The Lord can make saints anywhere, even amid the brutality and license of Renaissance life. Florence was the “mother of piety” for Saint Aloysius Gonzaga despite his exposure to a “society of fraud, dagger, poison and lust.” As a son of a princely family, he grew up in royal courts and army camps. His father wanted Aloysius to be a military hero.

At age seven he experienced a profound spiritual quickening. His prayers included the Office of Mary, the psalms and other devotions. At age nine he came from his hometown of Castiglione to Florence to be educated; by age 11 he was teaching catechism to poor children, fasting three days a week and practicing great austerities. When he was 13 years old he traveled with his parents and the Empress of Austria to Spain and acted as a page in the court of Philip II. The more Aloysius saw of court life, the more disillusioned he became, seeking relief in learning about the lives of saints.

A book about the experience of Jesuit missionaries in India suggested to him the idea of entering the Society of Jesus, and in Spain his decision became final. Now began a four-year contest with his father. Eminent churchmen and laypeople were pressed into service to persuade him to remain in his “normal” vocation. Finally he prevailed, was allowed to renounce his right to succession and was received into the Jesuit novitiate.

Like other seminarians, Aloysius was faced with a new kind of penance—that of accepting different ideas about the exact nature of penance. He was obliged to eat more, to take recreation with the other students. He was forbidden to pray except at stated times. He spent four years in the study of philosophy and had St. Robert Bellarmine (September 17) as his spiritual adviser.

In 1591, a plague struck Rome. The Jesuits opened a hospital of their own. The general himself and many other Jesuits rendered personal service. Because he nursed patients, washing them and making their beds, Aloysius caught the disease himself. A fever persisted after his recovery and he was so weak he could scarcely rise from bed. Yet, he maintained his great discipline of prayer, knowing that he would die within the octave of Corpus Christi, three months later, at the age of 23.

Editorial credit: Zvonimir Atletic / Shutterstock.com

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Jeremiah 20:10-13
Psalm 69:8-10, 14, 17, 33-35
Romans 5:12-15
Matthew 10:26-33

Jeremiah 20:10-13
(10) For I heard the insults of many, and terror all around: ‘Persecute him!’ and, ‘Let us persecute him!’ from all the men who had been at peace with me and who had kept watch by my side. ‘If only there were some way that he might be deceived, and we might prevail against him and obtain vengeance from him!’ (11) But the Lord is with me, like a strong warrior. For this reason, those who persecute me will fall, and they will be ineffective. They will be greatly confounded. For they have not understood the everlasting disgrace that will never be wiped away. (12) And you, O Lord of hosts, the Tester of the just, who sees the temperament and the heart: I beg you to let me see your vengeance upon them. For I have revealed my case to you. (13) Sing to the Lord! Praise the Lord! For he has freed the soul of the poor from the hand of the wicked.

Psalm 69:8-10, 14, 17, 33-35
(8) For because of you, I have endured reproach; confusion has covered my face. (9) I have become a stranger to my brothers and a sojourner to the sons of my mother. (10) For zeal for your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproached you have fallen upon me. (14) But as for me, truly, my prayer is to you, O Lord. This time has pleased you well, O God. In the multitude of your mercy, in the truth of your salvation, hear me. (17) Hear me, O Lord, for your mercy is kind. Look upon me, according to the fullness of your compassion. (33) Let the poor see and rejoice. Seek God, and your soul will live. (34) For the Lord has heard the poor, and he has not despised his prisoners. (35) Let the heavens and the earth praise him: the sea, and everything that crawls in it.

Romans 5:12-15
(12) Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into this world, and through sin, death; so also death was transferred to all men, to all who have sinned. (13) For even before the law, sin was in the world, but sin was not imputed while the law did not exist. (14) Yet death reigned from Adam until Moses, even in those who have not sinned, in the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a figure of him who was to come. (15) But the gift is not entirely like the offense. For though by the offense of one, many died, yet much more so, by the grace of one man, Jesus Christ, has the grace and gift of God abounded to many.

Matthew 10:26-33
(26) Therefore, do not fear them. For nothing is covered that shall not be revealed, nor hidden that shall not be known. (27) What I tell you in darkness, speak in the light. And what you hear whispered in the ear, preach above the rooftops. (28) And do not be afraid of those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul. But instead fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell. (29) Are not two sparrows sold for one small coin? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father. (30) For even the hairs of your head have all been numbered. (31) Therefore, do not be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows. (32) Therefore, everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father, who is in heaven. (33) But whoever will have denied me before men, I also will deny before my Father, who is in heaven.

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Please comment below to leave your prayer request. As your request will be prayed for, please also pray for the petitions of others! Remember in your prayers, those in purgatory, all those suffering around the world, and for the intentions of the Pope! Lord, hear our prayer!

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Saint Paulinus of Nola was of a family which boasted of a long line of senators, prefects, and consuls. He was educated with great care, and his genius and eloquence, in prose and verse, were the admiration of St. Jerome and St. Augustine. He had more than doubled his wealth by marriage, and was one of the foremost men of his time. Though he was the chosen friend of Saints, and had a great devotion to St. Felix of Nola, he was still only a catechumen, trying to serve two masters. But God drew him to Himself along the way of sorrows and trials. He received baptism, withdrew into Spain to be alone, and then, in consort with his holy wife, sold all their vast estates in various parts of the empire, distributing their proceeds so prudently that St. Jerome says East and West were filled with his alms.

He was then ordained priest, and retired to Nola in Campania. There he rebuilt the Church of St. Felix with great magnificence, and served it night and day, living a life of extreme abstinence and toil. In 409 he was chosen bishop, and for more than thirty years so ruled as to be conspicuous in an age blessed with many great and wise bishops. St. Gregory the Great tells us that when the Vandals of Africa had made a descent on Campania, Paulinus spent all he had in relieving the distress of his people and redeeming them from slavery.

At last there came a poor widow; her only son had been carried off by the son-in-law of the Vandal king. “Such as I have I give thee,” said the Saint to her; “we will go to Africa, and I will give myself for your son.” Having overborne her resistance, they went, and Paulinus was accepted in place of the widow’s son, and employed as gardener. After a time the king found out, by divine interposition, that his son-in-law’s slave was the great Bishop of Nola. He at once set him free, granting him also the freedom of all the townsmen of Nola who were in slavery.

One who knew him well says he was meek as Moses, priestlike as Aaron, innocent as Samuel, tender as David, wise as Solomon, apostolic as Peter, loving as John, cautious as Thomas, keen-sighted as Stephen, fervent as Apollos. He died in 431.

Photo credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

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2 Chronicles 24:17-25
Psalm 89:4-5, 29-34
Matthew 6:24-34

2 Chronicles 24:17-25
(17) Then, after Jehoiada passed away, the leaders of Judah entered and reverenced the king. And he was enticed by their obsequiousness, and so he acquiesced to them. (18) And they abandoned the temple of the Lord, the God of their fathers, and they served sacred groves and graven images. And wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem because of this sin. (19) And he sent prophets to them, so that they might return to the Lord. And though they were offering testimony, they were not willing to listen to them. (20) And so the Spirit of God clothed Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada the priest. And he stood in the sight of the people, and he said to them: “Thus says the Lord God: Why have you transgressed the precept of the Lord, though it was not to your benefit, and why have you abandoned the Lord, so that he would then abandon you?” (21) And gathering together against him, they stoned him, beside the place of the king, in the atrium of the house of the Lord. (22) And king Joash did not remember the mercy with which Jehoiada, his father, had treated him; instead he put to death his son. And as he was dying, he said: “May the Lord see and take account.” (23) And when a year had turned, the army of Syria ascended against him. And they went to Judah and Jerusalem. And they put to death all the leaders of the people. And they sent all the spoils to the king of Damascus. (24) And although certainly there had arrived a very small number of Syrians, the Lord delivered into their hands an immense multitude. For they had forsaken the Lord, the God of their fathers. Also, against Joash they executed disgraceful judgments. (25) And upon departing, they left him greatly debilitated. Then his servants rose up against him, in vengeance for the blood of the son of Jehoiada the priest. And they killed him on his bed, and he died. And they buried him in the City of David, but not in the sepulchers of the kings.

Psalm 89:4-5, 29-34
(4) I have set up a covenant with my elect. I have sworn to David my servant: (5) I will prepare your offspring, even in eternity. And I will build up your throne, from generation to generation. (29) I will preserve my mercy for him eternally, and my covenant for him faithfully. (30) And I will set his offspring from generation to generation, and his throne like the days of heaven. (31) But if his sons abandon my law, and if they do not walk in my judgments, (32) if they profane my justices, and if they do not keep my commandments: (33) I will visit their iniquities with a rod, and their sins with a beating. (34) But I will not scatter my mercy from him, and I will not do harm to my truth.

Matthew 6:24-34
(24) No one is able to serve two masters. For either he will have hatred for the one, and love the other, or he will persevere with the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. (25) And so I say to you, do not be anxious about your life, as to what you will eat, nor about your body, as to what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? (26) Consider the birds of the air, how they neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of much greater value than they are? (27) And which of you, by thinking, is able to add one cubit to his stature? (28) And as for clothing, why are you anxious? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither work nor weave. (29) But I say to you, that not even Solomon, in all his glory, was arrayed like one of these. (30) So if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and cast into the oven tomorrow, how much more will he care for you, O little in faith? (31) Therefore, do not choose to be anxious, saying: ‘What shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and with what shall we be clothed?’ (32) For the Gentiles seek all these things. Yet your Father knows that you need all these things. (33) Therefore, seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things shall be added to you as well. (34) Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow; for the future day will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its evil.”

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In the tenth century Sergius, a nobleman of Ravenna, quarreled with a relative over an estate and, in a duel to which his son Saint Romuald was witness, slew him. The young man of twenty years was horrified at his father’s crime, and entered a Benedictine monastery at Classe to do a forty days’ penance for him. This penance led to his entry into religion as a Benedictine monk.

After seven years at Classe, Romuald went to live as a hermit near Venice, under the guidance of a holy man who had him recite the Psalter from memory every day. When he stumbled, the hermit struck his left ear with a rod. Romuald suffered with patience, but one day, noting that he was losing his hearing in that ear, asked the old man to strike him on his right ear. This episode supposes great progress in virtue. The two religious were joined by Peter Urseolus, Duke of Venice, who desired to do penance also, and together they led a most austere life in the midst of assaults from the evil spirits.

Saint Romuald, whose aim was to restore the primitive rule to the Order of Saint Benedict, succeeded in founding some hundred monasteries in both Italy and France, and he filled the solitudes with hermitages. The principal monastery was that at Camaldoli, a wild, deserted region, where he built a church, surrounded by a number of separate cells for the solitaries who lived under his rule; his disciples were thus called Camaldolese. For five years the fervent founder was tormented by furious attacks by the demon. He repulsed him, saying, “O enemy! Driven out of heaven, you come to the desert? Depart, ugly serpent, already you have what is due you.” And the shamed adversary would leave him. Saint Romuald’s father, Sergius, was moved by the examples of his son, and entered religion near Ravenna; there he, too, was attacked by hell and thought of abandoning his design. Romuald went to visit him; he showed him the error of the devil’s ruses, and his father died in the monastery, in the odor of sanctity.

Among his first disciples were Saints Adalbert and Boniface, apostles of Russia, and Saints John and Benedict of Poland, martyrs for the faith. He was an intimate friend of the Emperor Saint Henry, and was reverenced and consulted by many great men of his time. He once passed seven years in solitude and total silence. He died, as he had foretold twenty years in advance, alone in his monastery of Val Castro, on the 19th of June, 1027, in an advanced and abundantly fruitful old age.

By the life of Saint Romuald, we see how God brings good out of evil. In his youth Saint Romuald was much troubled by temptations of the flesh; to escape them he had recourse to hunting, and it was in the woods that he first conceived his love for solitude. His father’s sin prompted him to undertake a forty days’ penance in the monastery, which he then made his permanent home. Some bad examples of his fellow-monks induced him to leave them and adopt the solitary mode of life; the repentance of a Venetian Duke brought him his first disciple. The temptations of the devil compelled him to lead his severe life of expiation; and finally, the persecutions of others were the occasion of his settlement at Camaldoli, mother house of his Order.

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2 Kings 11:1-4, 9-18, 20
Psalm 132:11-14, 17-18
Matthew 6:19-23

2 Kings 11:1-4, 9-18, 20
(1) Truly, Athaliah, the mother of Ahaziah, seeing that her son was dead, rose up and put to death all the royal offspring. (2) But Jehosheba, the daughter of king Joram, the sister of Ahaziah, taking Jehoash, the son of Ahaziah, stole him away from the midst of the sons of the king who were being killed, out of the bedroom, with his nurse. And she hid him from the face of Athaliah, so that he would not be killed. (3) And he was with her for six years, hidden in the house of the Lord. But Athaliah reigned over the land. (4) Then, in the seventh year, Jehoiada sent for and took centurions and soldiers, and he brought them to himself in the temple of the Lord. And he formed a pact with them. And taking an oath with them in the house of the Lord, he revealed to them the son of the king. (9) And the centurions acted in accord with all the things that Jehoiada, the priest, had instructed them. And taking each one of their men who would enter on the Sabbath, with those who would depart on the Sabbath, they went to Jehoiada, the priest. (10) And he gave to them the spears and weapons of king David, which were in the house of the Lord. (11) And they stood, each one having his weapons in his hand, before the right side of the temple, all the way to the left side of the altar and of the shrine, surrounding the king. (12) And he led forth the son of the king. And he placed the diadem on him, and the testimony. And they made him king, and they anointed him. And clapping their hands, they said: “The king lives!” (13) Then Athaliah heard the sound of the people running. And entering to the crowd at the temple of the Lord, (14) she saw the king standing upon a tribunal, according to custom, and the singers and trumpets near him, and all the people of the land rejoicing and sounding the trumpets. And she tore her garments, and she cried out: “Conspiracy! Conspiracy!” (15) But Jehoiada gave orders to the centurions who were over the army, and he said to them: “Lead her away, beyond the precinct of the temple. And whoever will have followed her, let him be struck with the sword.” For the priest had said, “Do not allow her to be killed in the temple of the Lord.” (16) And they laid hands on her. And they pushed her through the way by which horses enter, beside the palace. And she was killed there. (17) Then Jehoiada formed a covenant between the Lord, and the king and the people, so that they would be the people of the Lord; and between the king and the people. (18) And all the people of the land entered the temple of Baal, and they tore down his altars, and they thoroughly crushed the statues. Also, they killed Mattan, the priest of Baal, before the altar. And the priest placed guards in the house of the Lord. (20) And all the people of the land rejoiced. And the city was quieted. But Athaliah was slain with the sword at the house of the king.

Psalm 132:11-14, 17-18
(11) The Lord has sworn the truth to David, and he will not disappoint: I will set upon your throne from the fruit of your lineage. (12) If your sons will keep my covenant and these, my testimonies, which I will teach to them, then their sons will sit upon your throne even forever. (13) For the Lord has chosen Zion. He has chosen it as his dwelling place. (14) This is my resting place, forever and ever. Here I will dwell, for I have chosen it. (17) There, I will produce a horn to David. There, I have prepared a lamp for my Christ. (18) I will clothe his enemies with confusion. But my sanctification will flourish over him.

Matthew 6:19-23
(19) Do not choose to store up for yourselves treasures on earth: where rust and moth consume, and where thieves break in and steal. (20) Instead, store up for yourselves treasures in heaven: where neither rust nor moth consumes, and where thieves do not break in and steal. (21) For where your treasure is, there also is your heart. (22) The lamp of your body is your eye. If your eye is wholesome, your entire body will be filled with light. (23) But if your eye has been corrupted, your entire body will be darkened. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great will that darkness be!

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Venerable Matt Talbot is considered the patron of men and women struggling with alcoholism.

Matt was born in Dublin, where his father worked on the docks and had a difficult time supporting his family. After a few years of schooling, Matt obtained work as a messenger for some liquor merchants; there he began to drink excessively. For 15 years—until he was almost 30—Matt was an active alcoholic.

One day he decided to take “the pledge” for three months, make a general confession and begin to attend daily Mass. There is evidence that Matt’s first seven years after taking the pledge were especially difficult. Avoiding his former drinking places was hard. He began to pray as intensely as he used to drink. He also tried to pay back people from whom he had borrowed or stolen money while he was drinking.

Most of his life Matt worked as a builder’s laborer. He joined the Secular Franciscan Order and began a life of strict penance; he abstained from meat nine months a year. Matt spent hours every night avidly reading Scripture and the lives of the saints. He prayed the rosary conscientiously. Though his job did not make him rich, Matt contributed generously to the missions.

After 1923 his health failed and Matt was forced to quit work. He died on his way to church on Trinity Sunday. Fifty years later Pope Paul VI gave him the title venerable.

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