between Portuguese missionaries and Propaganda Communities had its effects on Brahmavar. The majority of the people supported the Portuguese Missionaries and the Padroado Community. They strongly opposed the Propaganda Fide and Pope. Those who supported the Propaganda Fide built Mount Rosary (1856) Church, which is only one kilometre away from the Milagres Church of Kalyanpur.

In 1886 a Concordat was signed between the Papacy and the Portuguese King by which the Milagres Church of Kalyanpur became part of the Propaganda Fide. Brahmavar Christians petitioned both the Pope and the Portuguese King to reconsider the decision, but Rome did not reply favourably. A number of Catholic families who were in favour of Padroado jurisdiction felt that the response from Rome was not at all satisfactory and it was an insult to them. As a result, many families of the Milagres Church, under the leadership of Fr Roche Lopes Noronha, protested against the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Later, Fr. Roche too was disowned by the Archdiocese of Goa. 

Brahmavar Orthodox Church is a split faction from the Catholic Church formed under the leadership of Fr Antonio Francisco Xavier Alvares (1836-1923). Fr. Antonio Alvarez who was a Roman Catholic priest of Goa at the time, opposed the Vatican policies and interference of the Government in Church administration. His pro-Independence periodicals which were also critical of the Roman Catholic Church were banned. He was excommunicated. He left the Church with some hundreds of Konknni speaking Catholic families from Goa, who were settled in the vicinity of Brahmavar, and joined the Malankara Orthodox Church.  He understood the situation in Brahmavar and organised the discontented believers. Fr. Antonio Alvares was ordained as the first Orthodox Metropolitan of Goa, Ceylon and Greater India in 1889 A. D. by Paulose Mar Athanasius and Geevargheese Mar Gregorios of Parumala at the Orthodox theological seminary, Kottayam in the state of Kerala.

A new Church was built for the split group in Brahmavar. Fr Noronha was influenced by Fr Alvarez and he was very well attracted towards the teachings of the Orthodox Church. Fr. Noronha was given the leadership of the Brahmavar Orthodox Church, which had a membership of 4,000 families. In the year 1889 on Easter Day Fr. Noronha celebrated the Holy Mass in the newly built Orthodox Church. The split group of Brahmavar Konknni community has come into existence since then as a part of the Indian Orthodox Church. Presently, they are under the Brahmavar diocese. During my boyhood they were labelled as schismatics by the local Roman Catholics.

The little known Brahmavar Orthodox Community has a very special status in the history of the Malankara Orthodox Church. The Indian Church which for centuries had been confined within the boundaries of Kerala obtained a national outreach when the former Roman Catholic Priest, Antonio Alvarez from Goa and his community united with the Mother Orthodox Church and he received episcopal consecration as Metropolitan of the Diocese of Ceylon, Goa and India (Malabar excluded).

Fr. Alvarez was the first person to reunite with the Orthodox Church from the Roman Catholic Latin Rite in India. He devoted most of life serving leprosy patients and poor sections of society but he also fought a brave war to protect the Orthodox faith irrespective of the opposition inflicted on him and his followers by the Roman Catholic Church. Sadly, he died in reduced circumstances and was buried in Sant Inez, Panaji, cemetery, without receiving either an Orthodox Christian funeral or the traditional burial accorded to an Orthodox prelate. Today he is regarded as the hero of the Reunion Movement in India. Later his relics were recovered and moved to St Mary’s Orthodox Church at Ribandar, Panaji in 1979 under the direction of His Holiness Mar Thoma Matthews I, Catholicos of the East.

Fr. Noronha was born in Goa in 1850. After completing basic education, he joined the Rachol Seminary in Goa, having been awarded a scholarship. After completing his seminary education, he was ordained a Roman Catholic priest on 12 March 1881 by Bishop Thomas De Almeda. He served as the assistant vicar of Salvador do Mundo Church. Later Fr. Noronha became the Vicar of Ribandar Church and finally reached Brahmavar, where he was united with the Orthodox Church.

Fr. Noronha was a multi-functional personality. He was a great educator, a spiritual father, writer, and social reformer. Joining the Orthodox Church gave Padre Noronha great trouble. He was always threatened by the Roman Catholic Church but he was very much loved by the Brahmavar residents. He was very particular and strict about the Orthodox faith, especially the prayers and sacraments. He encouraged many people to participate in prayers through house visits. On many occasions the Catholic Church tried to entice Brahmavar Orthodox Christians to join the Roman Catholic Church by offering them rosaries, pictures of saints and other valuable gifts, but Fr. Noronha successfully blocked all attempts and confirmed his flock in the Orthodox faith.

He showed great vision in establishing educational institutions, and founded a school which was the first basic educational institution in Brahmavar. The school attracted many students irrespective of caste, creed or sex. Fr. Noronha provided great relief for many people who suffered from different kinds of diseases and treated many people, providing them with food and shelter. Hundreds found relief under his care.

Towards the end of his life, he suffered from diabetes. The Roman Catholic community tried to force him to come back to the Roman Church. Two years before his death it is recorded that a cross appeared on his back and on 23 July 1936 Fr. Roche Noronha died. He was buried at St Mary’s Orthodox Cathedral in Brahmavar. It is reported that a large number of people, especially non-Christians, have received blessings by his intercession after his death and even today many still seek favours at his tomb.  

Fr. Alvares and Fr. Noronha who were both excommunicated by the Catholic Church in Goa, now have become the heroes and saints of the Malankara Orthodox Church and their feasts are celebrated!! Those who are considered as villains in one community, are recognised as heroes in their new community. History has many such examples. Saul who was an ardent Jew who hated and persecuted the Christians of the first century has become St. Paul and the great saint of the  Christians.

Brahmavar Orthodox Christians have a number of peculiar characteristics with regard to their culture, tradition, life style and prayer habits. Along with the orthodox feasts (Perunnal), they also celebrate the memorial feast of Metropolitan Julius Alvarez (September 23) and Fr Noronha (July 23). All Orthodox prayers have been translated into Konknni and Kannada languages. There are two feasts which are celebrated as part of the Latin tradition, Memorial service of All Saints (1st November) and memorial service of All Souls (2nd November). The person who sponsors a major feast is known by the name ‘Sirginth’. He wears special dress and carries an artistic metallic stick during the procession.

Due to marriage relationships many Malankara Orthodox Church members have returned to the Roman Catholic church. Today there are around 850 Orthodox Christian families surviving in Brahmavar diocese of the Malankara Orthodox church. Their religious services are conducted in Konknni and Kannada. They have married clergy. But they have to marry before their diaconate. However, the bishop is chosen from the celibate priests only. Due to historical and ego problems the Konknni Catholics of Brahmavar area got divided into Roman Catholics and Malankara Orthodox Christians!!! 

Pratap Naik, SJ

09 July 2021

St. 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

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