Salve, Regina, Mater Misericordiae.
In the collect for today's Mass, that is, in the opening prayer, we prayed,
O God, the giver of heavenly gifts, who in the angelic youth Aloysius
didst unite a wonderful innocence of life with an equal spirit of penance,
grant to his merits and prayers that we who have not followed his innocence
may imitate his penance.
This formulary for
the collect of this Mass in honor of St. Aloysius Gonzaga
is used several other times
in respect to very young saints
who died innocently,
having really burned themselves up for God
in a very brief time,
having kept themselves pure,
for God, and desiring heaven alone.
St. Aloysius died at age 23.
His confessor, St. Robert Bellarmine,
believed that he had never committed a mortal sin.
And at the end of his life,
St. Aloysius was given a certain knowledge
through the gifts that God had bestowed upon him in his soul
that he was destined for heaven.
He asked St. Robert Bellarmine on his deathbed
if it was possible that anyone should go to heaven
without first going to purgatory.
And St. Robert said,
yes, it is,
and that he should hope for this grace.
And he did hope for that grace.
And from what he wrote to his mother on his deathbed
and things that he said while he was dying,
it seemed that God had assured him of heaven immediately.
After his death.
Interesting, one of the interesting things
about St. Aloysius is that he came from
a very wealthy, noble family.
The Marquis of Castiglione was his father.
And they had a lot of involvement
with the various royal families of Europe.
He spent time also in Spain in the court of Philip II.
And his father wanted Aloysius to be a soldier
and placed him at a very young age among soldiers
and had him learning the skills of the military.
And St. Aloysius was very much,
had a great affinity towards these things.
And yet from the rough and sometimes blasphemous
and sacrilegious behavior of the knights,
he wanted to preserve his purity, unsullied.
And so he turned to God and very quickly
acquired the grace to protect himself
and to realize that God was calling him
to a different way of life.
And so with great difficulty and opposition,
he moved towards entering the Jesuits
in spite of his father's and many of his relatives'
opposition to his vocation.
He was unmovable, immovable.
And so he escaped the temptations of the kind of life
that he was exposed to.
While he was in the world, he was required
to live in court and to be a page and to serve the needs,
of those that he answered to, the nobility.
And in that context, he managed to keep his purity
and to keep his conscience clean.
And then he entered religious life,
which was the desire of his soul, left behind his title.
He was the firstborn, so the title of Marquis
was conferred upon his younger brother.
And he left the world.
He left the world gladly, happily, without any regret.
And his desire was to serve God.
And then died at age 23 before he was ordained a priest,
with great joy of having the opportunity to go to heaven.
And so we pray, as we did in the opening prayer,
that we who have not followed his innocence
might follow his example of penance.
He did.
He did also, while he was in court and in the Jesuits,
practice extraordinary penances.
Once he was in the Jesuits, they curtailed some of his vigils
and prayers and fasting and scourging.
But while he was in the world,
under the direction of Saint Bilalman,
he did extraordinary penance to preserve his chastity
and his conscience.
And while not all of us may be called
to the extraordinary penances,
but Saint Aloysius practiced,
we can reflect that what separates good men
or saints from good men is the fact
that they didn't hold anything back.
And their desire was to be united to God.
And they cultivated that desire by their way of life,
by the sacramental life, by the life of penance,
and most of all, of course, by the life of prayer.
They begged God continually for the grace to be one with him,
see the benefit and the joy of making whatever sacrifice was necessary to achieve that goal
and in the saints who opened themselves up to these graces they found it a joy they found it
the focus of their of their life to do these things without counting the cost and
you know it's not simply gritting one's teeth and and bearing hardship it's not simply
that certain individuals are given a natural talent for uh penance and prayer uh no it's
rather that those that whoever the person is no matter what their temptations or limitations
they struggle and persevere against their nature and continue to pray for the grace of the holy
spirit the saints were
fortunate to have the grace of the holy spirit
fortified by the gift of fortitude which allowed them to find joy in things that were difficult
and arduous, found joy in overcoming the obstacles that would ultimately lead them to God.
And so let us really with great sincerity and with a fervor of heart take these words
of the opening prayer and lift them up to God that we might find the intercession of
Saint Aloysius and learn to follow him in the way of penance, even though we have not
followed him in the way of innocence, and be restored to God.
And to a great zeal and a great desire to serve God, no matter what the cost, and to
know that that is where we will always find our joy and happiness.
May God upwardly buddy you and lead you to the peace and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.