From Season to Season

I first read about Aluigi Gonzaga when I was about 9 years old. Leafing through an old St. Joseph’s Daily Missal that I had found in my grandmother’s cedar chest, I saw page after page of saints’ names and the prayers assigned to various days of the year. When I turned to June 21, I came across an image of a Renaissance prince (wearing a ruffled collar, breeches, and hose) kneeling before a statue of Mary. Although the short bio that preceded the prayers of the Mass assigned for the day didn’t provide much information, something resonated within me. That was the moment when I began a relationship with the young man who is now remembered as Saint Aloysius Gonzaga . Today, when most people hear the name “Gonzaga” they think of the great Jesuit University in Spokane, Washington. For Reformation-era Europeans, the name of Gonzaga meant something very different. Distant relatives of the Holy Roman Emperors and counted among the greatest families of Italy, Spain, and all of Europe, the...

There have been moments in the history of faith, which is at the heart of the human story, in which women, men, and even children, have made decisions about the course or orientation of their lives that have changed history itself. Like that “ shot heard ‘round the world ” of April 19, 1775, marking the first military action of the American Revolution, certain acts have opened up new pathways and modes of faith that have forever shaped the lives of countless believers through the ages.    The Calling of Saint Matthew by Caravaggio   Some of these might seem quite simple, perhaps because we know the stories so well: Mary’s fiat ( Luke 1:26-38 ), Saint Peter and Saint Andrew's decision to get out of their boat to follow the wandering Rabbi ( Matthew 4:18-20 ), and Saint Matthew leaving his tax collecting post (cf. Matthew 9:9-13 ). Others seem, somehow, far away and remote to us: Saint Lawrence presenting the poor, the Church’s true treasure, ...

Born in 1568, Aloysius was the son and heir of the powerful Gonzaga family of Castiglione and a prince of the Holy Roman Empire. At an early age he manifested habits of prayer and virtue which formed a strong spiritual foundation for his later life. Sometimes given to excess in his penances, he was nonetheless unrelenting in his desires to please God and see God's will above all things. Feeling called to religious life, he entered into a battle of wills with his father, who refused to allow his son to abdicate his title and the right of succession. However, after years of prayer, sacrifice, and struggle, Aloysius was given the necessary permission by his family to enter the Society of Jesus at Rome. Well-liked by his superiors and confreres, he was an outstanding student and desired to serve in the Society's Asian missions. In the spring of 1591, he contracted the plague after carrying a dying man from the street to a hospital. Aloysius died during the night of June 20-21, afte...