A virtuous life consists in mortifying vices, sins, bad thoughts, and evil affections, and in exercising ourselves in the acquisition of holy virtues. - St. Philip Neri
The new/old evangelization.
Philip Neri worked the streets - he went to the 'existential peripheries' before existentialism was invented, ministering to prostitutes and other outcasts of the day. Every age has its saints who step outside the boundaries, the limitations of the past...
What I like very much about St. Philip is his spirituality.
[H]is genius was entirely unmonastic and unmedieval; he was the active promoter of vernacular services, frequent and popular preaching, unconventional prayer, and unsystematized, albeit fervent, private devotion.I think some people do better by not trying to live like a monk or a nun, but rather living an ordinary life with extraordinary love of God and neighbor, within their own parish, city, neighborhood, home, etc..
Neri was not a reformer, save in the sense that in the active discharge of pastoral work he labored to reform individuals. He had no difficulties in respect of the teaching and practice of his church, being in truth an ardent Ultramontane in doctrine, as was all but inevitable in his time and circumstances, and his great merit was the instinctive tact which showed him that the system of monasticism could never be the leaven of secular life, but that something more homely, simple, and everyday in character was needed for the new time. - Source
Today is the feast of St. Philip Neri.
Hating you right now (in a good way, you truth-teller). "Br. Boniface"
ReplyDeleteListen Poodle - this was not about that old Bonnie-face guy. Haha! It is really about those monastic places which have it as their aim to rehabilitate diocesan clergy or make monks out of laity. It isn't a bad thing - it just doesn't work out well in contemporary life - although it may help people find structure and makes them feel as if they are religious.
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