Saint Alphonsus Rodriguez

Today while the world celebrates Halloween, and the Roman Catholic Church observes the 31st Sunday in OT, the Society of Jesus (SJ) remembers a Spanish Jesuit lay brother St. Alphonsus Rodríguez (July 25, 1532 – October 31, 1617). Rodriguez entered the Society of Jesus at the age of 40. He was the son of a wool merchant who had been reduced to poverty when Alfonso was still young, leaving the business to Alfonso when he was only 23. At the age of 26 Alphonsus married Mary Suarez, a woman of his own station, and at 31 found himself a widower with one surviving child, the other two having died previously. From that time he began a life of prayer and mortification, and separated from the world around him. On the death of his third child his thoughts turned to a life in some religious order.

Previous associations had brought him into contact with the first Jesuits who had come to Spain, Blessed Peter Faber among others, but it was apparently impossible to carry out his purpose of entering the Society as he was without education, having only had an incomplete year at a new college begun at Alcalá by Francis Villanueva. At the age of 39 he attempted to make up this deficiency by following the course at the College of Barcelona, but without success. His austerities had also undermined his health. After considerable delay he was finally admitted into the Society of Jesus as a lay brother on 31 January 1571.

Distinct novitiates had not as yet been established in Spain, and Alfonso began his term of probation at Valencia or Gandia -- this point is a subject of dispute—and after six months was sent to the recently-founded college at Majorca. In 1579, he was appointed as the doorkeeper of the College. As doorkeeper his duty was to receive visitors and take messages for the professors and students. On his way to the door he would repeatedly say, “I am coming Lord!” and greeted everyone with same warm smile that he would have reserved for the Lord. Legend has it that Our Lord and His Blessed Mother did appear to Alphonsus when he opened the door one day. Alfonso remained in the humble position of porter for 46 years, exercising a marvelous influence on the sanctification not only of the members of the household, but upon a great number of people who came to the porter's lodge for advice and direction. Among the distinguished Jesuits who came under his influence was St. Peter Clavier, who lived with him for some time at Majorca, and who followed his advice in asking for the missions of South America.

The bodily mortifications which he imposed on himself were extreme, the scruples and mental agitation to which he was subject were of frequent occurrence, his obedience absolute, and his absorption in spiritual things, even when engaged on most distracting employments, continual. It has often been said that he was the author of the well-known "Little Office of the Immaculate Conception", and the claim is made by Alegambe, Southwell, and even by the Fathers de Backer in their Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus. From 1615 due to illness he was confined to his bed and could rise only occasionally. Finally on October 31, 1617 with the name of Jesus on his lips, he left for that heavenly abode.

Alphonsus left behind a considerable number of manuscripts, some of which have been published as Obras Espirituales del B. Alonso Rodriguez (Barcelona, 1885, 3 vols., octavo, complete edition, 8 vols. in quarto).

He was declared venerable in 1626. In 1633, he was chosen by the Council General of Majorca as one of the special patrons of the city and island.

In 1760, Pope Clement XIII decreed that "the virtues of the Venerable Alonso were proved to be of a heroic degree"; He was beatified by Pope Leo XII on June 12, 1825, and canonized by Pope Leo XIII on September 6, 1887. His remains are enshrined at Majorca.


Alphonsus’s confrère Gerard Manley Hopkins has captured the spirit of this saint’s life perhaps better than anyone, in the following poem:

St. Alphonsus Rodriguez
From the poem of Gerard Manley Hopkins 1918
Laybrother of the Society of Jesus

Honour is flashed off exploit, so we say;
And those strokes once that gashed flesh or galled shield
Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field,
And, on the fighter, forge his glorious day.
On Christ they do and on the martyr may;
But be the war within, the brand we wield
Unseen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,
Earth hears no hurtle then from fiercest fray.

Yet God (that hews mountain and continent,
Earth, all, out; who, with trickling increment,
Veins violets and tall trees makes more and more)
Could crowd career with conquest while there went
Those years and years by of world without event
That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.