Blessed Alphonse Rodriguez of Segovia

Ah! if our sorrow is great at the sight of the suffering Jesus, what must it be for those to whom this divine Savior attaches Himself in a particular way! Like several other Saints, our Blessed one merited to see, with the eyes of his soul, every detail of this cruel torture and to endure, in his body, as a reward for his detachment from the world, a portion of the pains of his good Master. In 1568, he had a prophetic vision of the misfortunes of Granada, during the Moorish revolt; one night, while he was in prayer, he felt himself transported into the streets of Granada, where troops of armed men were fighting against one another; then, suddenly, he seemed to be transported into the middle of a church that these men were devastating with fury, profaning the altars and a magnificent statue consecrated to the Mother of God. This sad spectacle drew tears from our Blessed one, who redoubled his prayers.

Whenever he had the happiness of receiving Holy Communion, he would go early to the foot of the altars, in order to prepare himself to receive worthily the God of all holiness. One day, it was for the Assumption of Our Lady, that he had received the divine Eucharist, he was rapt in ecstasy at the foot of Mary's throne, near whom stood Saint Francis and his guardian angel. Our Lady welcomed him with honor and presented his soul to God the Father, who accepted so pleasing an offering; when he had returned to himself, he could barely return to his dwelling; his legs buckled under the weight of his body. He had eyes, but only so as not to see; for he no longer recognized the people he encountered on his way; the world was for him nothing more than emptiness compared to this heavenly homeland, in the delights of which he was still absorbed. From then on, by a virtue that we find hard to understand, and so familiar to the Saints, his heart was entirely detached from everything that touched the earth. His son, three years old, full of grace, beauty, and innocence, was the object of his tenderness; he resolved to make him a sacrifice to God. Unable to bear the sight of sin in such a lovable creature, he prayed to God to call him to Himself if he were ever to offend Him. His prayers were answered: that very night, while the child was resting at his side, he seemed to see him dead and clothed in the garments in which he was to be buried. The child did indeed die soon after, and the Blessed one thought only of retiring into a religious Order; he sold what remained of his worldly goods, and headed toward Valencia where he knew the rector o f the J Valence Place of Ismidon's early studies. esuit college. Following his advice, he resolved to learn the Latin language and entered the service of the Duchess of Terranova as tutor to her son, Don Luis de Mendace. He was then in his thirty-eighth year; he worked with the children, bearing their mockery with patience, but, despite his efforts, he was forced to abandon his plan.

However, the demon, who did not see without pain such a holy man devoting himself to the salvation of souls, resolved to distance him from the Society of Jesus, and here is the ruse he employed: after the arrival of the Blessed one in Valencia, there was a man as old as he, and who, also desiring to learn the Latin language, attended the same lessons. This conformity of taste and spirit bound them in friendship. Together they went to church to fulfill their exercises of piety; but Alphonsus was not long in noticing that his companion, who seemed very pious to him, never approached the sacraments. His desire was the eremitic life; he often spoke to him about it and finally retired to a hermitage two days' journey from Valencia, from where he wrote to our Blessed one to beg him to come and see him.

The latter went there, and it was nearly the case that he yielded to the entreaties of this new hermit, who wanted to keep him by his side. However, he wanted to see the Duchess of Terranova one last time and inform his director. The latter, upon seeing him arrive, said to him: "Where have you been, Alphonsus, since the time I last saw you? I fear greatly that you will lose your way." — "And why?" replied the Blessed one. — "It is because you want to follow your imagination, and, by continuing thus, there is no doubt that you will end up losing yourself." At these words, Alphonsus threw himself at his feet and said to him: "I make a vow never to follow my own will during my life, and I beg you to dispose of me according to your good pleasure."

The rector encouraged him to follow the plan he had formed to enter the Society. As he was ignorant of the Latin language, and his health, weakened by austerities, did not allow him to render many services, he was received only under the title of lay brother or coadjutor. When he was on the point of leaving the Duchess, God sent him a new trial. Suddenly a great noise was heard at his window, he opened it: it was the hermit who had come to remind him of his promise, to reproach him with anger for being a man of bad faith, and to command him, with threats, to accompany him to his hermitage. The Blessed one, terrified, did not let himself be won over by these threats and hastily closed his window. He never saw this man again and it was never known what had become of him.

We shall now follow our Blessed one in a new career. After six months of novitiate, begun at the age of thirty-nine on January 31, 1571, at the College of Saint Paul in Valencia, he went, at the voice of obedience, to the island of Majorca, to the College of île de Majorque Primary location of his ministry as a doorkeeper. the Blessed Virgin of Mount Sion, where he to collège de la Sainte-Vierge, du mont Sion Jesuit college in Majorca where he served as porter. ok his simple vows on April 5, 1573, and his solemn profession on the same day in 1585. It was there that he spent his life, and for more than thirty years fulfilled the office of porter, knowing how to sanctify the actions of each day and to make himself ever more pleasing in the eyes of the Lord. In the morning, at the first sound of the bell, he would throw himself on his knees, thanking the Most Holy Trinity for having preserved him during the night by reciting the Te Deum, pronouncing with extraordinary fervor these words: Dignare Domine, die isto, sine peccato nos custodire. After his other exercises of piety, he would carry out his office as porter, receiving all who presented themselves with the same eagerness as if it were Our Lord Himself. If at times he received insults, it was with the greatest and most sincere humility that he bore them, and when his duties allowed him to indulge his attraction for piety, he would invoke Mary by reciting the rosary and devote himself to prayer, for which he had, like all the Saints, a particular affection. Then he would pray to Our Lord to let him die rather than see him consent to any mortal sin. At every hour of the day he had a special invocation to the Queen of Heaven, and when the time for rest had come, he would commend to her the souls in purgatory, for whom he offered the mortifications he would perform during his rest. Often the thought of their sufferings made him forget to take food. He had such great modesty in the world that he was called the "Dead Brother."

But the demon could not endure such piety. He began to attack him with assaults against the most beautiful of virtues, appearing to him in a thousand hideous forms. The Blessed one always resisted. Then, to take revenge, the furious demons threw him from the top of a very high staircase; but the names of Jesus and Mary that he pronounced saved him. One day, he felt the ardor of a fire so terrible that he called upon the Lord. Immediately the infernal troop took flight, and his wounds were healed. The demon, seeing then that all torments were useless, wanted to employ the temptation most capable of afflicting a Saint: he tried to persuade him that one day he would abandon the path of virtue, and that he would be damned forever. In the midst of his anguish, the Blessed one had recourse to Mary: his habitual prayer was the recitation of the rosary; but, seeing that this thought of despair increased day by day, he cried out: "Mary, come to my aid, for I am perishing." Immediately Mary appeared to him, resplendent with the brightness of the heavens, put all the demons to flight, and restored peace to her servant. She delivered him shortly after from a new temptation and said to him: "My son Alphonse, where I am you have nothing to fear."

But the demon, whose ruses are without number, was not discouraged. He remembered these words, and, after having filled the soul of the Blessed one with sadness and bitterness: "Where is Mary?" he said to him; "now let her come to your aid." Immediately a divine light announced the arrival of Mary, and the infernal troop was again put to flight. After all these succors from Mary, one can understand the filial tenderness that the Blessed one had for her, confiding in her aid in all his needs, and always encouraging others to have recourse to such a powerful protectress who never abandons.

A Spanish religious, who has since written his life, being on the point of leaving Mallorca, went to see him one last time. Having found him completely absorbed in God, he threw himself on his knees to kiss his feet. The Blessed one, having returned to himself, blushed to see him thus humbled in his presence. "Brother Alphonse," he then said to him, "I am going to leave you; but, in memory of the years that I have spent with you, give me, I pray you, some spiritual souvenir." — "When you desire to obtain something from God," replied Alphonse, "have recourse to Mary, and you will then be assured of obtaining everything." He himself never ceased to feel the effects of this confidence in the Mother of God. One day when he was going, with another religious, to a castle on the top of a hill, and was walking with difficulty, the Blessed Virgin appeared to him, and with the tenderness of a mother for her son, she wiped his face with a white cloth, and spread such vigor into his limbs that he finished the rest of the journey without difficulty. To reward him for the devotion he had to the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption, she showed him the triumph that an angel gave him upon his entry into heaven.

We have seen Saints practice a blind obedience, which we find difficult to understand with our proud reason, and thereby become very pleasing in the eyes of Him who penetrates the depths of hearts. The love that our Blessed one bore for Our Lord and His most holy Mother had also made him understand that in executing the orders of his superior, he was fulfilling those of heaven: which made the burden of obedience sweet and easy for him. Sometimes he was seen remaining for entire days where he had been ordered to stay, waiting for someone to remember him. If people mocked his simplicity, he found in it a precious opportunity to humble himself, which he did not want to let slip away, in order to gain thereby a flight toward heaven.

The rector of the college wished to test him and commanded him, one day, to go to the port to embark, without telling him where he was to go, nor on which ship he could travel. The Blessed one wanted to leave immediately; but a religious, who had been warned, notified him that the superior was asking for him again; so he retraced his steps. "Where are you going," the superior then said to him, "and on what ship did you intend to embark, since there is none at the port?" Alphonse replied with simplicity that he was going to practice obedience. — "Leave for the Indies," the rector said to him another time. And the Blessed one went down immediately and asked to leave. — "Where are you going?" the porter said to him. "I am leaving for the Indies," replied Alphonse, "according to the orders of the superior." — "Do you have his permission? If you do not have it, I will not let you leave." Then he went to find the rector who asked for the Blessed one. "And in what manner do you intend to go to the Indies?" the rector said to him. "I was going to the port," the Blessed one replied; "if I had found a ship, I would have embarked, otherwise I would have gone into the water, and I would have gone as far as possible, then I would have returned happy to have done everything to obey." Happy love of obedience, how great you are, and how many things you can inspire in a generous heart!

The superior finally wished to test this worthy religious one last time. He had him come and told him that he had become incapable of rendering the smallest service, that he could not keep any useless subject, and that he should consequently withdraw. At these words, the good old man bowed his head, and, without letting any complaint escape, he headed toward the door of a house to which he had devoted himself for more than thirty years, and from which he was being driven out without regard for his services or his old age. He left it as he had always lived, stripped of everything. He asked the Brother to let him out: "No," the latter replied, deeply moved; "no, dear Brother, I cannot open for you, return to your room, and remain there as usual." This example of such touching obedience, the account of which brings tears to the eyes, had the effect on the other religious that the superior expected: for none thereafter found it hard to obey.

Blessed Alphonsus had been, for almost the entire course of his career, tried by harsh temptations. In the writings he composed by the order of his superiors, he gives advice on how to behave in these delicate circumstances, which can be useful to all the faithful. Here they are: "Temptations are sometimes so violent, and the pains with which the soul is attacked are so distressing, that it seems that peril is inevitable, especially when it sees itself deprived of all interior consolation and all human aid, and surrounded by a troop of demons who threaten it with infallible loss. What then shall the soul do that is so cruelly persecuted by its enemies and is deprived of all divine and human aid? This soul, which finds itself overwhelmed by interior or exterior pains, great or small, must place itself before God in the same manner as if it were enjoying deep peace, and as if it were in the fervor of its devotion and recollection.

"Being thus in the presence of God, it must place its pains, its temptations, and everything that gives it anxiety between God and itself, and it must offer to its Lord, by an act of love, all its pains, its persecutions, and its temptations. To succeed in this exercise and in this combat against adversities, the soul must perform three acts, which are like three arrows with which it will shortly defeat hell and all its enemies: The first arrow is love, by which it excites its will before God, to desire and love all its sufferings for the love of Him. The second arrow is mortification, embracing before God all pains, all persecutions, and temptations, by performing contrary acts. The third is the prayer it makes to obtain victory from God, and it is by this help that it will be victorious; so that to draw fruit from sufferings and not be defeated by the pains of temptation, it must sustain the combat by acts of love, not contenting itself only with loving God with a good heart, but it must also strive to desire with the same heart to suffer the present pains out of love, exciting its will to love and to relish sufferings to please the Lord."

At that time there was at the college a religious named Father J. Aguirre, who, after a few years of stay in Majorca, had received the order to leave for Catalonia. At this news, the Blessed one began to pray to recommend his journey to God. Then the Blessed Virgin appeared to him and assured him that the sh Père J. Aguirre Jesuit religious whose fate was predicted by Alphonsus. ip would be taken by the Turks and that the religious, if he embarked, would be taken captive to Algiers. "If you wish, you can save him," cried Alphonsus then, "and I will not cease to pray to you until you have brought him back safe and sound to me." What he asked for indeed happened; for the superior, one does not know why, had sent the ord Algérie City associated with the liturgical source of the text. er to the religious to return, and, as the vessel had not yet left the port, he had the happiness of seeing his friend again.

Some time later, several religious having to embark for Valencia, the Blessed one consulted the Lord about this journey, and it was answered to him that they would make "a golden journey." However, the ship was taken and the religious were taken captive to Algiers. The journey, however, had been golden, for the Brothers made a great number of conversions among the infidels. One of them, Jerome Lopez, whose virtue had previously been weak, suffered the most cruel tortures rather than deny the faith, and earned the name of apostle of his time.

Alphonse Rodriguez performed many other prophecies and miracles which are not recorded in his life. He saw in heaven the throne of the bles sed Claver, his di bienheureux Claver Disciple and friend of Alphonsus Rodriguez. sciple and friend. The day finally came, after forty-five years spent in the practice of the most admirable virtues, to go and receive the crown of immortality. He died, pronouncing the holy names of Jesus and Mary, on October 31, 1617, at the age of eighty-six. Extraordinary pomp was displayed at his funeral, which was attended by the viceroy, all the clergy, and the magistracy. An immense crowd had flocked from the entire island at the report of his virtues.

Our Blessed one has not ceased to be the object of great veneration, both from his compatriots and from foreign nations. Numerous miracles have been performed and are still being performed at his tomb. As early as 1627, Pope Urban VIII had his virtues investigated; but it was reserved for Leo XII to inscribe him in the cata Léon XII Pope who proceeded with the beatification of Julian. logue of the Blessed: which he did by a decree of September 25, 1724.

Blessed Alphonse Rodriguez is represented: 1° Reciting his rosary or praying at the feet of an image of Our Lady: this is an allusion to his tender devotion to the Mother of God; 2° having a bunch of keys hanging from his belt or placed near him, because he long exercised the office of porter at the college of Palma, on the island of Majorca; 3° in the company of Blessed Peter Claver, to whom a holy friendship united him.

We have preserved the account of Father Giry.