Preparing for the feast of St Philip
For each of the last five evenings, after Mass we have prayed the novena prayers to St Philip in preparation for his feast day. They are simple and heartfelt, calling on our Holy Father’s aid for this little corner of the Lord’s vineyard which is never without need of help. The words of the hymns, written in his honour by old Fathers over the years, remind us of his life and his patronage of us in heaven. As part of those devotions we read from St Philip’s life, giving us a picture of the fruits as well as the cause of Our Holy Father’s sanctity throughout his long life. We pray to the Holy Spirit during the novena on account of the great closeness St Philip had to the third person of the Blessed Trinity. That proximity to the Holy Spirit changed the young Philip’s life, and remained for him as a Pentecostal fire for the rest of his life. From the moment in the catacombs in 1544 when the Holy Spirit appeared to him as a ball of fire and entered into his heart he was changed both spiritually and physically: his heart was enlarged so much that his ribs remained broken his entire life. Philip was taken over by the Spirit and his life was guided by the Holy Spirit’s promptings in an extraordinary way.
St Philip’s life is a good place to look for evidence of what that Holy Spirit can do in a soul that is well disposed to him. If, in St Philip’s life, we see compassion, courage and a hatred of sin, all tied to his profound devotion (particularly to the Mass) along with a radiant, beautiful joy, we see too the work the Holy Spirit wants to do in us. Although our Father enjoyed these spiritual gifts in an unusual and impressive way, we should certainly try to imitate much of what the Spirit did in him. We should imitate him in his prayerfulness, in his love of learning of the things of God, in his devotion to the Blessed Eucharist and in his zeal for winning souls for the Lord — this is what his Oratory, after all, is for — it is for making us into saints after the pattern Philip sets.
Feast days are given us as helps, useful steps on our journey to support and encourage us. Put Monday in your diary, come to the Mass for our Saint and ask him to help you in your own journey with God. Take him as your own special patron and entrust your cares to him. Perhaps we could all of us try a little bit more to allow that saint of “gentleness and kindness, cheerful in penance, and in precept winning” to steer the little ships of our lives. And if we do trust him as our friend and guide, we ca be confident that he, kindest and most cheerful of fathers, will help us along that journey to the place where he is now and forever.