We could wish that there was more space for each of these pages. We can only hope you will fill in the details yourself from the complete accounts. This remark applies also to the third page we propose to ask you to examine. It is culled from the story of St. Aloysius, who was, as I hope you know, appointed by Pope Pius XI as special patron of all our young people.
There are three reasons for this selection of Aloysius as your patron. He was young himself: he died when he was twenty-three. He had any amount of experience of the temptations that beset the path of every normal young man. Thirdly, Aloysius often reeled in the ring but was never beaten. He never committed a mortal sin.
All there is space for here to say about his struggle to preserve his purity is that he started life with a big handicap. His forbears had nothing to boast of on the score of purity; indeed that is an understatement. How did he succeed? In addition to the means already mentioned, Aloysius was remarkable for his extraordinary devotion to the Mass and to Holy Communion. He lived in God's presence, like Joseph, but he had the enormous advantage of becoming himself a living tabernacle. He knew, too, that. Mary was his Mother, and to her he gave over the care of his virtue, never doubting that, if he did his part, she would never fail him. Finally, he cultivated a deep devotion to his guardian angel.
Do you remember, I wonder, the story of another young man, named Tobias? He had once to undertake a very long and perilous journey and he needed a guide and a companion. God sent him an angel to be with him all the way. It was only at the end of the journey that Tobias found it out. The angel had given him marvelous helps without which he could never have achieved his task. Now, Aloysius recognized that he too had an angel all his own, and that angel's interest in his charge and the unfailing devotion with which he discharged his task were a powerful help to Aloysius when the battle was toughest.
An angel went with three young men into a furnace of fire. He shielded them round about so that the hot breath of those roaring flames did not even scorch them. Such joy seized hold of them that they broke out into a cheer and a song. What else can any young man do when he begins to realize that he has an angel beside him too, as he sees the flames that surround him leave him unscathed?
It is terrific incentive to have a good backing if you are in the ring or playing on the field. The cheers of your supporters encourage you and you determine to get there. Life is a battle and the issues at stake are of such overwhelming importance that words are all inadequate to tell you of them. But see, as Our Lord is showing you in this prayer, what a splendid backing you have. There is God Himself; there is Mary your Mother; there are young men like Aloysius, your patron; there are the angels whose purity you must emulate, and, amongst them, there is the angel who is in a very special sense "your" angel.
Aloysius, you must know, was a marquis, and his family was related to half the sovereigns of Europe. But Aloysius' ideal was too high for the tawdry things of the world to satisfy it. Would you believe that he signed away his entire vast fortune, handed over to his brother all his claims to future inheritances, all his present possessions? All of them he let go, and himself went off to Rome to become a Jesuit. Mad? Some people thought he was; some would think it still. You do not think him mad, do you?
At first his father would not hear of his proposal; he certainly had no doubt that it was mad. But he did not know his Aloysius. One day the father knelt outside his son's door and peeped through the keyhole. Aloysius was inside, his shoulders bared, clutching a whip with which he scourged his innocent flesh, in union with the Master he loved at the pillar. The father capitulated after that.
"O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee." My angel guardian, my patron St. Aloysius, obtain for me deep, personal love of Jesus that will hold me steadfast in the time of temptation.