p. 23Early Religious Life and Temptations

The Society of Jesus had only existed seven years when, in 1546, its sainted founder saw the necessity of completing its organization by the addition of lay brothers. Their duty is to aid the fathers and scholastics by relieving them in great part from household duties, and their privilege it is to share in the merit of all the work done by these their brethren in religion. Though bound only by simple, and not by solemn vows, they are religious in the truest sense, as the Sovereign Pontiffs have more than once declared. Thus, while protected from the many perils of the external Apostolate, they enjoy all the rich merits of the Apostolic life, just as, in the Levitical law, the baggage guard had equal share in the spoil with the actual combatants. To be the standard bearer, the model of this rank of His new company of warriors, God had chosen St. Alonso. And if his life as a lay-brother is so wonderful in the order of grace, it is but one among many, even in the Society of Jesus, hardly less marvellous, or less sublime.

On the morning of January 31st, 1571,¹1The Archbishop of Valencia at this time was the B. John de Ribera. At two leagues from the City the great Missioner, St. Lewis Bertran, was Prior of St. Onofrio; in the Franciscan house was B. Nicholas Fattor (V. Oratorian Lives); while B. Gaspar de Bono was in the Minorite Convent of St. Sebastian. Brother Rodriguez, whose previous life of penance and long delay before being admitted were counted as a postulancy, was received as a novice lay-brother of the Society. Little is recorded of the noviciate of our Saint. The General Congregation of 1565, which elected St. Francis Borja, decreed that separate establishments for the novices should be established as soon as possible. But it was some time before it was possible to organize the Noviciates on a completely separate footing, and exactly in accordance with the ideal laid down in the Institute of the Society. The College at Gandia had been for the last three years used as the House of Probation for the Province, to which this had been removed in 1567, from a building adjoining the College at Valencia. But in the August of 1570, owing to the remonstrances of the then Duke of Gandia, and by orders of his father, St. Francis Borja, the original founder, and the then General of the Society, the novices were removed to Saragossa, so that the College at Gandia might be devoted to its original purpose of educating the vassals of the Duke. The Novice Master up till the year 1573 was Father Bartholomew Piñas. For some reason or other St. Alonso was not sent to Saragossa, but began his term of probation at Valencia, under Father Raphael Riera.²2This Father is probably the Father Riera, a native of Barcelona, who was one of the early members of the Society, and who, then only a scholastic, in 1548 was sent by St. Ignatius with Father Nadal, B. Peter Canisius, and others, to found the new Jesuit College in Palermo. In 1575 he was in Rome, and wrote an account of the Jubilee of that year. He became one of the penitentiaries of Loretto, and composed a book on the miracles of that Sanctuary. He died in 1582, on the 1st of January. V. De Backer.

About all that is known of this Saint’s noviciate is that, as is the custom, the first experimentum or test to which our novice was put was to spend a month upon the Exercises of St. Ignatius, the School of Saints, the Grammar of the Society’s sanctity.

It is easy to imagine what would be their effect on one so well prepared and already so high in heavenly teaching.

St. Alonso learnt from his long retreat that the solid principle of a lay-brother’s life is to offer himself thoroughly for labour,³3Exerc. Spirit., Contempl. de Regno Christi. and accordingly he resolved, as the thing most pleasing to God, that if any spare time remained after he had done his spiritual duties, he should devote it entirely to menial work. The Exercises no doubt pierced him through with a fresh sorrow for his sins committed in the world.

It was only after long prayer of many days that in his deep humility he could satisfy himself that it was possible for one so sin-stained and so broken down in health to be allowed to stay in an Order with men so full of merit and good works. He had seen others far stronger and more fitted than he was sent away from the Society, and this increased his fears. God, however, consoled him with a certainty of perseverance in his vocation by these words, “Alonso, My will is sufficient for you.” He learnt from God that his superiors would never send him away, if only he chose to stay. This filled him with confidence. He used to say, with great gratitude, that of three who were in the noviceship in his time,⁴4Bernardino de Ledesma, a lay-brother, who arrived at Majorca in 1570, left the Society; so, too, did a novice lay-brother, Gines de Exea, who came the same year, on July 29th (MS. Hist. Coll. Mall.) Possibly these are the two referred to by our Saint. he alone had persevered, though the others were far better suited for the life than himself.

His extreme care to be faithful to his engagement to Father Santander, and always to do the will of another rather than his own, his scrupulous exactness in obeying the very slightest indication of his superiors’ wishes and even those of his companions, seemed to some as the result of scrupulosity and narrowness. No doubt he heard of this opinion, and together with the memory of his having been rejected at Segovia, this may go to explain these fears of our Saint. Yet they served as a fresh spur to make him walk more worthy of his vocation and to aim at thorough self-conquest and humility.⁵5Nonell, p. 97. As his superiors had curtailed the amount of the austerities which he had been accustomed to practise in the world, because of his broken-down health, he was anxious to offer in exchange any toil that was hard and humbling. He had accepted the prohibition with perfect simplicity, and turning to God he said, as he used often to repeat, “You know, my Lord, how I hate this wicked flesh of mine, and how I would wish in every way to afflict it; but I prefer still more the guidance of those whose judgment is to be my law.” But our Saint did not fail to petition for as much as obedience would permit, and he presented a formidable list of austerities to his superior for his authorization; but his Novice Master not only cut them down to what he thought was proportioned to his enfeebled frame, but gave him the permission to use them only for a month. Alonso came at the end of the month for a fresh leave, and this he continued to do during the whole time of his long religious life. Spite of failing years and old age, he never failed to go to the superior to seek approval for his monthly allowance of corporal austerities; and even when confined to his room he used to send some one with this list. The motive of his penance in his early religious life was to be like the object of his love, Christ Crucified; but the deeper, by God’s light, he penetrated into the abysses of his nothingness, the more he was filled with hatred of himself, and he persecuted his body as the rival and the enemy of his Lord. This constant watchfulness to spy out occasions of humiliation and of suffering, and to practise “the greatest mortification in everything,” which became second nature to him, shows how well he must have practised this difficult art in his noviciate.

As our Saint constantly said, self-conquest and prayer are the two wings by which man ascends to God. Great and very wonderful were the favours bestowed on Alonso at the very beginning of his spiritual life. High were the heights to which he was to be raised before the close of his long life; but even in his very noviceship he had reached a closeness of union with God such as is the lot only of a few. For in his account of his spiritual progress he says distinctly that the favours which he describes in detail, of which a summary is given below, were granted to him previous to the assaults of the devil, and these assaults followed immediately on his taking his first vows.

He had spent three years after what he called his conversion, with his mind ever full of the terrible evil which sin is in itself, and of the fearful consequences which follow it, and while ever bewailing his past, he had taken terrible vengeance on himself. Then followed some years when he had ever before him the life and sufferings of his Lord. And from these thoughts he was raised to the consideration of the perfections of God, and to so close a union that the knowledge of Him and of His infinite excellence, of His love of souls so utterly unworthy of His affection, set his heart on fire. Alonso’s will was filled with great desires to do and suffer much for the eternal love of God, and the more he learned to know this love, the more he despised and detested himself. His mind was lifted so high above anything created or of this world, that it came by a clear and strong light from heaven to know God as He is in Himself, without need of the exercise of his mental faculties. And the more he despised and lowered himself in presence of this revelation of God, so much the more again did God pour into him a fuller knowledge of His Divinity, and so much the more was he consumed with love of God so known. And as this love increased, so deeper and more deeply did he penetrate into the knowledge of himself, until his love grew into a mutual friendship and a familiarity so great with God, that it seemed as if God willed to reveal Himself to His servant as He does to the blessed.

The mere words of “Lord!” or “My love, my desire! Thou art all mine, and I am all Thine!” said, while he fixed the eyes of his soul with great affection upon God, were enough to raise him to an ecstatic union with God, in a way that all human words must fail to tell. Like the life of the glorious Spirits around the Throne, his life became lost in God’s. He had no other wish, no other will but His. And like all true love, each gave of what he had to the other, “All mine is thine, all thine is mine.”

And in this celestial banquet, wherein the soul feeds on God, without words or effort, and the heart is always praising and blessing its Lord, there was no fatigue of mind or body. Rather in this union both found rest and refreshment.

As Father Colin says, the simple lay brother in the passage of his Memorial (n. 12.) from which all this is borrowed, goes through the whole range of prayer up to its most exalted stages of the knowledge and love of God, just as we find in the treatises of SS. Bernard and Bonaventure, of Gerson and the most eminent mystics.

The best proof of the progress which Alonso had made was that when scarcely six months of his noviciate had passed, in the month of July, 1571, his superiors determined to send him to Majorca, where only a few years before a house of the Society had been founded. Alonso landed on the island on the feast of St. Laurence, August 10th, 1571, and was warmly welcomed by the small community of the house, who had already heard of his holy life. He had as fellow travellers his future Rector, Father Matthias Borrasá and Father Bernard Crespin. Father Matthias Borrasá, who had just made his solemn professions of the four vows in the College of Valencia, on July 1st, was one of two brothers, both natives of Majorca, and who both entered the Society. Though of good birth, he had embraced the career of a lay-brother, but his extraordinary talents made his superiors insist on his becoming a scholastic.⁶6Diego Borrasá, his brother, entered about 1556, at Valencia, and before he had studied his Theology was appointed Lecturer on Aristotle at the Roman College, and Claud Acquaviva, the future General of the Society, was one of his pupils. He was afterwards a distinguished Professor at Dillingen, Paris, and Valencia.

The Viceroy of Majorca, Don William de Rocaful and his wife Doña Antonia de Morales, had been both anxious to have a house of the Society on the island. The holy and zealous confessor of the lady, Canon John Abrines, shared in their desire. Don Stephen Nadal, the brother, and Señor Caldantell⁷7His daughter was Praxedes Caldantell y Moranta, the mother of the Jesuits whose names occur later on. a brother-in-law of Father Jerome Nadal, who was himself a native of Majorca, and others of his relatives, strongly supported the viceroy’s wish. Father Nadal was one of the most distinguished men of the early Society. A close friend of St. Ignatius, and thoroughly master of the spirit and letter of the Constitutions of his Order, he was at that time, 1560, Commissary-General of the Jesuits in Spain.

As the Bishop of Palma, Don Diego de Arnedo, and the magistrates of the city were all equally anxious to have a college, and as they offered a sum of five hundred pounds⁸8A Majorcan pound was of the value of about fifteen pence English. (Majorcan) for endowment, the Superiors of the Society consented to the foundation. Accordingly, on August 24th, three fathers and three lay brothers arrived at Palma, to the great joy of the inhabitants and especially of the good priest Canon John Abrines, who received them into their house and generously supplied their every want.⁹9It was not till 1597 that the College was permanently endowed. Don Frey Ramon de Verí y Despuig, a knight of Malta, Bailiff of Majorca, who had left his mark at the headquarters of his Order by his large-handed charities, merited by his generosity to Montesion the title of founder, which was bestowed on him at a solemn celebration on Feb. 2nd of that year. He died on July 21st, 1599, and is buried in the Church of Montesion under a sumptuous tomb of marble and jasper. V. Litt. Ann., 1597, Naples, 1607, and Piferrer, Nobiliario d’España. Madrid, 1857. The Fathers at once began to look about for a place for their College, and finally decided on the little chapel of Our Lady of Mount Sion and the adjoining houses. The precise dedication of the chapel was “the Presentation of Our Lady in the Temple.” It was said to have been built on the site of an old Jewish synagogue, as a place of instruction for the converted Moors after the capture of the Island by King James. It appears also to have become part of the foundation of a sort of college for a certain number of students, endowed by a noble lady, Isabel de Pinós, one of a Catalan family which had taken part in the conquest of Majorca. The city authorities, who were the trustees of the charity, with the approval of the viceroy and of the bishop, made over the chapel to the Society. Some neighbouring houses were purchased, a porter’s lodge arranged, and the place was fitted as best could be for a religious house and day-school, or, as it is technically called, a college. The position of Montesion was all that could be wished, as it is in a high part of the city, and in a very healthy situation. The blocks of buildings round about it could easily be taken down so as to extend the college at future times. At a very short distance to the east the city gate, called del Campo, leads out, as its name implies, directly into the open country; to the south is the Convent of St. Clare, with its garden crowned with palm trees, and the bright harbour with its shipping, and the headlands beyond; to the west lies the Cathedral and the main portion of the city, with the grand range of mountains rising in the distance; while on the north is the large Gothic church of St. Eulalia, the martyr patroness of Barcelona, in whose parish Montesion is placed, and the large convent of St. Francis,¹⁰10V. Month, Dec. 1888. with its fine church and cloisters.

In the little chapel the Fathers found a retablo or reredos of the fifteenth century which, with its graceful paintings of Our Lady and the Saints has survived to our day. There was also a bell, probably one of two which now hang in the belfry of the church, a few old vestments and a poor chalice of silver.¹¹11Indice della Primera Classe de Montesion, p. 4.; one of a magnificent series in folio of indices to the old papers of the College, now in the Archives of Palma; the papers have disappeared.

The Blessed Sacrament was placed in the little chapel in the September of 1561, and the Fathers took up their residence in the house which had been prepared for them round about their Lord. This was just ten years before the arrival of our Saint. But in 1570, the year before St. Alonso came to Majorca, Father Bartholomew Coch, a native of the island, the second Rector, had so enlarged the building that three classes of grammar had been opened there; and in the year following, that of the landing of our Saint, Father Coch began the great church of the college.¹²12St. Alonso found at the College besides the Rector, Fathers Llop, Cussola, Vincent Bru, Peter Prado, Bollicher (the prefect of studies), Jerome Mur, and John Aguirre; as masters, Francis Duarte, Francis Castell, and Diego Morales; and the lay brothers, Francis Morey, John Navarro, John Messeguer, Francis Fortuny, and Diego Ruiz. He was one of those who had entered the Society during the lifetime of the holy founder, St. Ignatius, and who had tasted of the first fruits of its zeal and fervour.

Alonso, when free from his spiritual duties and household work, was set to help the masons who were building the new church, or to accompany any of the Fathers whom business or work for souls called out into the city. Later on he was assistant Sacristan for several years, and when the new church became available this his work necessarily increased.

The ocean which separated Alonso from Spain and from his friends and family was a source of consolation to him, because it made the sacrifice of religious life more complete. God seems to have made known to him that he was never again to leave the island.

The temporary buildings which were used as the college were naturally but a make-shift, and the room given to Alonso was exposed to the extremes of heat and of cold, while the paved floor was so damp, especially in winter, that the place was hardly fit for anyone to live in. But no complaint did he ever make, though our Saint must have known that it would affect his health; and in fact he owed to this the catarrh which was such a source of pain and of merit to him during the rest of his life. When a Father once asked him what was the cause of his frequent illnesses, his first answer was that they came from God. However he then added that, as far as he could tell, it was the bad air of his room which had been to blame; but that he did not like to ask for a change, for fear of losing such a good opportunity of suffering for Jesus Christ, and of expiating his sins. He said that such a change must come from God, and not from his own choice. “See too,” he went on to say, “how many have died in the college stronger men and better lodged than myself. I assure you there is nothing so important as to leave ourselves in God’s hands. He always takes the more pains about us, the less for His sake we take of ourselves.”

At the close of January, 1573, the two years of St. Alonso’s Noviciate had come to a close; but our Saint was not admitted to his vows for two months more. Father Marimon explains the delay by the difficulty of the communication between Majorca and the mainland. The Algerine corsairs or the winter storms would suffice to prevent a sailing vessel from crossing. But as a matter of fact, Father Borrasá, on February 10th of this year, returned from Valencia, where he had been as procurator or representative of the Rector of Montesion at the Provincial Congregation. The death of the saintly General of the Society, St. Francis Borja, necessitated the election of a successor, and, according to the Constitutions of the Order, the Professed Fathers of each province and Rectors of the various colleges met together to choose their delegates for the General Congregation. Father Borrasá could therefore easily have brought back the needful authorisation from the Provincial, Father Cordeses, so as to enable Alonso to take his vows at least in the month of February. Some other reason must therefore be sought for.

The difficulties which had been raised to our Saint’s admittance both at Segovia and at Valencia had been grounded on the broken health of Alonso; for as to his spiritual fitness there could hardly be but one opinion. And that difficulties on the same score were in the minds of some of the Community of Montesion appears from our Saint’s own words, that he was for some time afraid lest he should be dismissed from the Society, and that he prayed our Lord for help in his trouble, for he somewhat feared certain persons. No doubt the fervour of St. Alonso in his Noviciate rather weakened his health than restored it. In answer to the prayers of our Saint, the Provincial, Father Cordeses, true to his first opinion of the supernatural worth of such a subject, must have overruled the objections to Alonso taking his vows, and he gave his orders accordingly before leaving for Rome.¹³13Nonell, p. 127.

At last then, on the second Sunday after Easter, April 5th, 1573, St. Alonso made his first religious vows, in the hands of Father Bartholomew Coch, the Rector of the college, during the Mass, at the solemn moment of Communion. Father Nonell remarks that as St. Ignatius and his first companions were consoled for the severe loss they sustained in the death of B. Peter Favre by the reception of the Duke of Gandia, St. Francis Borja, into the Society, so, on the death of that great Saint in the previous year, 1572, our Lord consoled his Order by another servant of God, who in a humbler sphere of life was to rival the late Father General in his life of prayer and self-conquest.

To Father Coch’s teaching, one of the very first inhabitants of Majorca who entered the Society, St. Alonso owed the practice of always visiting the Blessed Sacrament before he went out of the house.

It is worthy of note that just at this time Father Vilalba, who was then (1573–1579), the Provincial of Aragon, received from Rome the special rules for the various offices, and chiefly of the lay brothers. They were officially published by him, and he made it his particular duty to see to their being carried out. St. Alonso seems as if sent by God to be a singular model of exactness in their observance.

The slight attention which St. Alonso’s biographers have paid to the dates of the various events of his religious life—owing in part no doubt to the fact that it was varied but little by any striking incident—makes it often a difficult task to give the facts in their chronological order. To Father Nonell’s care and research we owe the first biography arranged in order of time. And here it is fitting to mention that one of the best and most authentic sources of our Saint’s life, and which has already been frequently quoted in these pages, was the Memorial which he wrote in the third person by the express order of his superiors. The first portion was written in 1604, at the wish of the then Rector of Montesion, Father Gabriel Alvarez, as will be told later on. The Father’s attestation declares that he gave the command to Alonso to write all that happened to him, especially spiritual favours, as far back as he could remember. But his memory was at that time beginning to fail, and the details are often provokingly meagre.

By orders of a subsequent rector, Father Torrens, the friend and confessor of our Saint, he wrote twice a year his account of conscience, and he continued to do so after that Father had exchanged the office of Rector for the post of Spiritual Father, or Confessor and Director, to the Community.

In the early days of his religious life our Saint confined himself to writing down his resolutions and his lights in prayer freely for his own use as a help to his memory. But when his superiors saw to what an extraordinary height of perfection he had arrived, and how steadfast and secure was his sanctity, they thought it well that he should put on paper the ideas on religious life, and about the perfections of God which came to him in his marvellous prayer; and they ordered him to do so. Alonso, however, showed how genuine was his humility and his fidelity to his rule, for he never manifested the slightest assumption of superiority, never even sought to read a word of Latin in the composition of the treatises which form his spiritual works; and if he was forced to quote from Holy Scripture any passage which he did not know by heart he asked a Father or a Scholastic to be kind enough to write it out for him. If anyone chanced to point it out to him in the bible, he would not take the book into his hands, saying that it was not befitting a lay Brother to read Latin, and that much less was he worthy even to touch the Holy Book, as he was not a priest. His writings, which have been published by Father Nonell,¹⁴14Obras Espirituales del B. Alonso Rodriguez, Barcelona, 1885. Three vols., 8vo. A full description of the MSS. of the Saint is given in Vol. I., Note B. It is perhaps hardly worth while to correct an error, not quite uncommon, that the holy lay brother and his namesake—the author of “Christian Perfection”—are one and the same. were examined and approved by the Congregation of Rites in 1717, an approval ratified the same year by Pope Clement XI.¹⁵15V. infra.

So far the holy brother had not left what he in his modesty styles his “spiritual childhood.” He had laboured hard before entering religion, and as a novice, in acquiring virtue, but such had been the consolations with which God had overwhelmed him, that all his labour had been made light. As he described it in one of his writings, which is evidently a page from his own experiences¹⁶16Obras Espirit., Tom. III., p. 438., “So far all had been almost entirely the work of God alone, who bore him on His shoulders, and gave him great consolations, to prepare him for great trials, of which at that time he was ignorant, but with which he was later on to become acquainted. God gives these precious aids and support by wonderful visitations and comfort, because He intends afterwards to try them, that so they may be able to support the cross on their own shoulders, and to bear the trials which will be sent to test them. Thus God acts with those whom he wishes to raise to great perfection. He grants them many heavenly favours that they may pass on to things much higher and more perfect. Because, after giving these gifts, God tries the soul until, with Elias, it reaches the Mountain of God, which is perfection. And the road thither is not by favours and consolations, but by desolation, by storms, by tempests, and by trials; just as happened to St. Paul, and to our Holy Father St. Ignatius, to whom they were given by handsful.”

Thus, in later years, speaking by the light of experience, for he had then trodden this thorny path, did St. Alonso explain the reason of the trials he was called on to endure. For God, who destined him for such high sanctity, cast him into a furnace of tribulation, the most painful of any to a pure soul, rich though it be with merit, and giving forth a virgin’s crown. During some eight long years Alonso had to fight hand to hand for his virtue against all the power of Hell. The memory of things long forgotten came back to his mind with a vividness and a force that only seem to have grown greater the harder he strove to cast them away. In his years of penance and prayer, in the midst of the favours which he had been privileged to enjoy, well might St. Alonso have thought that all the baser inclinations of his nature, all that was evil and disordered had been buried for ever. Yet now they started up with a new strength and fury, and he had to struggle with them for dear life. The very delicacy of the angelic virtue, the fact that he had vowed his chastity by a sacred vow, cast him into a constant state of doubt and fear. The awful nearness of the danger made him fly for help to Jesus and to Mary. God, who wished to bring out the virtue of His servant, not to injure it, allowed him a short truce in the struggle. Like a fond mother (to use a comparison of our Saint) who plays with her child, and pretends to hurt it only to kiss away its tears, so does God with the young and tender in His service, and in the opening of the fight, which he permits as the condition of victory—“giving him a hard struggle that he might overcome.”¹⁷17Wisdom, x., 12. He cannot bear to see His little ones in sorrow, but He consoles and encourages them, only that, when they grow stronger, He may expose them to much greater trials to be endured for His love, and may then treat them as full grown men and no longer like children as before.¹⁸18Obras Espirit., Tom. III., p. 318.

For the first years of his life in religion the morning hour of meditation was the life and strength of Alonso’s day. Now, when the need was the greatest, this help seemed utterly to fail. The devil was anxious to break down the channels of the water of life, for by cutting the aqueduct which brought these waters to his soul, he hoped to force it to surrender. And accordingly no sooner did our Saint kneel down to begin his meditation than a preternatural sickness came over him, an exquisite pain in his back, breast, and every part of his frame. It was as if some deadly poison had entered his veins, and this agony went on increasing so that he thought that if the time had been prolonged he would have breathed his last. Constantly he fainted and fell to the ground, as if dead, in the extremity of the torture, or bathed in perspiration, as if in a death struggle. But the moment the bell rang for the close of the hour of meditation, all traces of illness left him, his head was clear, his mind at rest, and he found himself so well and strong, so fit for his work, that his superiors and himself were amazed to find how much he could get through in a very short time. St. Alonso, as was natural in a new and growing community, had plenty of work of all kinds to do. Yet he used to find the refectory swept and dusted and arranged, and ready for the meals, the dispensa or buttery all in order, and so with the various places and duties under his charge.¹⁹19Marimon, lib. II. § 18, cf. Memor., n. 37. For eight or ten long years this trial lasted, just as long as the dreadful temptations against his virtue. But St. Alonso never despaired, struggling all the time as best he might against these almost insuperable difficulties, and going with exact regularity every day to a duty which was a very martyrdom. God, however, in the portions of time that were free, loved to pour into his servant such abundance of grace that his heart was flooded with delight.²⁰20There is a great discrepancy among the different accounts of our Saint’s life as to the date, the order, and the duration of these two temptations. Father Marimon says distinctly that, after many years of heavenly favours, God allowed the assaults of the demons of impurity to last more than seven years (lib. II. § 18), that some years later came the difficulty in prayer, after “the first ten or twelve years in which Brother Alonso had enjoyed the greatest facility” in that holy exercise; but that this latter trouble did not last long, nor so many years as the former temptations (lib. II. § 18). The rare “Breve Relacion,” written by a Father of the Society and published in 1627, says the difficulty in prayer did not last a whole year. The Saint himself, whom Father Nonell follows, says in his Memorial, n. 37, that after having had “great facility in prayer for nearly eight or ten years,” “for about ten years” there came the difficulty in meditation. At n. 18, almost in the same words, he tells us that “after he had received such favours from God”—“for the space of about seven years” he was assaulted with the horrible temptations against his virtue. In his Obras Espirit., T. III., p. 299, he says these temptations lasted four years. Father Nonell considers that the eight or ten years of facility in prayer date from the Saint’s dedicating his whole life to God in 1562, which would bring the commencement of the trial in his prayer to about the time of taking his first vows. He thinks also, as is very evident, that the expression in n. 18 shows that the temptations against purity began at the same date, and both lasted simultaneously during about the same period between his first and last vows. The statement of Father Marimon about the work in which Alonso was then employed, and that of our Saint (Memor., n. 37), go to show that the desolation in prayer occurred before the time when he was entrusted with the office of porter. In his account of these temptations, written in 1591 by order of his confessor, Father Bollicher, (V. Obras Espirit., Vol. I., p. 691) our Saint says that “the worst of all these troubles were his scruples, which lasted eight or ten years.” He then speaks of the illnesses which he had afterwards endured for the space of fourteen years, thus bringing the date of the close of his spiritual temptations to about 1577.

Our Lady, out of pity for his trials, deigned at their outset to give Alonso a wonderful proof of her tender regard for him. One of the most striking buildings that one sees on entering the Bay of Palma is the circular Castle of Bellver, the beautiful Gothic fortress and palace in one, of King James II. of Majorca. It crowns a conical hill a mile or so outside the city. The Governor of the Castle, at the time of which we are speaking, was Don Peter de Pax, the Procurator Royal of the island, of the first nobility of the land. p. 35One of his family, Michael de Pax, had been Viceroy of Majorca from 1583 to 1584. As Don Peter was obliged to go to Court on matters of business, and was a widower with four young girls, he determined to leave his children under the care of his unmarried sister, Jane de Pax, a lady of extraordinary piety. He wished, too, that they should live at the Castle of Bellver, a place where they would be out of the noise and distractions of the world, and able to attend to their studies. As Doña Jane was an invalid, her confessor, Father Borrasá, used to go to hear her confession, and to say Mass in the Castle Chapel, in order to give her Holy Communion, as well as to instruct the children. Father Borrasá, who had come to Majorca with our Saint, had succeeded Father Coch as Rector of the College in the same year, but after the happy day of St. Alonso’s vow-taking, 1573. He pushed on vigorously the new church, and opened the course of higher studies in the September of 1574. It was somewhere about this time that the miraculous event took place which we are going to record.²¹21As one of the daughters of Don Peter de Pax was married in 1584, and as she was a child when the event just described occurred, it is evident that it must have taken place during Father Borrasá’s first term of office (for he was three times Rector) that is between 1573 and 1576. Father Torrens says it happened in winter. V. Summ., p. 138. The apparition is honoured in the chapel, now erected on the spot, in February. St. Alonso himself, Memor., n. 31, says it was in “tiempo de grandes calores”—in very hot weather.

It is a long and steep climb, over rocky soil, from the road below up to Bellver. St. Alonso was suffering greatly in his legs, when one hot day in February he was accompanying the good Father Rector, and he found it impossible to keep up with him. Still he struggled on under a burning sun. His thoughts were with God and he was saying his rosary devoutly, as was his wont, offering up gladly all the pain and fatigue to his Lord. At the steepest part of the climb he was forced to sit down on a stone to rest, when our dear Lady appeared to him, and with a handkerchief, which she held in her hand, wiped off the perspiration that ran down from his face. Alonso was greatly confused at this honour; but the consolation which it gave him filled him with such joy and gave such strength to his limbs, that he did not feel at all tired during the rest of the ascent. While Father Borrasá was engaged in hearing the lady’s confession, Alonso stayed in a room hard by absorbed in the memory of our Lady’s kindness. The children of the Castle had heard that the Brother was a Saint, so they came to see him. Some doves had lighted upon his shoulder, but he was altogether unconscious of all around him, so full was he of this latest favour of his blessed Mother.²²22Father Colin states that he got these details four years after St. Alonso’s death, when, in 1621, he was the guest of the Count de Perelada while giving a mission on that nobleman’s estates. His mother, Doña Praxedes de Pax, was a girl at the time of the occurrence, and she told Colin what she herself had seen.

The temptations which up to this time had attacked St. Alonso, he called “ordinary,” because comparatively easy to overcome, and because their very novelty made them seem more dangerous than they really were. But in proportion as God saw that His servant was becoming more inured to the combat, He freed the hands of the enemy, and allowed Satan to attack with such vigour that it seemed to be beyond all human power to resist. Night and day, at prayer or at work, our Saint was haunted by thoughts and ideas so vivid that, though he resisted most vigorously, yet, with his delicacy of conscience and in the dust and darkness of the conflict, he ceased to be able to distinguish between what was involuntary and what was voluntary. Thus, to add to his other troubles, he got entangled in perpetual scruples, nor could his confessor extricate him from them. The poor sufferer could gain no relief from prayer to the Saints, nor even to the Queen of Saints. In vain St. Alonso turned to God, in vain he sought refuge in the Sacred Heart of his Saviour.²³23In his Treatise on Tribulations, from which we have already quoted, our Saint speaks with deep feeling and practical experience of how God sends such trials out of love and not out of hatred. V. Obras Espirit. Vol. III., p. 301.

Still, from time to time, in pity for his faithful servant, Our Lord gave some comfort to his wearied soul. He was lying one night in bed tormented by a terrible scruple. The more he tried by self-examination to rid himself of it, the more confused he became. One moment the matter looked clear, and then the moment after all was changed again. His heart was wrung with grief because of the fear of sin. At last he fell asleep. In the very middle of his first sleep he was awakened by a loud noise overhead, and a bright light shone out upon the darkness of his mind, showing him clearly how baseless was the whole of the scruple that had so sorely tortured him.²⁴24Obras Espirit., Tom. III., p. 102. Though told of a third person, no doubt it is a personal experience of the Saint.

The floodgates of trouble once opened, all sorts of fear rushed in upon the soul of Rodriguez. Fears about to-day, fears about the past. A strange dread of having somehow incurred excommunication haunted him. A dying man—so someone told him—was about to receive Viaticum, when the priest found he could not raise the Sacred Host from the paten; on being interrogated it had turned out that the sufferer had been excommunicated, and that though he had made the satisfaction which had been demanded of him, and was in perfect good faith, he had never obtained absolution from the censure. The story of this miraculous event, whether true or false, suggested or confirmed the fears of St. Alonso, and he persuaded himself that perhaps he too had fallen unwittingly under the ban of the Church. In his agony of mind he turned with ardour to God; he laid before Him his trouble and begged to be freed from his anguish. He offered himself as ready to bear anything, to go anywhere, to endure death itself if only he could satisfy his Lord, and for His honour escape from the snare. As he was praying in the greatest anxiety, the love of God smote his heart, steeping it in intense desire to do only and in all things the Divine will, and then such a flood of heavenly light poured into his soul, and with it such a peace and quiet of mind which assured him so positively that he was in God’s grace and favour, that beyond the vision of the Blessed and the voice of Revelation, he felt that no certainty could have been greater. St. Alonso, with such a conviction, would have faced death with joy, and this visitation and the peace which it brought kindled in him a new yearning for the eternal peace of Heaven.²⁵25Marimon, lib. VII., § 6.

St. Alonso used in after life to tell those who came to him to ask advice under the plague of scruples, how when he was tormented by them he had sought to free himself from them by a most careful general confession. Spite of the confession he had made with such extreme diligence at Segovia at the beginning of his turning to God, he imagined that he had failed in it, in some matters by defect, in others by excess, that he had omitted circumstances which altered the character of his sins, or had explained them away. He persuaded himself in consequence that his confessions had all been invalid, and that his sins were unforgiven. After a long and most searching examination of conscience, and after writing down at full length all his faults, he thought that he had secured peace for his soul, and so presented himself with a great scroll of paper before his confessor. “What do you want to do?” asked the Father. “To make a general confession,” was the reply, “and because I feel I have taken all possible pains, I think it will set all my scruples at rest.” “But did you not take like pains in your former confessions?” his confessor urged: “Put this idea out of your head; tear up that paper and make an ordinary confession.” He did as he was told, and every vestige of the scruples vanished.²⁶26Marimon, l. III., § 27. They returned again, as will be seen, from time to time, but only as passing, and quickly passing, troubles.

The memory of his past sins grew the more oppressive as St. Alonso drew closer to God, and as he sought to serve Him with greater perfection. One day²⁷27Memor., n. 23. when in the height of contemplation and in intimate union, as if face to face, with his Creator, our Saint looked back upon himself and his former life, and was filled with fear lest his offences were still unforgiven. Out of an ardent desire to be pleasing to God, he cried out to him from the bottom of his heart, and these cries and groans unutterable seemed to him to fill the very heavens and to reach the Infinite Essence of God Itself. Three times he heard in reply a voice from above which said: “These sins are all forgiven thee.” At once the cloud of sadness lifted from his mind, and he felt a joy such as he had never known before. A whole week this visitation lasted, and he realised in himself the words of St. Paul: “I live, now not I; but Christ lives in me.” All he did seemed to spring from God dwelling within him, and most closely united to him. And with this favour came many others, so that he was laden with spiritual treasures.

Still our Saint valued at a far higher price his troubles than all his joys, for as he remarks,²⁸28Memor., n. 21. intimate as is this union with God by acts of love, far more perfect is prayer in time of trial, if only with God’s grace we overcome ourselves. “We must not measure or estimate holiness by favours and consolations, but by suffering much for God, and by conquering in hard fight all the defects and passions which disquiet us, and which trouble and make sad our souls, until we have gained a mastery over them and secured a genuine peace.”

How terribly and thoroughly was this to be verified in St. Alonso! As he had been forewarned in the mysterious dream of the fight between the dove and the birds of evil omen, again and again was Satan permitted to renew his onslaught against his virtue. Words failed him afterwards to tell how hard he was pressed. So horrible were the conflicts, that the holy Brother said there was no torture which he would not have gladly undergone rather than again face such a struggle. He, however, prepared himself for the combat by an unreserved offering of himself to God, both body and soul, begging to suffer death and, as was his usual formula, the pains of hell, rather than offend even by a venial sin. Three times a day he renewed this offering, spending a whole hour over it each time, a prayer which he did not allow to interfere with the laborious duties of his day. Each hour he implored our Lady to be his shelter and refuge in danger.

What he underwent can only be likened to what some of the Maiden Martyrs had to undergo when given up by their Judges to the licence of the Pagans. In vain he closed his eyes to the seductions, to the disgusting orgies which the demons perpetrated before him; they had the power to force him to behold what to him was worse than death. They tried by every allurement, even by open violence, to wring from him some degree of consent. Weak and breathless from the struggle, streaming with perspiration even in the depth of winter, he was with all this seemingly cut off from aid from above, or, as he said, “as if there was no God for him, but only the demons in their loathsome shapes.” St. Alonso compared himself to a man in the agonies of drowning, or to a frail vessel of glass tossed amidst the rocks.²⁹29Marimon, l. II., § 14. And to add to these external attacks his passions were aroused, and traitorous nature pressed him hard from within. But strong in the grace of God, he refused the slightest consent, until weary with his heroic and unconquerable resistance, the demons attacked him with blows and insults. They used to throw him on the ground and stamp upon his throat, and, with hideous blasphemies against all that he most loved and most venerated, threatened his very life if he would not yield. But Alonso held on to trust in God, and renewed his offerings to suffer a thousand deaths rather than give the least consent. Day after day he came off victorious; and so sublime was his confidence in God, that, like another St. Antony, he jeered at the demons, making a great sign of the cross, and bidding them pay it homage, as three times he prompted them to repeat “We adore Thee and bless Thee, because by Thy holy cross Thou hast redeemed the world.” “In the name of Jesus every knee shall bow.” He even bade them to repent of their vile attacks.

It was usually in his cell and at midnight that these terrible conflicts came off. And, but for the marvellous ecstacies he enjoyed, and the torrents of consolation which God poured into the soul of His faithful servant when each contest was over, his life would have been worn out by this continual martyrdom, greater than which he could not imagine. So wan and pale he became, that the boys attending the school used to call him the extremaunciado, or the Hermano oleado—given up by the doctors, or more literally, the Brother who had been anointed.

It would seem that it was in face of these terrible temptations that Alonso began the daily use of the little office of the Immaculate Conception, to which he was so attached, “asking her to beg of her Blessed Son, by the most holy spotlessness in which she was conceived, being holy before she was born, to keep him pure as an angel from all sin, that he might be pleasing to God.” With the same intent, and that Our Blessed Lady might pray for him each hour of the day and night, he said the Hail Mary and the Salve Regina twelve times each day.³⁰30Memor., n. 60.

God allowed him one day to see the demons in council, planning their final attack. Alonso turned at once to Our Blessed Lady, and with his habitual petition begged her and all his heavenly patrons and the whole court of Heaven to obtain for him, rather to pass, without sin, through the tortures of hell itself than to allow him to offend his good and tender Lord. Then a vast troop of demons in visible shape entered his cell. They dragged him about the room, and under impure forms tempted him in every way. In the face of the awful peril, Heaven seemed to be deaf to his cries. He turned to God, and no help seemed near. He invoked his Blessed Mother, she seemed not to heed him. The more he prayed the greater the danger seemed to grow. But God, Who let loose the tempest, was not wanting to His heroic servant. All the efforts of hell were in vain; his constancy only changed their assaults into victory after victory. The demons then told him that they were determined to continue their attacks till he either gave in or was killed by the struggle. They would leave him no peace nor rest. St. Alonso generously offered, for God’s sake, to bear till the judgment day whatever torments their rage might suggest. Such a cry of love put them finally to flight, and our Blessed Lord appeared in glory to console His servant, and flooded his soul and body with a heavenly peace.

Still Alonso could not help asking Him, as other Saints had done before, “Where wast Thou, Lord, when I was attacked by such sorrows?” “Fear not,” was the answer, as He showed him His sacred wounds, “I never will abandon thee, My dear son.” And so overwhelming grew the joy of our Saint’s heart that it forced him to cry out like St. Francis Xavier, “Enough, O Lord, enough!” Our Blessed Lady appeared to him at the same time and assured him of her love towards him. Thus at last the hideous temptations of so many long years passed away for ever.³¹31Obras Espirit., t. III., 299, where he gives in his Treatise on Tribulation a long account of these terrific struggles.

Somewhere about this time too, some ten years or more after his conversion,³²32Memor., 1606, n. 51. God freed Alonso from the holy fear with which the ever-present sense of the terrors of death had penetrated him. In its place his whole soul was filled with the firmest confidence in God and with the most utter distrust of himself and of every creature; Death and Hell were to Him no subject of personal fear, in the assurance he had received of his salvation. It was this trust no doubt which had borne him up in the terrible hand-to-hand struggle with temptation.