St Aloysius Day

Today is the feast day of St Aloysius Gonzaga, the patron saint of the church of the Oxford Oratory. Built in 1875 by the Jesuits they took as their patron one of the great Jesuit saints, and a role model for youth.

The Jesuits surrenderd the care of the church to the Archdiocese of Birmingham in 1981 and in 1990 the Oratorians arrived to found the third English Oratory. Nonetheless devotion to St Aloysius has continued alongside that of St Philip Neri, and St Aloysius Day is always a highlight of the parish year.

The statue of St Aloysius in the church of the Oxford Oratory

Image: Brownie Bear on Flickr

We commenced our celebrations last night with Solemn Vespers and this evening there was a Sung High Mass at 6pm. As is customary the preacher was a Jesuit, and this year it is Fr Dushan Croos  the assistant University Chaplain. In his sermon he said that on theapplication of the Gospel reading St Aloysius' love for God - unkowable to the outsider - could be measured by the love St Aloysius showed to his neighbour, and that this was a model for us all to follow, and as illustrated by the excellent pastoral care we enjoyed from the Oratorians.

It occurs to me that despite the diiferences between a Jesuit and an Oratorian approach one can see in St Aloysius a young man not unlike those of his near contemporaries who were transformed under St Philip's influence to lives of pastoral solicitude.

Following the Mass there was the customary parish buffet, and this time we were back in the reconstructed ansd extended parish centre which I wrote about in my last post. This proved an excellent setting and was amost enjoyable occasion, one on which one could talk to old and new friends and tuck in to Pimms and suitably festive food - not least meat on a Friday as today was, of course, a local Solemnity...  

My posts from previous years about St Aloysius can be seen at  Flos paradisi and  Celebrating St Aloysius from 2010, St Aloysius Gonzaga for 2011 and St Aloysius Gonzaga from last year.

St Aloysius Gonzaga

Today is the feast of St Aloysius Gonzaga, the Jesuit patron of the church of the Oxford Oratory.

St Aloysius Gonzaga

Image: Catholicism Pure and Simple blogspot

At the Solemn Mass this evening Fr Michael Holman S.J., Principal of Heythrop College preached. His theme was the continuing witness of what St Aloysius himself bore witness to in his brief life, and his compelling attraction as a model for life and fidelity to vocation.

My illustrated post from last year about St Aloysius can be read at St Aloysius Gonzaga.

St Aloysius Gonzaga

Today, being the feast of St Aloysius Gonzaga, is the patronal festival for the Oxford Oratory parish.

St Aloysius as a boy

Image: Breviary.net

St Aloysius (1568-1591) is not perhaps the easiest company amongst the saints. An aristocrat who renounced his inheritance to join the Jesuits, and who, having lived a life of mortification and penance dies as aresult of nursing plague victims at the age of 23 he can appear uncomfortably demanding. Much of the later artwork depicting him has a somewhat sickly quality which gets in the way of understanding him as a human being. The contemporary portraits suggest aclear sighted young man with the very considerable sense of purpose he demonstrated in life.

He stands somewhat in the same tradition as St Louis of Toulouse or the later fourteenth century Peter of Luxembourg, all of them noted for their royal or aristocratic background, life of mortification, service of the poor and the Church, and early deaths.

St Aloysius as a teenage layman
Image: Gonzaga College

There is another account of his life and devotions to him here.

A year or two ago the preacher on St Aloysius day at the Oratory, Fr Brendan O'Callaghan SJ, the Master of Campion Hall, made the point that in order to understand St Aloysius and his choice of austerities it is important to realise that this came from his own self-knowledge of the temptations his birth and position offered.

The Vocation of St Aloysius
Painting c.1650
Image: Wikipedia

May St Aloysius pray for us all

Celebrating St Aloysius

Last night's Solemn Mass at the Oratory was the main celebration for St Aloysius here in Oxford.

As something of a surprise we had a Pontifical Mass with Bishop Peter Elliott, a long- standing friend of the Oratory. I gathered that he just happened to be in Oxford and was recruited at short notice. We had an excellent sermon from Fr Simon Bishop S.J., the Chaplain to the University. This brought out the lessons that can be applied by everyone in their own lives from the example of St Aloysius' life,and concentrated on the future saint's remark to his father when he told him of his vocation: I am made for greater things.

After the Mass, and on the way to the splendid buffet supper there was an opportunity to admire the completed work on the statue of our patron saint. I am basically reproducing, with a few alterations, the piece about it from the Oratory website, and would add that I have a personal interest in this in that I found at an auction the pillar base on which St Aloysius now stands. It fits in so well I wonder if it had wandered from the church at some point in the past. The capital is just visible. The statue is a handsome piece, and representitive of the way St Aloysius is usually depicted

... the statue of St Aloysius in the Relic Chapel has now acquired a splendid shield of the Gonzaga arms by Tom Meek. The original statue was wood, from Ammergau, and was mysteriously sold away just before the Oratory came to Oxford. The one we have now was given to us by the nuns of Oulton Abbey, and recently restored by Richard Pelter's team from IFACS. With the ihs and sa monograms on the background, it is a little reminder of four hundred years of Jesuit ministry in Oxford, from Fr Edmund Campion to Fr Richard Manners SJ.

Flos paradisi

Salveto centies! Flos paradisi! are the first words of the hymn we shall no doubt sing this evening to mark St Aloysius' day at the Oxford Oratory, as we sang it last night at First Vespers.

St. Aloysius Gonzaga as a youth

St Aloysius (1568-91) was a Jesuit, and when the present church in Oxford was built by the Society in 1875 he was chosen as patron. I assume this was partly because he was seen as a suitable role model for young men in the university city as well as being a Jesuit. There is a short biography here
.

The contemporary portraits of St Aloysius suggest, as does his life, a young man of considerably more determination that the later, hagiographical images, where he looks decidedly wimpish.

As we were reminded in a good sermon on this day last year from one of the Jesuit Chaplains to the University St Aloysius can appear a rather uncomfortable figure - the pious youth of aristocratic family who renounces all to become a Jesuit and dies at the age of 23 whilst nursing plague victims, a young man of austere life and spirituality who never, according to his confessor, committed a mortal sin. He stands in a tradition that includes the fourteenth century Avignon teenage Cardinal, Peter of Luxemburg, as someone one may admire, but feel it impossible to follow. It was perhaps for this reason, that is with conscious irony, that Lord Sebastian's teddy bear is named Aloysius in Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. As, however, last year's preacher pointed out what we need to see is the young man who is possessed of self knowledge - the member of Renaissance aristocratic military society who sees only too clearly the temptations the world has to offer, and rejects them. A little known English parallel would be the member of the great Bohun family who, in the fourteenth century, renounced his inheritance to join the Austin Friars.

Presented in that way St Aloysius becomes a much more accessible figure, one who is re-configured in Christ, and who can speak to all of us as to the possibilities of spiritual transformation in our own situations.

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
Saint Aloysius Gonzaga in Glory

May St Aloysius continue to pray for the Oratory and its parish.