From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   October 30th - Saint Alphonsus Rodriguez, Confessor, Jesuit Coadjutor   
      
   (1531-1617)   
      
   Saint Alphonsus Rodriguez was born in Spain in 1531, of a well-to-do   
   commercial   
   household of Segovia, the third of eleven children. When Alphonsus was   
   eleven   
   years old, he and his older brother were sent to a Jesuit college which had   
   just   
   been founded. He had already manifested great joy in serving the Jesuits   
   when   
   they had given a mission in Segovia and lodged in his father's country home;   
   now   
   he rejoiced in the one year of study he was able to undertake, before the   
   death   
   of his father interrupted these pursuits. His brother, after certain affairs   
   were settled, returned to school, but Alphonsus was obliged to remain at   
   home,   
   destined one day to replace his father.   
      
   He accepted this lot and in 1557 married a virtuous wife; they were blessed   
   with   
   a daughter and two sons. But God intended to sanctify this soul of   
   predilection   
   by great and heroic sufferings. Only five years later he was already a   
   widower,   
   with only one little boy of three years remaining for him to raise. He   
   believed   
   this calamity must have come upon him for his sins, and he developed a great   
   horror of sin; he asked God to let him bear even the torments of hell here   
   below, rather than fall into a single mortal sin. He offered himself   
   entirely to   
   God, for whatever He might desire of him. Then he began a life of severe   
   penance. A year later his mother died. He looked at his beautiful and   
   innocent   
   child, the only bond which still attached him to the earth; and he prayed to   
   God   
   that if ever that child should offend Him, to take him at once. His prayer   
   was   
   granted before long.   
      
   Alphonsus left Segovia and went to Valencia, where a Jesuit priest he had   
   loved   
   and admired earlier in Segovia was then stationed. This priest helped him to   
   attain a loving confidence in God. He was thirty-eight years old when he   
   requested his admission to the Order, but insufficient instruction and his   
   unstable health, affected by his austerities, were regarded as obstacles.   
   For   
   two years he was employed as a preceptor of the young by two families of   
   that   
   city; finally, when he renewed his request for admission, he was accepted.   
   It   
   was in 1571, after Saint Ignatius had decided to join coadjutor Brothers to   
   the   
   Order, that he was received as a novice; his years of austerities were   
   regarded   
   as equivalent to a postulancy.   
      
   His religious life was spent primarily as a porter in a Jesuit college on   
   the   
   island of Majorca; his interior life was a succession of moral tortures,   
   borne   
   with perfect humility and love of God. The demons would not leave alone this   
   holy man who made it his joy to take upon himself all the most humble and   
   fatiguing offices. He cast himself, as it were, into the abyss of the love   
   of   
   Jesus Crucified. Twice he was thrown down a cement staircase by the adjured   
   enemies of man's salvation; but his love for his crucified Saviour was proof   
   against all such attempts on his virtue. He was afflicted with various   
   illnesses, which plunged him into a sort of preliminary purgatory but did   
   not   
   change his life of effacement and service.   
      
   In 1591 he was already 60 years old when he received an order to sleep   
   thereafter in a bed; until then he had contented himself with a few hours of   
   sleep on a table or in a chair. He served a chapel where the elderly or   
   infirm   
   fathers celebrated late Masses. He was told to write the story of his life,   
   which work he began with hesitation in 1604. He was not spared the trial of   
   being misunderstood and underestimated by a new Superior, but he found only   
   joy   
   and consolation in the public reproaches he received. He wrote in his book   
   of   
   maxims: "In the difficulties which are placed before me, why should I not   
   act   
   like a donkey? When one speaks ill of him - the donkey says nothing. When he   
   is   
   mistreated - he says nothing. When he is forgotten - he says nothing. When   
   no   
   food is given him - he says nothing. When he is made to advance - he says   
   nothing. When he is despised - he says nothing. When he is overburdened - he   
   says nothing... The true servant of God must do likewise, and say with   
   David:   
   Before You I have become like a beast of burden."   
      
   The story of his association in his old age with Saint Peter Claver, the   
   novice   
   whose future mission he saw by a vision and foretold to him, is written into   
   the   
   annals of the Church in letters of gold; the two Saints were canonized   
   together   
   by Pope Leo XIII after more than two centuries.   
      
   Saint Alphonsus died in 1617; already he was known and loved as a Saint by   
   the   
   population. In 1631 the Jesuits desired to add a chapel for the relics of   
   the   
   servant of God, after the bishop of Palam in Majorca had proceeded to the   
   canonical inquiry concerning his sanctity, and the Pope had signed the   
   introduction of his cause of beatification. But the public cult had begun   
   too   
   soon, according to a new decree of Urban VIII requiring a fifty-year lapse   
   of   
   time after the death of a proposed Saint. And other difficulties arose; his   
   writings were not yet examined in detail, and in 1773 the suppression of his   
   Order stopped the progress of his cause. It was in 1825 that he was   
   beatified,   
   and in 1888 Pope Leo XIII closed the inquiries after two new miracles had   
   been   
   verified, and proceeded to the ceremonies of canonization in Rome. The   
   memory of   
   Saint Alphonsus remains in benediction in the Order and in the hearts of   
   those   
   who know the value of the Cross of Christ and its perpetuity in His Mystical   
   Body.   
      
   Source: Biography of Saint Alphonsus Rodriguez, text by Abbé L. Tabourier,   
   in Un   
   Saint pour chaque jour du mois (Paris: 1932), Vol. 10, October.   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   God is seen by those who have the capacity to see him, provided that they   
   keep   
   the   
   eyes of their mind open. All have eyes, but some have eyes that are shrouded   
   in   
   darkness, unable to see the light of the sun. Because the blind cannot see   
   it,   
   it does   
   not follow that the sun does not shine. The blind must trace the cause back   
   to   
   themselves and their eyes. In the same way, you have eyes in your mind that   
   are   
   shrouded in darkness because of your sins and evil deeds. No one who has sin   
   within   
   him can see God. If you understand this, and live in purity and holiness and   
   justice,   
   you may see God.   
   -Saint Theophilus of Antioch   
      
   Bible Quote   
    I have suffered the loss of all things, and I count them as dung, that I   
   may   
   gain Christ.  (Phil. 3:8)   
      
      
   <><><><>   
   Prayer of Saint Bonaventure   
      
   Pierce, O most sweet Lord Jesus my inmost soul with the most joyous and   
   healthful wound of Thy love, with true serene, and most holy apostolic   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)