June 21
St. Aloysius Gonzaga
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Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time

June 22
Sts. Thomas More and John Fisher

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Religious Freedom Week

June 23
St. Joseph Cafasso
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June 24
Birth of St. John the Baptist
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June 25
St. William of Vercelli
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June 26
St Josemaria Escriva
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June 27
Our Lady of Perpetual Help

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June 21

St. Aloysius Gonzaga

“I am a piece of twisted iron, I entered the religious life to get twisted straight.”

St. Aloysius Gonzaga

St. Aloysius Gonzaga (1568–1591) was born to a noble Italian family, the eldest of seven children, and was destined for the military. When Aloysius was but five, his father, the Marquis of Castiglione, took him to a military camp. Aloysius returned home mimicking the soldier’s rough language, but when his tutor chastised him, he became deeply contrite.

By the age of seven he was reciting the Little Office of the Virgin Mary and the seven penitential psalms daily. By the time he was nine years of age he chose the religious life and made a personal vow of chastity. As a safeguard against sexual temptation he always kept his eyes downcast in the presence of women.

Having read about the Jesuit missionaries, Aloysius decided to join them—a plan his father tried to destroy by sending him on a tour of the northern Italian courts. Although many tried to dissuade him from his chosen vocation, he remained absolutely firm; and at seventeen he was allowed to renounce his inheritance and enter the seminary in order to become a Jesuit priest.

The always-frail Aloysius took on many mortifications, which his spiritual director encouraged him to moderate. Yet Aloysius could not hold himself back when the Jesuits went out to care for the suffering during a plague in Rome.  He threw himself into the task of offering physical comfort and spiritual consolation. Eventually, he caught the plague himself. Although he seemed to recover, Aloysius foresaw the end, increasing his prayers. The fever returned, as he had predicted, and he died at the age of twenty-three, before completing his priestly studies.

St. Aloysius was connected with two great figures of the Counter-Reformation: he received his First Holy Communion at the age of twelve from St. Charles Borromeo, and his Last Rites from St. Robert Bellarmine, both of whom served as his spiritual advisers. On the night of his death, St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi had a vision of him being received into great glory.

June 22

St. Thomas More

Thomas More was born in 1478 in London, the son of a Justice of the King’s Bench. After receiving a first-rate education, Thomas rose to become an esteemed lawyer. His professional success caught the eye of King Henry VIII, who invited him to court. Henry had a deep appreciation for Thomas’ wit and intelligence, and they became personal friends. He appointed him to a series of high posts, finally making him Lord High Chancellor of England.

When Henry sought to divorce his wife and declared himself the head of the English Church, Thomas distanced himself from his friend. He quietly resigned and retired to relative poverty—a blessing, he reassured his wife and children. He embraced a simple life and continued his practice of frequent prayer. But Henry was not satisfied. He wanted Thomas to swear an oath to support him.

When Thomas refused, he was confined to the Tower of London for fifteen months. While there, Thomas wrote many warm letters to his four children. He withstood his daughter Margaret’s frequent pleading that he sign the oath. Thomas was at last tried and found guilty of treason. Four days later, he stepped onto the scaffold, declaring himself “the king’s servant, but God’s first.”

Thomas More was canonized in 1935.

Because the soul has such deep roots in personal and social life and its values run so contrary to modern concerns, caring for the soul may well turn out to be a radical act, a challenge to accepted norms.

St. Thomas More

June 24

Birth of Saint John the Baptist

Besides Christ Himself, only two saints’ birthdays are commemorated liturgically: The Virgin Mary’s on September 8, exactly nine months after the Feast of her Immaculate Conception; and Saint John the Baptist’s on June 24, 6 months before Christmas. Jesus himself declared John to be the greatest among those born of women. John was the forerunner of the Messiah, declaring his coming in his public preaching around the river Jordan.

The Gospel of Saint Luke tells us that John was born through the intercession of God to his parents Elizabeth and Zechariah, who were otherwise beyond the age for having children. Zechariah, a priest of the temple, was disbelieving of the Archangel Gabriel who proclaimed that Elizabeth would give birth to a boy they must name John. Zechariah was rendered speechless until the child’s birth. While Elizabeth was pregnant with John, she was visited by Mary, and, recognizing the presence of Jesus in Mary’s womb, John leapt in Elizabeth’s womb.

When John was finally born, Zechariah insisted that he be named John; when he did, his speech was finally restored. A beautiful proclamation poured forth from him in recognition of God’s impending intervention in the lives of the Jewish people. That proclamation, called the Benedictus, is still prayed today as a part of morning prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours.

June 26

St.  Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer

Josemaria was the second of six children of a Spanish textile merchant Jose Escriva and his wife Dolores. He entered the seminary at sixteen, was ordained in 1925, and went to Madrid for doctoral studies. Longing to place himself at the service of the Lord, his constant prayer was Ut sit, “that it might be done.” In addition to his pastoral duties, he undertook an apostolate with manual workers, professional people and university students who, by coming into contact with the poor and sick to whom Fr. Josemaria was ministering, learned the practical meaning of charity

And, on October 2, 1928, the Lord answered him. In prayer, he “saw” a new form of life in which Christians in all walks of life would cultivate a deep attachment to Christ while living and working in the world. He called it “the work of God,” Opus Dei. It’s growth in Spain was seriously impeded by the religious persecutions during the Spanish Civil War. After the war, in 1947, Josemaria obtained papal approval for Opus Dei, and it began to spread outside of Spain.

Around this time, Josemaria was diagnosed with diabetes; over ten years, the disease progressed. On April 27, 1954, he received an insulin injection that sent him into anaphylactic shock. Not only did he survive this shock, but he recovered to find that his diabetes was gone. The day had been the feast of Our Lady of Montserrat, and Josemaria, who had prayed often at her shrine in Spain, credited Mary with his cure. In The Forge, he wrote, “If I were a leper my mother would hug me. She would kiss my wounds without fear or hesitation. Well, then, what would the Blessed Virgin Mary do? When we feel we are like lepers, all full of sores, we have to cry out: Mother! And the protection of our Mother will be like a kiss upon our wounds, which obtains our cure.”

Monsignor Escriva died in Rome suddenly in 1975.  By the time of his death, Opus Dei had spread to thirty nations on six continents. Today Opus Dei has around 90,000 members, both men and women. 98% are laypeople, most of whom are married.

“Prayer is not a question of what you say or feel, but of love.  And you love when you try hard to say something to the Lord, even though you might not actually say anything.”

St.  Josemaria Escriva