When was saint aloysius gonzaga canonized

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Nov His military training started at an early age, but he also received an education in languages and the arts. As early as age four, he was given a set of miniature guns and accompanied his father on training expeditions so that the boy might learn "the art of arms. He grew up amid the violence and brutality of the Renaissance Italy and witnessed the murder of two of his brothers. In , at age of 8, he was sent to Florence, along with his younger brother Rodolfo, to receive further education.

While there, he fell ill with a disease of the kidneys, which was to trouble him throughout his life. While he was ill, he took the opportunity to read about the saints and to spend much of his time in prayer. In November , the brothers were sent to the Duke of Mantua. Aloysius was shocked by the violent and frivolous life-style he encountered there.

After reading a book about Jesuit missionaries in India, Aloysius felt strongly that he wanted to become a missionary himself.

He started practicing by giving catechism classes to young boys in Castiglione in the summers. The family was called to Spain in , st that point, Aloysius started thinking in earnest about joining a religious order. He had considered joining the Capuchins, but he had a Jesuit confessor in Madrid and decided to join that order. In July , Aloysius still wanted to become a priest, and several members of his family worked hard to persuade him to change his mind.

When they realized that there was no way to make him give up his plan, they tried to persuade him to become a secular priest, and offered to arrange for a bishopric for him. If he were to become a Jesuit he would renounce any right to his inheritance or status in society.

His family was afraid of this, but their attempts to persuade him not to join the Jesuits failed; Aloysius was not interested in higher office and still wanted to become a missionary. Aloysius' health continued to cause problems. In addition to the kidney disease, he also suffered from a skin disease, chronic headaches and insomnia. He was sent to Milan for studies, but after some time he was sent back to Rome because of his health.

On November 25, , he took the three religious vows of chastity, poverty and obedience. In February and March , he received minor orders, and started studying theology to prepare for ordination. In , he was called to Mantua to mediate between his brother Rodolfo and the Duke of Mantua.

He returned to Rome in May It is said that later that year, he had a vision in which the Archangel Gabriel told him that he would die within a year. In , a plague broke out in Rome. The Jesuits opened a hospital for the stricken, and Aloysius volunteered to work there. He was allowed to work in a ward where there were no plague victims, as they were afraid to lose him. As it turned out, a man on his ward was already infected, and on March 3, six days before his 23rd birthday Aloysius showed the first symptoms of being infected.

It seemed certain that he would die in a short time, and he was given Extreme Unction. To everyone's surprise, however, he recovered, but his health was left worse than ever. While he was ill, he spoke several times with his confessor, the cardinal and later saint, Robert Bellarmine.

Aloysius had another vision, and told Bellarmine that he would die on the Octave of the feast of Corpus Christi. On that very day, which fell on June 21 that year, he seemed very well in the morning, but insisted that he would die before the day was over. As he began to grow weak, Bellarmine gave him the last rites, and recited the prayers for the dying. He died just before midnight. Aloysius Gonzaga was beatified only fourteen years after his death by Pope Paul V, on October 19, In Pope Benedict declared Aloysius to be the patron saint of young students.

Owing to the manner of his death, he has always been considered a patron saint of plague victims. For his compassion and courage in the face of an incurable disease, Aloysius Gonzaga has become the patron of both AIDS sufferers and their caregivers.

Not long after Aloysius death, on his feast day in , the three daughters of his brother Rodolfo established, under his patronage, a community of women dedicated to education, under the formal name of the Noble Virgins of Jesus. Address West Mason Ave.

Last year Volunteer Missionary work , this year, discerning the Priesthood! Before entering the discernment program I had been home this summer and during my brief stay I volunteered my time to help update the rectory at St. Aloysius Catholic Church, which is where I grew up and practiced my faith. I returned to the Saint John's Society in Corvallis, Oregon, at the end of August but with a different path than last year.

I will continue my vocational discernment to the Priesthood. Your support is very appreciated during this important time in my life and you will forever be in my prayers. Please donate here ; or through the parish office; or directly to the Saint John's Society with Austin Zeober in the Comment or in the Donation Acknowledgement Preference sections on the donation page.

Thank you!!! And after four hundred years, for example, in Latin America, the cleavage between, call them the nobility, and the rest of the people, Aloysius, under divine inspiration from early boyhood, recognized that if he is to even save his soul, he cannot pride himself on his rank or social state.

In the United States, Packard describes with great detail how status conscious Americans are. I live on 83 and Park Ave. All I have to do is walk up Park Ave. In other words, you might say the barbarians of New York live beyond 96th. Aloysius hated pretense—a lesson for everyone of us—putting on, and let me tell you, this has infested every rank and every state of life.

He came back smiling. All I can tell you is it took a lot of grace, but I smiled. He wanted to make sure I knew who was in charge, because he knew the message that I had to share with him would somehow touch on his authority. Third feature of his spirituality, we may call it casually, penance, but it is much more refined. We all have these drives, there are seven. Well, this is an insight into the meaning of penance that only a person as totally innocent as Aloysius could teach us, which is one reason he was canonized.

For even though we have not personally sinned, we commonly and correctly associate doing penance for our own past mistakes. In Margaret of Cortona, all right, she had a sinful past, and Augustine, you better believe it, had a sinful past but not Aloysius.

There are a few things I will share with you during these conferences on the Jesuit saints more important than this one. The insight that he gave the Church was that even though we have not personally sinned, either we do, and the word is violence to our sinful nature or concupiscence will do violence to us.

Now in some people, they are just stronger than in others. We all have these drives, some are stronger than others, depending on who the person is and how much we have given in to a particular tendency. With Aloysius, it was lust, he knew it and in order to teach the world the need for penance, not just to expiate sins committed, but in order to master our sinful desires what we still call penance, is something that we should all learn from Aloysius to practice, to ask ourselves, what is my predominant passion?

Fourth feature of his spirituality. Aloysius had a profound understanding of the gravity of sin. In his own life, in the life of others and in how dreadful a thing it is to offend the good God.

If there is one mystery of our faith that needs strengthening in these days, it is the fact of sin. Who talks about it? Fifth feature.

Already from childhood, Aloysius looked forward to going to Heaven— the mystery of Heaven. This is no doubt one reason that he performed extraordinary penance, and that, remember, in addition to all of his physical disabilities which he already experienced from childhood, one reason was that he just looked forward to a day that all of this would end.

No wonder when he caught the plague in Rome, from which he briefly recovered then shortly after got a fever and died, he confessed impatience with wanting to die. May I recommend a daily looking forward to Heaven and to ask God to give us some foretaste of what awaits us. It will make this world, seem by comparison, very cheap and dreary, indeed.

He not only meant it, He lived it, or you could make a transitive verb: He died it. One meaning of Calvary that can be lost on us—this is a voluntary sacrifice of His life as an act of charity. I get some idea of how this charity can be very costly.