Saint Alphonsus Rodriguez

Confessor, Jesuit Coadjutor (1531-1617)

Feast – October 30

The Lombards were a Germanic people who conquered and ruled most of the Italian Peninsula starting in 568, establishing a Lombard Kingdom in north and central Italy. In 751, Aistulf, king of the Lombards, conquered what remained of the exarchate of Ravenna, the last vestige of the Roman Empire in northern Italy. He demanded the submission of Rome and a tribute of one gold solidus (about 4.5 grams of highly pure gold coin) per capita.

Pope Stephen II and a Roman envoy tried through negotiations to convince Aistulf to back down. When this failed, the Pope sent envoys to Pepin the Short, Mayor of the Palace of Neustria, (the western part of the Kingdom of the Franks) whom, on the 28th of July, 754, he anointed in the Basilica of Saint-Denis as king of the Franks and patrician of the Romans. In the spring of 755, Pepin summoned the army and sent envoys ahead to offer Aistulf an indemnity if he restored the Roman territories he had taken. The Frankish army crossed the Mont Cénis and defeated the Lombard army near Susa. Defeated, Aistulf submitted to some form of Frankish overlordship and promised under oath to return Ravenna and the other cities he had occupied to the Pope. The peace treaty was signed by the “Romans, Franks and Lombards” As soon as the Frankish army left Italy, he disregarded the treaty. On the 1st of January 756, Aistulf besieged Rome. The Pope appealed again to the Franks. After three months, Aistulf abandoned the siege. In April, a Frankish army once again invaded Italy and defeated the Lombards. Aistulf was forced to give hostages and pay annual tribute to the Franks. He also had to promise in writing to return the occupied territories to the Pope. The territories specified in the treaty of 756 had belonged to the Roman Empire. Envoys of the Empire met Pepin in Pavia and offered him a large sum of money to restore the lands to the Empire, but he refused, saying that they belonged to St Peter and the Roman church. The official Donation of Pepin followed extending the temporal rule of the popes beyond the duchy of Rome and provided a legal basis for the creation of the Papal States.

The creation of the Papal State, its security and security of its people forced Popes to get involved in international affairs, taking sides and positions in conflicts and wars, creating coalitions to maintain balance in Catholic Europe. Few kings and local rulers were saints, so times without military conflict were rare and even during times of peace the jealousy, greed and struggle for power continued.

In 1489, Pope Innocent VIII, in conflict with King Ferdinand I of Naples, excommunicated and deposed Ferdinand and offered the Kingdom of Naples to Charles VIII of France, grandson Marie of Anjou of the Angevin dynasty of Naples. Pope Innocent later settled his quarrel with Ferdinand and revoked the bans before dying in 1492, but this didn’t dissuade the French from invading. In July 1494, 30,000 men under Louis d’Orleans followed by another 25,000 troops under King Charles VIII entered the territories of the Duchy of Milan, advancing into the long Italian peninsula towards Naples. As a response to the speed of the greedy and brutal French advance, Pope Alexander VI formed an alliance of opponents of French hegemony in Italy. These included the Papal States, Republic of Venice, Kingdom of Naples, Kingdoms of Spain, Duchy of Milan, Holy Roman Empire, Republic of Florence known as the Holy League of 1495, or as the League of Venice which forced the French out of Italy in 1496.

In October 1511 Pope Julius II (the Warrior Pope) formed another Holy League against France.

In 1512 Ferdinand II of Aragon, the Regent of the Crown of Castile (the Iberian Peninsula), initiated a series of military campaigns to seize the Iberian part of the Kingdom of Navarre and move the Spanish border into the Pyrenees, which were easier to defend against French aggression.

On the 20th of May, 1521, a French-Navarrese expedition force stormed the fortress of Pamplona. At the Battle a cannonball ricocheting off a nearby wall crushed the leg of knight Inigo Lopez de Loyola. After the battle the Navarrese so admired his bravery that they carried him all the way back to his father’s castle in Loyola. He underwent several surgical operations to repair the leg, where his bones were rebroken and set.

His meditations during his long recovery set him on the road of conversion, from a regular knight to a Knight of Christ, today known as St. Ignatius of Loyola. In 1540 with St. Peter Faber and St. Francis Xavier, he founded the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits).

The purpose of the Society of Jesus, says the Summary of the Constitutions, is “not only to apply oneself to one’s own salvation and to perfection with the help of divine grace, but to employ all one’s strength for the salvation and perfection of one’s neighbor.”

Jesuit missions have generally included medical clinics, schools, and agricultural development projects as ways to serve the poor or needy while preaching the Gospel. Their educational institutions often adopt mottoes and mission statements that include the idea of making students “men and women for others.”

In addition to the vows of chastity, obedience, and poverty of other religious orders in the church, St. Ignatius instituted a fourth vow for Jesuits of obedience to the Pope, to engage in projects ordained by the pontiff.

In 1541 after attending the Diet of Ratisbon, St. Peter Faber was called by his superior “Father General” St. Ignatius Loyola to Spain. He visited Barcelona, Zaragoza, Medinaceli, Madrid, and Toledo.

When St. Peter Faber had given a mission in the city Segovia northwest of Madrid, in central Spain to preach, the Rodríguez family, a successful wool and cloth merchant family, provided him with hospitality. While staying with them he prepared the third of eleven children, then ten years old St. Alphonsus Rodriguez for his First Communion. This brought great joy to the entire family and especially to St. Alphonsus, who enjoyed serving the Jesuits when they lodged in his father’s country home. A few years later, he and his older brother were sent to the recently founded Jesuit college at Alcalá, but their studies unexpectedly ended when his father died two years later. His brother, after family affairs were settled, returned to school, but Alphonsus was obliged to remain at home to help his mother run the family business, which eventually he took over. In 1557 he married Maria Suárez with whom he had three children, a daughter and two sons. Five years later he was already a widower, with only one little boy of three years remaining for him to raise. A year later his mother died. From then on, he offered himself entirely to God and began a life of prayer and mortification. In his distress on the death of his third child, he turned to the Jesuits and offered himself as a candidate for priesthood, but his advanced age of 35, poor health and limited education made him unsuitable in the eyes of the Jesuits who interviewed him for entrance.

In 1568 St. Alphonsus left Segovia and went to Valencia where his spiritual father had been transferred and spent two years seeking the education necessary to become a priest employed as a preceptor of the young by two families of that city. When he renewed his request for admission willing to become a Jesuit brother if priesthood was out of the question the fathers who examined him came to the same negative conclusion as before. The provincial, however, recognized his holiness and said that if Alphonsus was not qualified to become a brother or a priest, he can enter to become a saint. He was admitted into the Society of Jesus as a lay brother on 31 January 1571, at the age of 40. After six months, in the midst of novitiate he was sent to college of Montesion in Palma on the island of Majorca where he remained in the humble position of porter for 46 years. His duties as doorkeeper were to receive visitors who came to the college; search out the teachers or students who were wanted in the parlor; deliver messages; and run errands. Each time the bell rang, St. Alphonsus envisioned that it is Our Lord standing outside seeking admittance. Always cheerful he distributed alms to the needy, consoled and gave advice to the troubled, and greeted students with encouragement. Numerous people came to hear the porter’s advice and this trend grew. For many he became a spiritual father, among them was the patron of missionary work among black slaves, St. Peter Claver.

He had a deep devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, especially as the Immaculate Conception, and would produce copies of the complete text of the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary for the private recitation of people who asked.

The Jesuit doorkeeper was always appreciated for his kindness and holiness, but only after his death did his memoirs and spiritual notes reveal the quality and depth of his prayer life. The humble brother had been favored by God with remarkable mystical graces, ecstasies and visions of our Lord, our Lady and the saints. Maxims of his life was “In the difficulties which are placed before me, why should I not act like a donkey? When one speaks ill of him — the donkey says nothing. When he is mistreated — he says nothing. When he is forgotten — he says nothing. When no food is given him — he says nothing. When he is made to advance — he says nothing. When he is despised — he says nothing. When he is overburdened — he says nothing… The true servant of God must do likewise and say with David: Before You I have become like a beast of burden.”

For twenty years he had contented himself with a few hours of sleep on a table or in a chair until in 1591 he received an order to sleep a bed. The bodily mortifications which he imposed on himself were extreme. The demons would not leave alone this holy man. They tortured him mentally through frequent scruples and mental agitations as well as physical trauma. Twice he was thrown down a cement staircase by enemies of man’s salvation. He was afflicted with various illnesses, which plunged him into a sort of preliminary purgatory, but by casting himself into the abyss of the love of Jesus Crucified he did not change his life of modesty and service. He served a chapel where the elderly or infirm fathers celebrated late Masses. The extraordinary holiness shone out of the very ordinariness of his work as the Jesuit doorkeeper of a school.

His superiors, seeing the good work he was doing among the townspeople, were eager to have his influence spread far among his own religious community. So, on feast days they often let him into the pulpit of the refectory to have him give a lecture where entire community was sitting quietly past dinner to hear St. Alphonsus finish his preaching.

Out of obedience to his superiors in 1604 he began to write the story of his life.

He left a considerable number of manuscripts after him, they were not written with a view to publication, but put down by St. Alphonsus himself, or dictated to others.

St. Alphonsus died in 1617, already known and loved as a Saint by the population. In 1825 he was beatified and then canonized on the same day, the 15th of January, 1888, with his spiritual son St. Peter Claver, by Pope Leo XIII.

The Jesuits were instrumental in leading the Counter-Reformation, a comprehensive effort composed of apologetic and polemical documents and ecclesiastical configuration as decreed by the Council of Trent. By the mid-18th century, a flourishing Society had acquired a reputation in Europe for political maneuvering and economic success. Eager for more power, monarchs in many European states and their associates running shady businesses using slave labor in the colonies were unable to compete against areas run by the Jesuits, where bosses always cared more for workers material and spiritual wellbeing that their own, treating everybody the way St. Alphonsus did with love and kindness. The Jesuits were accused of being supranational, too autonomous, and too strongly allied to the papacy. Instead of adjusting the ways the colonies were run, political leaders pressured the papacy which reluctantly acceded to the anti-Jesuit demands of various Catholic kingdoms while providing minimal theological justification for the suppressions. The Portuguese Empire expelled Jesuits from their states in 1759, France in 1764, the Two Sicilies, Malta, Parma, the Spanish Empire in 1767, and the Society’s accumulated wealth and possessions were confiscated.

With his Papal brief, Dominus ac Redemptor on the 21st of July, 1773, Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Society, however, the order did not disappear. It continued underground operations in China, in Poland controlled by Russia and Prussia during the Partition era, and the United States. In 1814, a subsequent Pope, Pius VII, acted to restore the Society of Jesus to its previous provinces, and the Jesuits began to resume their work in those countries.

References and Excerpts:

[1] T. Modica, “Saint Alphonsus Rodriguez, pray for us – Good News Ministries,” Go!GoodNews Network, Oct. 30, 2019. https://gogoodnews.net/posts/saint-alphonsus-rodriguez/ (accessed Oct. 15, 2022).

[2] “Saint Alphonsus Rodriguez, Confessor, Jesuit Coadjutor.” https://sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_alphonsus_rodriguez.html (accessed Oct. 15, 2022).

[3] “Saint Alphonsus Rodriguez | The Society of Jesus.” https://www.jesuits.global/saint-blessed/saint-alphonsus-rodriguez/ (accessed Oct. 15, 2022).

[4] “Alphonsus Rodriguez,” Wikipedia. Sep. 07, 2022. Accessed: Oct. 15, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alphonsus_Rodriguez&oldid=1109067328

[5] “Jesuits,” Wikipedia. Oct. 14, 2022. Accessed: Oct. 15, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jesuits&oldid=1115974369

Did you know?

Thursday, October 13, 1977, began as just another routine trip for the crew of Lufthansa Flight 181, as the Boeing 737 departed the island of Palma de Mallorca bound for Frankfurt Germany. Onboard, 86 passengers and five crew members went about their business, while the coast of mainland Europe slipped away below them. Little did they know that it would take an ordeal to eventually reach their destination. Some 30 minutes into the flight, two men and two women rose from their seats brandishing pistols and hand grenades, while shouting commands to the passengers. They called themselves “Commando Martyr Halima” – in honour of fellow militant Brigitte Kuhlmann, who had been killed in Operation Entebbe the previous year. The leader of the hijacker group was Palestinian terrorist Zohair Youssif Akache (23, male), who adopted the alias “Captain Martyr Mahmud”. The other three were Suhaila Sayeh (24, female), a Palestinian, and two Lebanese people, Wabil Harb (23, male) and Hind Alameh (22, female). The Los Angeles Times, on Friday October 14, 1977, reported that they were wearing Che Guevera T-shirts

Ernesto “Che” Guevara was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist. A major figure of the Cuban Revolution.

Ernesto Guevara was born to Ernesto Guevara Lynch and Celia de la Serna y Llosa, on 14 June 1928, in Rosario, Argentina. He was the eldest of five children in an upper-class Argentine family of pre-independence Spanish and Irish ancestry. Two of Guevara’s notable 18th century ancestors included Luis María Peralta, prominent Spanish landowner in colonial California and Patrick Lynch, an emigrant from Ireland and significant landowner in the Rio de la Plata Governorate.

From the beginning, Ernesto was raised as a Marxist revolutionary. His father was a staunch supporter of the Republicans/Communists from the 1936 Spanish Civil War, and often hosted many veterans from this conflict in the Guevara home. His parents’ home library contained more than 3,000 left leaning books, including the writings of Karl Marx (the author of the Communist Manifesto) and Vladimir Lenin (the father of Russian revolution of 1917) which he enthusiastically read.

He enjoyed the lavish lifestyle that came with his family’s high middle-class status. Ernesto was active in sports like swimming, football, golf, rugby, and shooting, while also becoming an “untiring” cyclist. In 1948, Ernesto entered the University of Buenos Aires to study medicine. Two years into his studies he took a 4,500-kilometer (2,800 mi) solo trip through the rural provinces of northern Argentina on a bicycle on which he had installed a small engine. This was followed by a nine-month, 8,000-kilometer (5,000 mi) continental motorcycle trek through part of South America. In 1952 he took a year off from his studies to spend a few weeks volunteering at the San Pablo leper colony in Peru, and the rest of the time journeying through Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, and Miami, Florida, before returning home to Buenos Aires. At the end of the trip, he came to view Latin America not as a collection of separate nations, but as a single entity requiring a continent-wide liberation strategy, envisioning himself as its leader. On 7 July 1953, Guevara set out again, this time to Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador Guatemala.

Guevara arrived in Guatemala where President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, through land expropriation and redistribution, was attempting to end the latifundia (a large estate / ranch) system. Pleased with the road the nation was heading down, Guevara decided to settle down in Guatemala to “perfect himself and accomplish whatever may be necessary in order to become a true revolutionary.”

In Guatemala City, he sought out Hilda Gadea Acosta, a politically well-connected member of the Marxist organization APRA (American Popular Revolutionary Alliance). She introduced Guevara to a number of high-level officials in the Árbenz government. Then he established contact with a group of Cuban exiles linked to Fidel Castro and became part of Fidel Castro’s efforts to overthrow the Batista government in Cuba. He served as a military advisor to Castro and led guerrilla troops in battles against Batista forces.

When Castro took power in 1959, Guevara’s first assignment was to oversee executions at an infamous La Cabaña prison. As a “man of the people and for the people” he moved into the biggest, most luxurious mansion in Havana. Between 1959 and 1963, approximately 500 men were killed under his watch. He took a personal interest in the interrogation, torture, and execution of political prisoners. Ciro Roberto Bustos, Guevara’s fellow Communist revolutionary, described him as a ‘synthesis of pathological sadism and fundamentalist extremism.

Lacking any managerial training and skills, he was named head of Cuba’s central bank. Later, he became Minister of Industries, as such he called for the diversification of the Cuban economy, and elimination of any material incentives. By 1963 he had brought the economy to its lowest point since Castro came to power, at the same time Cuban dependence on the USSR for military equipment and economic aid was growing. The Soviet Union was intentionally overpaying for Cuban sugar, in 1969 Cuban sugar cost three times the price of any other.

In return Fidel Castro declared his readiness to support revolutionaries “in any corner of the world.” Guevara was the most visible advocate of this commitment. In 1965 he was deep in the African Congo leading a contingent of approximately 100 Afro-Cubans. His reputation outside of Cuba, among leftist intellectuals and the radical youth that called itself “the new left,” grew by leaps and bounds. At the order of Fidel Castro, on November 3,1966, after six months training in the mountains of Cuba, the legendary rebel Che Guevara entered Bolivia to ignite a continental revolution.

Guevara’s guerrilla force, numbering about 120 well equipped men, members of “National Liberation Army of Bolivia” entered Bolivia. However, Bolivia’s Communist Party reneged on the commitment to help him, and Fidel Castro cut off all supplies. Lacking outside support, Guevara was captured and executed on 9 October 1967.

In the 1930s, Joseph Stalin during the “Great Purge” eliminated high officers of the Red Army as well as almost all the activists of the Leninist party. From June 30 to July 2, 1934. Chancellor Adolf Hitler ordered a series of political extrajudicial executions called the “Night of the Long Knives.” In 1967 Fidel Castro got rid of Che Guevara. All of them to consolidate their power. Because the compassion for poor and needy is not a goal but a means to power, power at any costs. To manipulate poor ignorant young people to do things that they would never normally do, power hungry charlatans need legends like Che Guevara. The four young people who hijacked Lufthansa Flight 181 on October 13, 1977, are one of many victims of this propaganda.

Month: October 2022