St. Alphonsus Rodriguez

St. Alphonsus Rodriguez was born on 25 July 1532 at Segovia in Spain and died on 31 October 1617 on the island of Majorca. As a young man he took over his father's wool business and married, but within a few years he lost his wife, his children, and his mother, and saw his trade fail. Bereft of everything, he turned wholly to God, and after long trials was accepted, already in middle age and with little formal learning, as a lay brother of the Society of Jesus.

For some forty-five years he served as the humble doorkeeper of the Jesuit college of Montesión in Majorca, greeting every visitor as if greeting Christ himself, and living a hidden life of deep prayer, obedience, and heroic patience amid interior sufferings and temptations. His holiness and counsel drew many to him, among them the young St. Peter Claver, whom he encouraged to go and labor for the enslaved peoples of the New World. Revered as a mystic and model of humility, he was canonized by Pope Leo XIII in 1888.