saint of the week

St. Philip Neri

 

The other day my mother gave one of my grandmother's old journals to read.  It was from 1943.  I read some of it to my kids.  They loved it.  Then I began telling them stories that I remembered from my grandmother.  My grandmother always had a great sense of humor and a strong spirituality.  One of their favorites is the story that I tell about my grandmother playing a prank on my older sisters and my cousins.  At the time we were living at my grandmother's house.  It was an old farmhouse with a huge front porch and big crabapple tree in the front yard.  My sisters and cousins were planning on sleeping on the front porch that summer night.  They had taken the little TV out and were huddled around watching scary movies.  I, of course, being the baby, was not allowed anywhere near them.  I was sentenced to remain inside with Grandma.  After a while Grandma looked at me with a gleam in her eye, "Watch this" she said with a smile.

With the stealth of a cheetah, she silently crept over to the front screen door and locked it.  Then she got her flashlight from the kitchen drawer and quickly made her way upstairs to the front bedroom window.  She beamed the flashlight onto the tree while making haunting ghostly sounds.  My sisters practically impaled themselves on the locked front door; Shrieking and knocking.  Seconds later the five of them appeared at the back door, wide eyed and breathless.

Grandma played it cool.  She asked them what had happened and said (with a wink) that she could not have imagined how the door got locked.

That night they all slept on the floor of the living room.

Grandma and I slept upstairs in our beds, grinning.

 

St. Philip Neri was born in 1515 in Florence, Italy.   He was ordained in 1551.  It is said that one Pentecost while in prayer, he had a vision of a globe of fire and his heart physically grew that day.  Philip was capable of great love and spiritual wisdom.  Once a woman came to confession and told him about how she could not stop gossiping.  He told her to go to the market and buy a chicken and return to him.  But on her walk she should pluck the chicken.  She did and returned to him with a freshly plucked chicken .  He then told her to go back and gather all of the feathers.  She said that she could not because they all would have been scattered by the wind.  He said, so it is with your gossip.

 

St. Philip is known for having a great sense of humor and his unconventional methods.  He used practical jokes, laughter, games and even the occasional wine drinking contest to spread the gospel.  If he would have had a flashlight, I'll bet he would have used that too.

 

 

"Cheerfulness strengthens the heart and makes us persevere in a good life. Therefore the servant of God ought always to be in good spirits." -Saint Philip Neri

 

 

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"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well". St. Julian of Norwich


Jamie Dillon