p. 10Life of Penance in the World

In the light of his new knowledge of God’s holiness and goodness, his life, which to others had seemed so upright and blameless, appeared to Alonso to have been utterly wasted and misspent. Full of the sense of his guilt, and of his ingratitude for so many graces, his tears flowed so constantly that his eyes grew red and the lachrymal ducts were inflamed during the rest of his life. It was in the early days of his widowhood and penance, while still in his own house,¹1Cf. Memor., n. 2. that during his sleep he saw as in a vision Our Blessed Lord surrounded by twelve saints, who were clothed in a heavenly splendour. His patron, St. Francis of Assisi, was the only one of these whom Rodriguez recognised, though there was no special mark by which to know him. The Seraphic Saint stepped forward from the rest and asked Alonso, “Why do you weep so much?” “How can I help weeping,” was his answer, with a fresh outburst of scalding tears, “knowing as I do the gravity of my sins, when merely a venial sin committed against God deserves to be bewailed for a whole lifetime?” And so the vision departed, leaving such a memory behind it that it was fresh and sharp forty years after, when, under obedience, the Saint recorded it at the bidding of his Superior. Then it was he learnt his constant practice in face of any temptation, to beg God most fervently through the love He bore him that he might suffer all the pains of hell rather than that He should let him fall into even venial sin.

Another vision, or spiritual dream, happened about the same time, in the very first year of his turning entirely to God.²2Janin, p. 607, c. In his Memorial our Saint merely says, n. 19—“After his conversion, &c.” He saw in his sleep a dense flight of birds, black and noisy, rise up like a massive tower against the sky. A beautiful bird like a dove, with the cypher of the Holy Name, IHS., in letters of silver inscribed on its breast, came down into the midst of them, and so great was the havoc he made amongst them that the air was filled with their fragments, and the survivors flew away. After a considerable time they gathered together again; and again the conquering dove began its work of destruction, till once more the cloud dispersed. A third time, after another long interval, the birds gathered up once more in serried ranks. No sooner had they formed up, than the dove swooped down and beat them back, killing and tearing them to pieces, until the remainder dispersed for good and all, leaving the ground covered with the victims. St. Alonso recounted the dream to Father Martinez, his director, one of the best Jesuit preachers in Segovia. He recognised in it the signs of a supernatural warning, and prayed long and earnestly to know its meaning. After much and earnest consideration, he told his penitent that he was to enter the Society and would meet there with terrible assaults on his virtue; but that under the device of his Saviour, he would come off victorious. The future showed how rightly he explained it, and St. Alonso in after years experienced its truth in terrible fulness.

This thought of religious life seems already to have come before him.

About a year or so after the death of his wife, Alonso lost his mother.³3Don John Toro de Assenzo, whose son married Manuela Rodriguez, a sister of our Saint, testified in the first process of Canonisation that he had known Alonso for 14 years, and his mother for 8. If the acquaintance with the former began at the same time as that with Mary Gomez, and 14 years before Alonso left Segovia in 1569, this dates her death in 1563. Colin says that St. Alonso retired into a portion of his mother’s house before her death, and Nonell, p. 56, says the same, placing the death of his surviving child before that of Mary Suarez. V. p. 35. As the day of the week and the day of the month on which St. Alonso began his weekly communions are known, they enable us to fix accurately the year as 1564. And from records existing we learn that he was still in business the same year. The child Alonso was born in 1562 (v. supra) and died when 3 years old, or in 1565. These data prevent us from following Fathers Colin and Nonell in their chronology of these events. As an entrance upon a new life and with aid of his new knowledge of himself, he set himself, after the vision of St. Francis, to prepare by penance and self-examination for a general confession of his whole life. He fasted on Fridays and Saturdays, and began to take the discipline. p. 12Out of his devotion to Our Lady he chose one of Her feasts, Our Lady of the Snow, which that year, 1564, fell on a Saturday, as the day on which to begin to go to confession and communion each week. Several days were spent in the examination of his past life, and he only stopped when he could find nothing more to note down. The general confession was made with deep contrition to Father Martinez. He increased his penances after this confession, fasting more rigorously and more frequently, and scourging himself every day; he began to wear a terrible hair shirt, fitting tight like a jacket, and reaching from his shoulders to below his waist, and he gave himself to a greater watchfulness of life and to more frequent prayer. For this he resolved to abandon business and the house in which he was dwelling, and make to himself a sort of hermitage in the large family house, in a part of which his sisters were living their sequestered and penitential life. He had still enough left from the wrecks of his family fortune to support himself, his child, and his two sisters.

St. Alonso had learned the Rosary as a child from B. Peter, but he does not seem at first to have done much more than recite the holy words with reverence and attention. Each day he used to say the entire fifteen mysteries very slowly and on his knees. God rewarded his extraordinary devotion by a supernatural apparition, for as he said each “Our Father,” he used to see almost always a bright red rose before him in the air, while at each Hail Mary one of dazzling white appeared, each as fragrant as it was beautiful.

On the eve of the Feast of Our Lady’s Assumption, apparently in the year when he gave himself entirely to God,⁴4Janin, l.I., c.i., 4. says “Anno autem fere 1563.” St. Alonso in his Memorial, n. 5, tells us that it happened “a year, more or less, after his retirement.” 1564, our Saint had prepared himself with special care for Holy Communion, by discipline and hairshirt, by almsgiving and by extra time spent in prayer. On the morning of the day he went to Confession in the temporary Church of the Jesuits, and stayed a long time meditating on the Great Guest whom he was about to entertain. As soon as ever he had received his Lord and had knelt down to make his thanksgiving, swifter than thought, he felt himself carried “whether in the body or out of the body he knew not,” beyond the limits of this world into the midst of countless angels in the Heavenly Court. All he knew was that Our Lady was there with his Angel Guardian and St. Francis of Assisi at either side, that his soul was in Her hands, and that she presented it to the Eternal Father, who received it with great kindness. How long the Vision lasted our Saint could not say, but it seemed to have been a very long time, and when he came to himself, as he went home through the streets, so dazed was he with the Vision, that he could scarce find his way. When his confessor, Father Martinez, learned that Alonso had had to grope for the door of the church and was half beside himself when he was outside, he bade him to shun as far as possible all such raptures in public. Such, however, was their power when they came upon him that though our Saint struggled to obey, it was all in vain.⁵5V. Janin, lib. I. c., i. B. In spite of the constant favours of a like kind which he had received through his life, and though with a failing memory he forgot so many of them, this one he never could forget, but he spoke of it to Father Torrens, his friend and confessor, very shortly before his happy death. The narration of it forms the conclusion of his Memorial, of which we shall speak later and to which we shall constantly refer.

The love of Our Lady which had been so marked in his earliest childhood increased ever as he advanced in the service of God. It was noted of him how frequent were his visits to the churches dedicated to Our Lady,⁶6Rotulo por el Proces del V. A., MS., Montesion. and tradition tells us that he was, as well as one of his brothers, a member of the Confraternity attached to the Sanctuary of Fuencisla, the most noted shrine of Our Lady near Segovia.

His loving familiarity made him speak to Mary as a child to the best of Mothers. As our Saint was begging of Her one day to obtain for him from Her Son the grace to imitate closely the Mother and the Son, he dared to say that he loved Her more than She loved him. And Our Lady deigned to answer, “No, no, not so; for I love you more than you love me.”⁷7Colin. Nonell narrates this as if taking place in his early childhood.

But while God chose by these marvellous favours to cheer our penitent, he only grew in his knowledge and horror of sin. His own experiences had taught him how fleeting are the purest and noblest pleasures that earth can give, how terrible the risks and perils with which life is filled, how hard to pass through it without offence of God and danger of salvation. And as he was gazing one day at his little son, then in all the innocence of infancy, a bright boy of three years of age, so strongly did all this come before him, that, like another St. Blanche, he implored God that if He saw that that child was ever hereafter to offend Him, He would rather take him—dearest and nearest though he was—to Himself. Nor was this a mere passing aspiration of enthusiasm. He continually offered up the self-same prayer, till once, when in bed, with the little boy at his side, he seemed to see him as if laid out for burial, though at the time the child was in good health. Yet in a month or so the dream was realised, and little Alonso went to take his place in Heaven. The heroic father not only ratified the sacrifice which he had freely made, but, taking it as an answer to his prayer, gratefully believed that God had rescued his boy from a peril far worse than death.

Nothing now stood between our Saint and the complete surrender of himself to God’s service; and the thought of religious life came up with new force before him. He frequently consulted Father Santander about the affairs of his soul, and was very assiduous at his sermons and learned very much from them. In 1566, Santander ceased to be Rector. His place was taken by Father John de Leon, while he was sent to Valencia, where he became Rector in the October of 1567. After his departure, Father Martinez continued to be the director of our Saint. But God, Who always loves the simple and humble, deigned to be his chief teacher. So far, Alonso had given himself to bewailing his sins in the light of the tremendous truths of God’s Justice, and to the expiation of them by tears and austerities, while he was feeding his soul with the Sacraments, and with merely vocal prayer. But little by little the sense of the love of God began to prevail over all other views of his Lord and Master; his tears, though so bitter, became sweet by the overmastering sense of the Divine Charity, and his heart broke forth into tender colloquies of sorrowing love. It seemed to him as if these cries of his heart came back upon him from heaven, wounding it with still deeper wounds of love. This was about the year 1566.⁸8Memor., n. 1. “He stayed in Segovia three years after this special light.”

What helped him greatly along this new and higher path was the practice of mental prayer. When he told his sisters of the vision of the roses, they in turn taught him, as they had learned from their director while reciting the vocal prayers of the Rosary, to consider the various mysteries; and in about a twelvemonth or so⁹9Marimon, l. I., § 9, p. 34. His words leave it doubtful whether the twelvemonth refers, as it seems literally to do, to the mere recitation of the Rosary, or to the recitation in the new method, as the context appears to prove. he had been lifted up by this means to the practice of meditation. Such was the delight which he found in its exercise that, besides hearing Mass, he used to give to it two hours regularly morning and evening, with an additional quarter of an hour’s thanksgiving for God’s love and His favours towards him at the end of each meditation. And these four hours and a half do not include the continual aspirations which almost filled up the rest of the day. During Mass, in presence of the Bloodless Sacrifice, he carried on the affections which he had aroused before the mysteries of the Passion. Our Saint began by taking the events of Our Lord’s life, as they occur, in the Rosary, for the subjects of his mental prayers, but “this did not last long; for he found such facility, such favours, such profit, so deep a feeling of compassion at the sufferings of Our dear Lord, that he thought it best to give himself up to the meditations of the Passion in preference to all others.”

“His favourite subjects,” to quote his own words, “were the Ecce Homo, and the carrying of the Cross when Our Lord was led to be crucified amid the shouts of the herald and of the mob; or again, when the Son met His Mother on the way, and they looked at one another; when they nailed Him to the Cross and raised it up, and what there happened to the Mother and the Son; then the descent from the Cross and how His Blessed Mother received the Sacred Body and what happened to it.”¹⁰10Memor., n. 3, p. 17. In his Spiritual Works, Vol. II., p. 364, there is an exercise of devotion to Our Crucified Lord which reads like a prayer and meditation of our Saint in this stage of his repentant love. God deigned Himself to be his master in the art of prayer, and taught him what no human wisdom had suggested; and among other methods, that when by careful meditation he had so thoroughly realised the truth and tasted of its hidden virtue that his soul was all inflamed with love for his Lord, he was then to cease further effort of the mind, and to pause and enjoy the favours which were being offered to him. This restful contemplation he thus explains:—“When the soul was wounded by love and steeped in its Lord at the sight of what He was suffering for it, his Lord placed it within His sacred heart, and there He communicated to it wondrous things about His Passion and the immense and many sufferings which He had endured for it.”

One of these most marvellous communications was a real share, which Alonso felt, not merely in the soul, but often even in his body, of the sufferings of our Crucified Lord. With the Adorable Victim he bore the agony of the stripes, of the buffetting, of the thorn pricks, of the piercing of the nails. And he shared them joyfully, thanking God for the grace. “This method of prayer,” as Father Marimon notes, “was merely in the rough, a first sketch; but it went on ever growing more perfect till eight or ten years after the Saint’s arrival at Majorca, where the favours, the visions of our Lord, became so marvellous, lifting him up to the contemplation of His Divinity to a degree that would seem almost impossible.”¹¹11Lib. I., § 37.

Nor were these first gifts like those to be vouchsafed to him afterwards, visions purely intellectual, but of a lower order, affecting his external senses; they were as the milk of beginners to support the humble penitent, and to lure him on to still more sublime perfection.

Devotion to the Mystery of our Redemption necessarily filled Alonso with deep interest for souls. One night in 1568, when he had been praying fervently to God for the whole Church, and very specially for the needs of his own land of Spain, he began for the first time to read in God the future, or at all events what was at the time unknown and unknowable to those around him. While in his sleep, he saw the country round about Granada, which he recognised as he had been there, probably on business, and where the Moors still lived who had conformed outwardly to the Faith. He saw the whole of that fair land full of strife and bloodshed, and men hurrying in search of their victims to destroy them. Then he entered a church and beheld two monsters with their heads upon the altar, eating off it as if it were a manger. He raised his eyes to the Retablo, or lofty reredos so universal in Spanish churches, and saw in its midst a great statue of Our Lady. The figure was very beautiful and devotional, looking down on the desecration of her church. At this outrage against his good Mother he was deeply grieved, and he wept bitterly. A short time after, the news reached Segovia of the terrible revolt of the Moriscoes in the Christmas of that year, and of the awful sacrileges and hideous cruelties which they had committed. At the close of the year all the Moors in the mountainous fastnesses of the Alpujarras were in insurrection; and whatever might have been the faults of their rulers, horrible was the vengeance which they wreaked upon the Christians around them. The first fury of the insurgents fell upon the churches and the clergy; and the outrages committed against God’s House, and the tortures to which the priests were submitted could hardly be exceeded.¹²12V. Stirling Maxwell’s “Don Juan of Austria,” London, 1883, Vol. I., p. 129. No less than 3,000 Christians were put to a cruel death, not to speak of horrors worse than death.

Six years had nearly gone by since Alonso had practically left the world, but the question of his vocation was not yet settled, or rather, an apparently insurmountable difficulty stood in the way of its realisation. It was no doubt only after a struggle with his humility, and out of obedience to the clear call of God, recognised as such by his confessor, that our Saint ventured to ask for admission into the Society. The divine seed had been sown, we may be sure, in his father’s country house by B. Peter Favre. What he had seen of Francis Villanueva and his companions at Alcalá had pushed forward its growth; and if circumstances had prevented its coming sooner to maturity, in God’s good time, thanks to the winter of worldly losses and troubles, the vocation had come forth tried and strong.

But Alonso was then 38 years old; his education was so deficient that he could not be admitted as a scholastic, that is to say, as one who was to be raised to the priesthood; while his strength was so broken down by his long course of austerities as to forbid any prudent hope of his being useful as a lay brother. So argued the Fathers of the College at Segovia, and with apparent reason, and they declined the responsibility of accepting him. The decision of course did not rest with Father Martinez. Whether at the suggestion of his confessor, or by direct guidance from God, we do not know, but strong in his surety of a divine call, St. Alonso determined to go as far as Valencia, in the hopes that his old friend, Father Lewis Santander, might be able to help him in his need. He was ready, as St. Stanislaus had done some two years before, to leave friends and home, if by any means and at any cost he could compass the one desire of his heart, to give himself entirely to God in the Society.

St. Alonso made over by a deed to his two sisters, las Beatas, as they were called, all that he possessed, save just enough money for his journey.¹³13In a letter of Father Paul Maldonado, Segovia, Jan. 8th, 1612, to Father Torrens, the Rector of Majorca, there is a question about 160 reals which Brother Alonso Rodriguez stated were owing to his sisters, and which were supposed to be in the hands of the Father Procurator of Aragon at Madrid. V. Nonell, p. 655. His affairs were in perfect order, nor had he any outstanding debts. His other brothers and sisters were either dead or settled in life. Diego was at Seville. Manuela was with her husband at Madrid. Juliana and Antonia, after his departure, took a little house near the Jesuit church, and there they lived in complete solitude, doing their own household work, and for nearly fifty years rivalling the prayer and penance of their holy brother. He kept up a correspondence with them, inciting them ever to still higher perfection.

To Valencia then, after a long winter’s journey, at the end of 1568 or the beginning of 1569, came St. Alonso. The beautiful country of Southern Spain was not unknown to him, but coming from bare and rugged Castile, the rich luxuriance of the Oriental Huerto (garden), the teeming plenty of the richly irrigated plain around Valencia, must have been a pleasant change, recalling to him the pleasant valley by his old home, where the bright stream of the Eresma gives freshness and green to the trees and gardens along its banks. But the sea of verdure which, even in the winter months, spreads out before one till it joins the blue waters of the Mediterranean, the waving palms, the groves of almond and peach and apple, the vineyards and olive trees, all these delights did not delay him as he pressed on to his goal. Neither did the brilliant colour and the movement of the busy streets of the princely city, its noble churches and palaces, the cathedral with its lofty detached bell tower. Our Saint hurried to the new College of St. Paul to find his old friend.¹⁴14The portion which was built in St. Alonso’s day still exists, though the college has been since much enlarged and added to. V. Month, November, 1888. It is now a government school of higher studies. The railway station is built on a part of the old garden. The building was then rising in a quiet part of the city, close to the city wall. He had already written to Father Santander about his vocation,¹⁵15Marimon, p. 46. and the joy at meeting was mutual. It was resolved that the best thing Alonso could do would be to resume his studies, so as to fit himself for the priesthood, with the idea that a man of such fervour would not fail as a priest to do good work in the Society,¹⁶16Janin, 607, d. if not as a learned man, yet as a useful helper in labouring for souls.

Meantime a means of support must be found for St. Alonso, who, as we have seen, had given away all his fortune to his sisters. For some time he had to beg, as many poor scholars did in those days, from different religious houses and from the charity of the townsfolk. The Fathers of the Society were naturally amongst his best benefactors. Peter Juste, who was then a student of theology at St. Paul’s College, and who, in after years, was our Saint’s provincial, when distributing alms, noticed him among the poor scholars, on account of his marked holiness and humility, and gave him a larger share than the rest. Brother Jerome Espinel, who was then the hall porter of the college, was a man of very holy life. He soon came to know and to value Alonso, and not only gave him an extra share of charity, but much wise counsel and instruction, which was of great help to him.

So, bravely, as St. Ignatius had done before him at the school at Barcelona, the scholar of thirty-nine summers sat down among the little boys in the lower classes to learn with them the rudiments of Latin. He had to put up with much ridicule and even abuse from some of the rougher ones. But he turned it all to good account, and continued in Valencia the same course of prayer and penance which he had been following at Segovia. He put himself entirely under the direction of Father Santander, to whom he went to confession. The Father procured for St. Alonso a situation in the house of a merchant of position in the city, Ferdinand Chenchillos, as a sort of tutor to his son, whom he had to accompany to school and bring back home. Besides that he had to teach his little daughter to read. Rodriguez won high opinions for his holiness in that place, and left behind him the character of a saint. Both the children in after life entered religion, and crowned holy lives by holy deaths.¹⁷17During the time of our Saint’s stay at Valencia, B. Ignatius Azevedo passed through Valencia on his return from Rome and stayed at the College of St. Paul. There he recruited for his arduous mission three volunteers. One of these, however, afterwards withdrew, and so forfeited the crown of martyrdom which his companions won in the Pacific Ocean on the 15th of July in the following year, 1570. Of these B. Ignatius had specially asked for John of Majorca, the Sacristan of the church at Valencia, who was a good painter, and who copied for his superior the picture of the Madonna of St. Luke, to which Father Azevedo clung as he was thrown wounded into the sea.

Our Saint afterwards occupied a similar position in the palace of a great lady, the Marchioness of Terranova,¹⁸18The Marchioness of Terranova of this time was Margaret de Ventimiglia y Moncada, daughter of Simon, Marquis of Geraca, in Sicily, whose family claimed precedence over all the nobility of that aristocratic island. She was married to Charles, Marquis of Terranova, of the great Sicilian house, Aragon y Tagliavia, descended, like the Ventimiglia, from royal blood. Don Charles was Hereditary Constable and High Admiral of Sicily, and was, in 1561, created Duke of Terranova, and four years later Prince of Castelvetrano. He was Capitan General of his native island from 1566–1568, and again from 1571–1577, when he was called to Spain and made a Grandee and a Knight of the Golden Fleece. He was also Viceroy of Catalonia and of Milan. He died in 1599. His son John fought bravely at the battle of Lepanto (1571), and in 1573 his father entrusted to him a very responsible post in the defence of Sicily against the Turks. He married Doña Mary de Marinis y Moncada, daughter of the Marquis of Favara. He died before his father, leaving several children, of whom the eldest, Charles, succeeded to the splendid fortunes of the house. His brother Simon was made a Cardinal in 1583. V. Emanuele e Gaetani, Sicilia Nobile. Tom. II., P. II., lib. II., p. 12. cf. Pirri, Chron. Reg. I., p. 199; Caruso, Storia di Sicilia, Vol. III., P. III., p. 444 seq.; Inveges, Palermo T. III., p. 33, and Add. MS. Brit. Mus. 12,473, Nobiliario of Don Manuel de Moura Cortereal, 1645. of an illustrious Sicilian family. Her boy, Lewis de Mendoza, was placed under his charge. There, as in his former situation, Alonso was seen to be a saint. But, if he made great progress in virtue, his success in his studies did not keep pace with this advance. Not only had he to struggle against difficulties natural to one of his age, but he had a thorough repugnance for everything that was not directly spiritual. He had excellent masters, Viñas and Torella, and during his two years nominally went as far as the class of Rhetoric, the highest in classical studies. Still his studies proved a failure.

With the advice therefore of his confessor, he resolved once more to ask admission to the Society, leaving it entirely to the Fathers to decide as to whether he should enter as a lay brother or as a scholastic.¹⁹19Janin, loc. cit. Marimon says, on the contrary, that he made progress continually in learning as in virtue. Only a few pages further on however, he says that, after two years’ study, St. Alonso could hardly understand Latin. But when apparently so near the attainment of what he had so long desired, St. Alonso narrowly escaped a snare which would have robbed him of his vocation, and with it too, most probably, of his salvation.

There was a man of like age and tastes, and apparently of like aims to himself, following the elementary classes at the school at Valencia. Very naturally Rodriguez and he formed each other’s acquaintance, and the more our Saint saw of the stranger, the more he learned of his love of poverty, of penance, of prayer, the more this acquaintance ripened into a close friendship. Alonso told him of his desire to enter the Society. His new friend approved his call to religious life, but said that for his part he did not care for life in a community, and extolled the charms and advantages of solitude. The very day after this conversation the man left Valencia and wrote a short time after begging Alonso to come and join him in leading a hermit life at a place some little way off a town called St. Mateo,²⁰20On a mountain, three-quarters of a league to the west of St. Mateo, there still existed in 1817 two hermitages, one dedicated to St. Barbara, and the other to St. Anthony the Abbot. In the latter, some fourteen years later than the time of which we are speaking, there lived a Portuguese hermit called Sebastian, who discovered a picture of Our Lady behind the Altar of his Oratory. Under the title of Our Lady of the Angels, great favours were granted to those who revered the picture, and a large church was built over the place with a handsome sanctuary and sacristy, and a guest house for pilgrims. The hermitage of St. Anthony was probably the one occupied by the strange acquaintance of Alonso, while the neighbouring cell of St. Barbara would in that case have been the one offered to our Saint. St. Mateo is an historic place some way east of the town of Alcalá de Chisbout, a station on the line from Valencia to Tarragona. which is some eighty miles north of Valencia, nearly on the northern borders of the province of that name. He entreated him at all events to come and pay him a visit. It was vacation time and Alonso was free to go. The attraction of a life given up to prayer, and the influence which the hermit had gained over our Saint, determined him to accept the invitation; and he went, without asking the advice of Father Santander, or bidding good-bye to his friends at Valencia. He had not at all made up his mind to stay. But when he got to the hermitage, his host assailed him with every argument, to give up his idea of entering the Society, and to settle definitely in a cell which was all ready for him and near at hand.

Alonso was sorely tempted to give in. His natural inclination led him to prefer a life of retirement and prayer to the distractions of study and to the life of a tutor in a nobleman’s house. He even preferred it to the mixed life and active duties of the Society. As, however, he had not given notice to the Marquesa, or said anything to Father Santander, he refused to put on the habit as his friend urged him to do, and, to avoid his importunity, left without a word, and returned to Valencia.

When he got home he felt very much ashamed of himself; he went to tell all that had happened to Father Santander. “What is all this about, my son, Alonso? Why have you been so long without coming to see me?” was the first salutation that met him. But far more astonished was his confessor when he heard where Alonso had been, what had been proposed and his half-intention of going back. “I fear greatly;” was Father Santander’s measured reply, who knew how easily Alonso could be led under the appearance of good; “that you will lose your soul.” “Why should I lose my soul?” rejoined Alonso. “Because I see you want to follow your own caprice; and if you do so, there can be no doubt that you will be lost.” God spoke through these words so loudly to the heart of our Saint, and showed him so clearly his danger, that, starting from the chair, he threw himself on his knees at the feet of Father Lewis. “Since that is the case, I make a firm resolution never, as long as I live, to do my own will. Father, you can do with me what you like.”

Father Santander knew thoroughly well the fervour of Alonso, and that he required a strong hand to guide his will. Alonso accordingly at once, by his Confessor’s advice, ardently implored our Lady to obtain for him entrance into the Society of her Son, if she knew that it was His Holy Will. So clear an interior reply came to his prayer that he took advantage of the opportunity of the presence in Valencia of Father Cordeses,²¹21Father Cordeses was a Catalan Notary at Barcelona when the Society founded its first house in that city, and he entered the Order in 1544, being then 26. He was also Rector at the College of Gandia, founded by St. Francis Borja, and was twice Provincial of Aragon, 1560–1565, and 1568–1573, and was Rector of Coimbra in the interval. He represented his province at the four first general Congregations of the Society, and must then have met B. Campion at Rome. While there he was appointed Spanish Penitentiary at St. Peter’s after the death of St. Francis Borja. He died a martyr of charity when Provost of the Professed House at Seville in 1601, having caught the plague while nursing his religious brethren. He was noted for his devotion to Our Lady, and was said never to have forfeited his baptismal innocence. He was looked on as a Saint and his clothes were kept as relics after his death. the Provincial, at a Provincial Congregation held in the January of 1571, to press for his admittance as a lay brother of the Society. The Father Rector, who valued most highly his holiness, and was convinced of the reality of his vocation and of his fitness for the Society, supported his application, and did all he could to remove any difficulties in the way. Father Cordeses carefully examined his vocation and the secrets of his soul, and, master as he was of the interior life, quickly saw what a treasure there was in that humble soul, and what profit could be drawn from it. He laid the matter before his consultors and some of them urged the same difficulties that had prevailed at Segovia—Alonso’s uselessness on account of his broken-down health, and want of education. But Father Cordeses over-ruled their objections, saying, “Well, Fathers, I have had a talk with Alonso, and examined carefully into his life and his purpose, and I really feel obliged to admit him as a Saint, for I intend that he shall be one, and a great one, and he will give great glory to the Society by his virtues and example.” Accordingly it was arranged that Alonso should be received on the following day. The Provincial was a man of great piety and discernment, and some six years before had insisted, in spite of the opposition of his advisers, on receiving at Valencia, a rough peasant from the mountains, John Ximenes,²²22Hist. Soc. Jesu. P. IV., l. vii., n. 161, p. 227. who seemed to them simply as if he could be of no use in the Order.

Father Cordeses said he took him in order that a Saint might be made of him, for he saw there were the makings of a Saint in him. John’s love of hard work, his continual prayer, his marvellous union with God, his devotion to the Passion, and his happy death, all proved the clearness of the Provincial’s foresight.

The very night on which Alonso entered the college, on the eve of his formal admission, he was given a room in an entresol, which then served for an infirmary,²³23MS. Hist. de la Prov. S. J. de Aragon, p. 101. The room was at the north-east corner of the building. It afterwards was used as a granary. MS. Hist. del Colegio de Valencia, 1564. the window of which was on the street, and could be easily reached from it. Suddenly he heard a frantic knocking at the shutter, and, opening it, he saw to his amazement the Hermit of San Mateo. His face was distorted with rage, and he violently abused Alonso for breaking his word. He used no longer persuasions or entreaties, but imperiously ordered him to come the very next morning to the Hermitage, and to take up his abode there. Terrified at the sudden sight, and the fury of a man whom he had thought to be a Saint, Rodriguez hastily closed the shutter. He never more heard of or saw him again. How could he have learnt of Alonso’s decision, or, if he had heard of it, have followed him so swiftly? And when St. Alonso looked back quietly on the past, and saw how nearly he had missed his way, and, by putting on a habit, had closed for ever to himself the entrance into the Society, he could not but imagine that the whole thing was a stratagem of the enemy of souls. And, what in his charity he had not cared to judge, now came to confirm his suspicions—that, spite of their intimacy for two whole years, he had never seen his fellow-student approach the Sacraments, or even heard of his doing so. Thankful for his escape, and to prepare for the great event of the morrow, Alonso spent the whole night in prayer.