Friday, May 11 | |
Liturgical Color: White | |
Today is the Memorial of St. Ignatius of Laconi, Religious. St. Ignatius' job was to beg for food for the friary. Even the poor wanted to give from their need because of his holiness. He died in 1781. (Franciscan Calendar) |
Collect: Grant us, Lord, we pray, that, being rightly conformed to the paschal mysteries, what we celebrate in joy may protect and save us with perpetual power. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Old Calendar: Saints Philip and James, apostles and martyrs; St. Francis di Girolamo, priest (Hist)
Historically today is the feast of St. Francis di Girolamo, a Jesuit priest from Italy who spent most of his life working as a rural missionary in the countryside near Naples. His sermons were short and vigorous, and he touched many hearts.
According to the 1962 Missal of Bl. John XXIII the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, today is the feast of Sts. Philip and James. Their feast in the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite is celebrated on May 3.
St. Francis di Girolamo
St. Francis di Girolamo was the famous Jesuit pulpit orator of Naples: a volume would hardly suffice to record the wonderful effect of his eloquence. "His voice" says Butler "was loud and sonorous, . . . and the style of his preaching simple and impressive. . . . His descriptions forcible and graphic and his pathetic appeals were sure to draw tears while his energy astounded and terrified," yet there must have been much of the magnetism of the popular orator in his manner for whenever he spoke whether in the streets of Naples a constant habit of his or in the church great crowds followed him and not a few of the sudden conversion made by him of hardened sinners sound like the records of some modern "Revivalist" preachers.
He was an earnest untiring faithful worker to the very last. Born in 1642, at a very early age he became a prefect in the "College of Nobles of the Society of Jesus" and soon after his novitiate was completed took high rank in the society. It was as a preacher and evangelist that he excelled. He died May 11th, 1716 and was beatified by Pius VII, on the feast of St. Joseph in 1806, and canonized by Gregory XVI, on Trinity Sunday 1839.
Excerpted from Saints and Festivals of the Christian Church, by H. Pomeroy Brewster
Patron: Grottaglie, Italy
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