Today, we hear the words of the Lord’s prayer that
Jesus taught us to pray. So often, we
don’t know the words that we want to pray, do we? We have longings, desires, and prayers
filling our hearts, but often it is so hard to put them into words. The Lord’s prayer helps us to pray, and if we
incorporate the values that these words stand for into the way we live our
lives, then these words will help transform us into the followers of Christ
that the Lord is calling us to be.
The saint we celebrate today really exemplifies someone who lived by the
values of our faith and by the words we hear in the Lord’s prayer. Aloysius Gonzaga was born to a wealthy family
in Florence, Italy in the middle of the Renaissance in 16th century
Europe. His family wanted him to have a successful & lucrative military
career, but as a child & a youth he felt the call to the priesthood. He
chose to enter the Jesuits after being inspired by stories about their
missionary work in India. Yet, he
suffered from many ailments as a youth, including kidney disease, skin disease,
chronic headaches and insomnia. Young
Aloysius had many crosses to bear. The
life of Aloysius Gonzaga was cut short – he died in Rome at the age of 23 after
he contracted the plague while nursing patients with this dreaded affliction.
When I went to Rome just after Christmas in 2010 with the youth choir from St
Richard, the choir sang at the Church of St Ignatius of Loyola in Rome where
Aloysius Gonzaga is buried. I remember a
young lady coming into the church wanting to see where he was buried. Even today, more than 4 centuries after his
death, the faithful still are inspired by the holy life by which St. Aloysius
lived.
As we hear the Lord’s prayer
today in our Gospel, may the meaning of those words really penetrate our hearts
and call us to lives of faith and action.
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