Feast day: June 21
St. Aloysius Gonzaga
Heir to an Italian princely fortune who renounced it for the Jesuits, then died at 23 caring for plague victims he carried from the streets.
Aloysius Gonzaga was born in 1568, the eldest son of the Marquis of Castiglione, and was raised from infancy for a soldier's and a courtier's life — sent at a young age to the brilliant, intriguing courts of Florence, Mantua, and Spain. But amid all that worldly splendor the boy was repelled by its corruption and drawn powerfully to God, resolving while still a child to give himself entirely to him.
His decision to become a Jesuit met furious resistance from his father, who had other plans for his heir and the family fortune. Aloysius held firm through years of pressure, and at last, renouncing his title and his rights as the eldest son in favor of his brother, he entered the Society of Jesus in Rome at eighteen — laying down a marquisate to become a novice.
He was known for an extraordinary purity and self-discipline, so much so that his superiors sometimes had to moderate his penances and remind him to be gentle with himself. He studied theology and was thought destined for great things in the order, but his real greatness showed itself in something simpler.
In 1591 a plague swept Rome, and the young Jesuit threw himself into nursing the sick, carrying the dying to the hospitals on his own shoulders and tending them with his own hands. He caught the disease and, after months of illness, died on June 21, 1591, at just twenty-three. Canonized in 1726, he is the patron saint of young students and of those who care for the sick, especially victims of epidemics.
Asked as a child playing at recreation what he would do if the world ended in an hour, he answered: 'Keep playing.' He was where God wanted him.
Image: Guercino (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.
Source: newadvent.org/cathen/01331c.htm
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