Thursday, June 21, 2018

Jun 21 - St. Aloysius Gonzaga


+ 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!

But, in addition, I cannot let this day go by without mentioning the gravely critical moral climate that pervades the political scene in our country, which affects all countries everywhere because of our prior moral and humane leadership, which culminated in a major hemorrhage and collapse yesterday.

“Love one another as I have loved you,” is not just a spiritual nosegay to comfort the weak and the imbecilic. It is the deepest spiritual principle and reality that lies in the heart of every human being on earth. It is so because we are created to love (love God and one another), and to be loved (by God and by others). When anyone denies, stifles or basically outlaws such a natural / supernatural dynamic an uproar will follow – both in the soul of the denier, if he has a conscience at all, and in the lives put into turmoil because of it.

“The straw which broke Trump’s back” is the incomprehensible way that he is toying with the lives of immigrant families and most especially the children caught in the political hailstorm. I should like to call this heinous attack on children and families “real-time-post-birth- abortion” – and ranks in “murderous intent” with the prebirth form of killing the same class of babies before they are even born!

It is time to wake up: this is God Speaking:  LOVE ONE ANOTHER AS I HAVE LOVED YOU – especially you whom I have entrusted with sharing my own administrative role as governor and safe guardian of human persons, human dignity, rights and privileges. Truly you are using my authority to do what you do, and know, that my patience is wearing very thin now. It is time for the same population who votes once a year, and who goes to church on Sunday, to STAND UP AND LET THEIR VOICES BE HEARD.

I predict – and this is not rocket science – that fist fights will be breaking out soon in our government office buildings, the White House and on cable-tv news – WAKE UP – we are about 2 degrees from the boiling point NOW!

LOVE ONE ANOTHER AS I HAVE LOVED YOU.

THE NEW HEAVENS AND THE NEW EARTH WILL BE A PLACE OF PEACE, OF HAPPINESS, JOY AND ADORATION OF THE GOD WHO CAME FIRST AND LOVED US FIRST AND REQUIRES US TO FOLLOW SUIT.

LOVE MUST TRUMP HATRED, BIGOTRY, LYING, DECEPTION, AND RABBLE ROUSING. THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS – THE FATHER OF LIES – SATAN HIMSELF IS HAVING HIS FIELD DAY RIGHT NOW – but he has already been conquered. He is the “chicken with his head cut off” – HE IS HARMLESS, HE IS HARMLESS, HE IS HARMLESS, if we just tell him in God’s Name – to cease and desist. It is the moral obligation of anyone in the world who is baptized to do this, we are an enormous opposition army: let’s report for duty today!

Whose banner are you now following: Satan’s or Christ’s!

I give you a new commandment: love one another as I have loved you.

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