Salve, Regina, Mater Misericordiae.
May the Lord Jesus give you his peace.
We celebrate a great saint today, a great Franciscan spiritual father,
St. Peter of Alcantara, a Franciscan of the stricter observance, born 1499, died in 1562.
A great preacher, but also, perhaps even more so, a great example of what a Franciscan can and should be.
He founded many Reformed friars, and he was, you could say, the spiritual backbone of even the Carmelite Reformed
through his interactions with St. Teresa of Avila.
He hung out with guys like St. John of Avila, Dr. of the Churches,
St. Louis of Granada, and just a whole milieu of sanctity upon which a lot of it was founded on his life.
Maybe a prodigy of grace from his youth, very young, entered into the friary
and very zealously put into practice the evangelical councils with tremendous fruit.
And we can kind of almost see him as like an inferno of divine love.
There are many principles that we can take from his life, and one of them is this.
Sometimes you hear this at the beginning of a sermon, that he's a saint to be venerated, not imitated.
And while there's some degree of truth to that, at the same time, we don't want to just let it go at that.
Because why? Because every saint, because it's a communion of saints,
if he is, and he is, this great seraph, this great inferno of love, we're meant to catch fire.
And we're really meant to catch fire.
We're meant to be elevated, and there should be some sense of being brought up to a higher level.
And while, again, it's not just a cut and paste in terms of, well, he did that, and then I'll do that,
because it doesn't work like that, but at the same time, through the fire of love, which is the Holy Spirit,
there should be an inspiration in our lives to strive.
Okay, so that's a principle we want to rightly understand, that as we go over some of the penances that he did,
it's not cut and paste that I'll do that because he did that,
but at the same time, being drawn.
Being drawn up into the greater perfection.
Okay.
The second principle that maybe we can put, or I think, look at is drinking deeply, as we can, from the spring.
That's kind of a figure from St. Teresa of Avila.
But in his life, he put it into practice, and his letter to her in the Liturgy of the Hours,
we'll talk about this, is basically, where in the spiritual life do we obtain,
what are the sources of our spiritual life?
He announces it as this, he's basically gentle reprimand of,
why you're talking to these guys about evangelical perfection when they've got no experience in it and
rather go to those that do put it into practice.
Here's the principle.
For even if others who observe the Commandments by which they are bound
attain to salvation, their insight is nevertheless generally limited to the things they carry out.
So that's a general principle in the spiritual life as we kind of take in lots of different things.
through books, conferences, tapes, what are the sources of them?
Who are these men or women that are, so to speak, preaching to us or feeding our souls?
And we can even apply it to even a broader application that, of course,
every life that catches fire with the love of Jesus,
it's the life of faith blooming forth in that soul.
For example, if you had the Word of God in front of you,
the Holy Scriptures versus some meditations on the Passion,
maybe Blessed Catherine Ann Emmerich or the Mystical City of God or something like that,
realize that one of those sources is a step removed from the font.
Not that we should never go to them because they can be inspiring,
but at the same time, it can signify a lack of faith not to take up the Word of God directly
and to think that Jesus, who is this living Word,
can act in my soul.
Just like he did in those saints.
And so to realize that, and although one might be more entertaining
in terms of painting a more vivid depiction of the Passion, so to speak,
but that living Word of God, not to neglect that deeper font of the spiritual life.
Third principle is a penance.
St. Peter of Alcantara was one of the greatest penance of all time.
And if you could put St. Anthony of the Desert in a Franciscan habit,
and give him the mixed life, that's St. Peter of Alcantara.
Off the charts.
He revealed to St. Teresa of Avila, basically because of his great love for her,
not because of pride, of,
I sleep about one and a half hours in the night.
I eat every three days.
And this is stuff that in his humility,
and some of it he strove to attain,
St. Teresa, in writing about it, she's got like a eulogy on his life.
Which I guess would be much too long to get into here.
In the life, in her autobiography of her life,
she gets into a eulogy of who he was.
She says, the world was not worthy of so much perfection.
And that's coming from a doctor of the church.
But nevertheless, the principle that St. Teresa enunciates
before getting into all those penances is this.
Although others may not be detached or perform such harsh penances,
as he, in other words, we're not all called to the same degree,
there are many ways, as I've said at other times,
of trampling on the world.
And we'll each have a call to do just that.
Trampling on the world.
World, flesh, the devil.
Trampling on the world.
The Lord teaches them when he sees the courage.
And that's fortitude.
And that's an important principle.
Because, again, we're not, you know,
it's almost like you can see it sometimes,
as Franciscans oftentimes we hear,
which St. Francis never directly said, you know,
preach the gospel at all times when necessary, use words.
First off, he never said that.
Secondly, there was certainly an account in his life
that leads us to that principle.
But it can also, like the prior principle,
be understood in the wrong way.
It can be an endorsement of my own timidity.
Just leave people alone.
And that's not how we're understanding it.
Why?
Faith comes from hearing.
And we are called to preach the gospel.
To exhort, reprove, admonish at all times and whatever season.
So that's important to realize, to understand properly.
And here, too, the fortitude that we're called to,
which is based on pure humility.
St. Teresa will talk about it.
That I see now clearly, she says,
how the martyrs are able to suffer what they've suffered.
It's not them who are suffering.
It's Jesus.
It's the fortitude of Christ.
And so, too, with these penances,
St. Peter undertook.
The most important principles that St. Peter will enunciate for us
are on prayer.
And here they are.
He talks about nine aids and not ten hindrances
for securing devotion.
And just as going through the list here,
maybe one will jump out at you and at me
to be convicted on that I have to work on this one.
Here are the nine aids to secure devotion.
Be serious and resolute about prayer,
about the gift of contemplation,
secondly, guard the heart from vanity and disordered loves,
being aware of those things that are springing up in the heart
that are not from the Lord.
Three, guard the senses, eyes, ears, and tongue.
How have I in the past gotten into trouble
through not guarding those things?
Four, be inclined to solitude.
Have a preference to gravitate, to be alone with Jesus.
Five, do spiritual reading.
Six, practice the presence of God.
Things like aspirations from scripture.
Seven, persevere at regular prayer times
when I'm supposed to be kneeling down in prayer.
Am I kneeling down in prayer or am I a busybody?
Eight, practice some bodily mortification,
get things in order.
Nine, practice the works of mercy, love of God,
always completely in line with one's love of neighbor,
which is going on both.
Ten, hindrances to prayer, sin, mortal, and venial.
Two, practice the works of mercy, love of God, and love of neighbor.
Two, excessive remorse of conscience,
getting all discouraged because of past sin.
Three, scruples.
Four, bitterness of heart and unreasoning depression.
Five, overmuch worry.
Six, too many occupations, just getting dissipated.
I've got all this stuff to do.
Let the evil of the day be sufficient for the day.
Seven, pleasure and excessive worldly consolations,
steeping oneself, trying to escape the demands of consecrated life.
Eight, delicacy.
Nine, abundance in food and drink,
even if it's on your plate or even if you don't have to eat at all to mortify.
Nine, vain curiosity.
Ten, unnecessary interruptions of prayer time,
things that will kind of come crashing in that have to be put to sleep.
Many, many lessons, and he wrote,
and it's translated in all languages in Europe,
a treatise on prayer and meditation, 10 books, puts it out.
Very worthwhile, I think worthwhile for everyone here.
And Francis considered the matter to take up
and to really get it under your belt, so to speak,
in terms of, again, go to those that have experience in these matters.
You open up a systematic manual on ascetical mystical theology,
you get the sense at the time that these guys are writing over their heads
because they're writing about everything.
St. Peter of Alcantara, writing very succinctly on principles of prayer
that he has gleaned from experience.
And so...
Just like St. Teresa of Avila, drinking deeply from that font,
who are the guys that we take?
Let's take this day, St. Peter of Alcantara,
that we may reach the summit of contemplation.
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