The Spirit and Genius of St Philip Neri, Founder of the Oratory - Paperback

by Frederick W. Faber (Author)

Excerpt: A YEAR has gone round, my dear Brethren, since St. Philip first began to teach, to preach, to give spiritual graces, and to make his home here. You have connected yourselves with him; you have let yourselves be drawn within the sphere of his influence; you have gladly drunk of his peculiar spirit; you are conscious to yourselves of many secret favours which you have received through him; in a word, you have of your own accord made yourselves his children, and St. Philip has lovingly adopted you. In asking you then to set aside these three days as a solemn preparation for his feast, I am only asking what you will be forward to grant; and in speaking to you about St. Philip, I may speak to you, not as strangers, but as children of our dear and holy Patriarch, who will not harshly criticise what may seem the affectionate exaggerations of an Oratorian. I cannot of course say to you in three Lectures all I think or feel about St. Philip; like other Saints who have left the impress of their character upon the Church of God, he may be looked at from many points of view. I wish, if he will please to help me, to put one view of him before you in this Triduo, so that you may be able to have a true idea of St. Philip, and his peculiar spirit and genius, and therefore of the work which he comes to do in England at this present day. The fact with which we start is this: Here in a Protestant country, the genius of whose nationality may be said to be most eminently Protestant, a number of men, thoroughly English in education, ways, habits, feelings, and tone of thought, some in one place, some in another, some for one reason, some for another, have been mercifully drawn by the power of grace to abjure their false religion and save their souls in the Church of God. The Church receives them, and vouchsafes to use whatever they may have of energy or usefulness for her own purposes. In remarkable ways (which it would be out of place to detail here), not only without forethought, but quite contrary to it, and without being agreed among themselves, a Roman Saint, but little known in England, and with a very special genius of his own, attracts them to himself. They are drawn almost Without knowing it, some abroad, others at home, some earlier, others later, some attracted by one feature of the Saint, others by another, and some with little or no distinct perception of what it was which was so palpably alluring them. The Vicar of Christ, the holy Father at Rome, gives not a bare but a cordial approval to their deed. They become the children of St. Philip, embrace his Institute, and place themselves beneath the yoke of his rule. Experience shews them it was no blind leading which guided them to the Apostle of Rome; they find his Institute as if it had been expressly made for them and their peculiar circumstances; it fulfils more than words can tell every desire of their hearts, they find in it all they need, and more than they expected; and what seems stranger still, its ideas, sympathies, tastes, instincts, yearnings, seem to be a simple intellectual expression of their own. When you consider the varieties of character and disposition, of education, taste, circumstances and wants, of a score of men, you will admit that there is something remarkable in this fact.