+ Aloysius Gonzaga was a member of the Society of Jesus who died in his early twenties
and is the patron saint of young people and of students in Jesuit colleges and
universities.
He was born in 1568 into a high-ranking family
in Castiglione, in Lombardy, Italy and following the wishes of his father he
was meant to go into military service, but on a family trip to Spain in the
company of the empress of Austria in 1581 he decided to become a Jesuit. His
family could not dissuade him and so Aloysius renounced his inheritance and
entered the Jesuit novitiate in Rome in November of 1585.
He was inclined to austere
penances, but obedience and poor health (a kidney disease) curbed this penchant
a bit and gave him time for real prayer and meditation on the spiritual
realities of life. His spiritual director, St. Robert commented that Aloysius’
example of piety was so extreme that others should not be encouraged to follow
it; but it was his dedication to his studies, and his few years of nursing the
sick in a Jesuit hospital during an outbreak of plague that qualified him for
sainthood. He himself contracted the disease and died at the very young age of
23.
Aloysius understood the
meaning of the gospel mandate of loving
God, loving neighbor and loving self – and is a model for young people
everywhere because he himself enjoyed being a child of God who experienced that love more and more deeply every
day that he forgot himself and lived only for others. May young people in the
world today find a true companion and model in St. Aloysius Gonzaga!
I give
you a new commandment: love one another as I have loved you.
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