MEMORIAL OF SAINT ALOYSIUS GONZAGA, RELIGIOUS (JESUIT SEMINARIAN) ~ FEAST DAY: JUNE 21ST Today, we celebrate the Memorial of Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, Religious (Jesuit Seminarian). Through the intercession of our Blessed Mother Mary, Saint Aloysius Gonzaga and all the Saints on this feast day, we humbly pray for all Youths, for Seminarian and the sick and dying, we particularly pray for those who are sick with cancers and other terminal diseases. We pray for the poor and the needy, for peace, love and unity in our families and our world. And we continue to pray for the Church, the Clergy, with special intention for all Priests, for persecuted christians, for the conversion of sinners, and Christians all over the world.🙏🏽
SAINT ALOYSIUS GONZAGA, RELIGIOUS (JESUIT SEMINARIAN): St. Aloysius Gonzaga (1568–1591) was born on the 9th of March, 1568 to a noble Italian family, the eldest of seven children of Ferdinand Gonzaga, Marquis of Castiglione, his father was a compulsive gambler. The first words he pronounced were the holy names of Jesus and Mary. He grew up in a castle and and was destined for the military, he was trained from a very young age of four to be a soldier and courtier. At the age of eight he served in the court of Grand Duke Francesco I de’ Medici. He was baptized in the womb, because his life was in danger. As a young boy, St. Aloysius always had a great desire to know and serve God, but his family life was not always supportive of this desire. At the age of nine Gonzaga made a private vow of chastity, a vow of perpetual virginity, and by a special grace was always exempted from temptations against purity. As a safeguard against sexual temptation he always kept his eyes downcast in the presence of women. St. Aloysius encountered many holy people in his lifetime; he received his first Communion from St. Charles Borromeo and studied under St. Robert Bellarmine. As a teen, he suffered from a kidney disease and in the process of recovery spent time in spiritual reading and prayer. He considered the disease a blessing, as it left him with plenty of time for prayer. At an early age he resolved to leave the world, and in a vision was directed by our Blessed Lady to join the Society of Jesus. At 18 he signed away his legal claim to his title and his family’s lands and entered the Jesuits. When St. Aloysius Gonzaga announced his intention to become a Jesuit, the Saint’s mother rejoiced on learning his determination to become a religious, but his father for three years refused his consent. Although his family wanted him to be a secular priest so that they could buy him a bishopric. However, he chose to become a Jesuit and at length Saint Aloysius obtained permission to enter the novitiate on November 25, 1585.
He pronounced his vows after two years, and studied, as was customary, philosophy and theology. A fervent penitent at all times, he was accustomed to say that he doubted whether without penance grace could continue to make headway against nature, which, when not afflicted and chastised, tends gradually to relapse into its unredeemed state, and thereby loses the habit of suffering. I am a crooked piece of iron, he said, and have come into religion to be made straight by the hammer of mortification and penance. While he was studying in Rome, during his last year of theology a malignant fever broke out in Rome. St. Aloysius volunteered to care for the sick during the outbreak of the plague, despite the delicateness of his own health. The Saint offered himself for the service of the sick, and was accepted for the dangerous duty. Several of the religious contracted the fever, and St. Aloysius was among them. He was at the point of death but recovered, only to relapse a little later into a slow fever, which after three months his fragile health could no longer resist. He died at the age of twenty-three, repeating the Holy Name, a little after midnight between the 20th and 21st of June, 1591 on the octave day of Corpus Christi. He died before completing his priestly studies. St. Aloysius was connected with two great figures of the Counter-Reformation: he received his First Holy Communion at the age of twelve from St. Charles Borromeo, and his Last Rites from St. Robert Bellarmine, both of whom served as his spiritual advisers. On the night of his death, St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi had a vision of him being received into great glory. In the sick, the helpless, the dying, St. Aloysius saw the crucified Christ. The man of the iron will who thought he could take Heaven by sheer determination surrendered at last to divine grace. St. Aloysius Gonzaga is the Patron Saint of youth and bodily purity; AIDS care-givers; AIDS patients; Catholic youth; Jesuit students; relief from pestilence; sore eyes; teenage children; teenagers; young people; now might be a patron of those who tend COVID-19 patients, our modern day plague. His feast day is June 21st.
Saint Aloysius’ Act of Dedication to the Virgin Mary: O Holy Mary, my Mother, into your blessed trust and custody, and into the care of your mercy I this day, every day, and in the hour of my death, commend my soul and body. To you I commit all my anxieties and miseries, my life and end of my life, that by your most holy intercession and by your merits all my actions may be directed and disposed according to your will and that of your Divine Son… Amen🙏🏽
PRAYER: God, Author of all heavenly gifts, You gave St. Aloysius both a wonderful innocence of life and a deep spirit of penance. Through his merits grant that we may imitate his penitence… Amen🙏🏽