Part II: The Ardent Life of the Crusade:

b) The Patron of the Crusade

First, the Crusade offers you a patron. You know him perhaps: he is St. Stanislaus Kostka. If you do not know him, you must read his life.

His life was not long: he died at the age of seventeen. He had, nevertheless, time to pray with such great fervour that he was obliged to cool his burning breast with cloths soaked in cold water; time to love the Eucharist so much that the angels came to him even in heretical places of worship to give him Holy Communion; time to leave his family who opposed his vocation, to enter the Jesuit novitiate in Rome. If you want an example of sacrifice, that is one, I should think! And notice that he set out from Vienna in Austria, and that in his time one did not travel by airplane, but on foot And all the way he begged his food and lodging.

And the Blessed Virgin! How he loved her. “She is my mother,” he would say, “how could I help loving her?” He loved her so much that several times he got to see her, not just as you do in a statue or picture, but really, face to face.

God has not revealed to us how many souls St. Stanislaus saved during his short life, but the Church assures us that he was a great apostle…

And that is enough to make the Crusade happy to offer him to you as patron and model.

 

to be continued....