Saint Alphonsus Rodriguez, Jesuit lay brother (1533-1617)

Alphonsus is born in Segovia on 25 July 1533, in a family of wool and cloth merchants. Around 1541, the Jesuit Peter Faber, one of the first companions of Ignatius of Loyola, passing through Segovia for a popular mission, lodges with his parents and prepares the young Alphonsus for his first communion. This encounter marks his whole life.^[6][7]

At thirteen, he goes to study at the college of Alcalá with his elder brother. The death of his father, in 1546, obliges him to return: his mother cannot alone hold the cloth trade with nine children. At twenty-six, he marries Maria Juarez; three children are born, whose first names are Gaspar, Maria and Alphonsus.^[8]

The years that follow are a long bereavement: the eldest son Gaspar dies, then the daughter Maria and the wife in 1567, finally the youngest son Alphonsus. The trade declines and closes. Alphonsus then turns to religious life. The Jesuits Louis of Santander and John Martinez support him.^[9][10]

His first request to enter the Society of Jesus, in 1568, is refused: he is judged too old (thirty-five years), of fragile health and without the studies required for the priesthood. He will nevertheless follow courses at Valencia, on the advice of Louis of Santander. Two years later, he asks again for his admission, this time as a brother. The provincial Anthony Cordeses overrules the unfavourable opinion of his advisers and admits him: according to the account taken up by Wikipedia, he is said to have declared that he was already receiving a saint in him.^[11]

The novitiate begins on 31 January 1571 at Valencia. After six months at Saint-Paul College, he is sent to the college of Montesión, in Palma de Majorca. He will remain there forty-six years, until his death.^[12][13]

At the college of Majorca, Rodriguez first holds various domestic offices. In 1579, he is appointed to the porter's lodge. The office is humble: welcoming visitors, fetching the fathers or the students asked for, carrying messages, running errands, comforting the sick, distributing alms. It is nevertheless from this threshold that he radiates.^[14][15]

Every time the bell rings, he says, he looks at the door and imagines that it is God who stands outside and asks to enter. The most frivolous students as well as the most austere religious pass through the porter's lodge and find counsel there. After fifteen years of service, at sixty-one, he is given an assistant who spares him the long hours of presence, but his spiritual apostolate does not diminish.^[16][17]

The Jesuit student Peter Claver, arrived at the college in 1605, likes to converse with him about the spiritual life. It is Rodriguez who suggests to him to volunteer for the missions of Spanish America, where Claver will become the apostle of the slaves of Cartagena. The episode is one of the best known in the life of the porter of Montesión: the wisdom of an unlearned brother directed one of the great missionaries of the seventeenth century.^[18][19][20]

Rodriguez pronounces his perpetual vows as lay brother in 1585, at fifty-two years of age. From 1615, racked with pain and very weakened, he remains almost always in bed, rising only to attend Mass. His memory declines in the last months. He dies on 31 October 1617 at the college of Montesión.^[21][22]

During his lifetime, Rodriguez is very discreet about his interior life. After his death, fourteen notebooks of spiritual notes are discovered, kept at the express request of his superiors and not for publication.^[23][24]

These pages, often dictated, present themselves as memories of domestic exhortations, counsels of direction and a brief autobiography. They return to the presence of God, obedience, mortification, and bear witness to an intense union with God, with mystical accents (ecstasies, visions). The spirituality is Christocentric; Rodriguez asks there to be introduced into the Heart of Jesus. He hides his person under a formula of modesty: the notebooks open as the memory of certain things that happened to “a certain person”.^[25][26]

These writings were published after his death, notably under the title Obras espirituales or Autobiography, and translated into many languages. They must not be confused with the Ejercicio de perfección y virtudes of the theologian Alonso Rodríguez (1526-1616), nor with the “counsels” of Saint Alphonsus Liguori.^[27][28]

The essentials of his oral teaching were not written by him: it is the people of Majorca, the students, the fathers of the house and the inhabitants of the city who retained it. Two traits return: the humility of the office, which gives him access to all, and the attention to the one who knocks at the door, whom he compares to God asking for hospitality.^[29]

His superiors, seeing the good he did outside the college, sometimes let him preach in the refectory on feast days. More than once, the community stayed at table after the hour to hear him finish. Rodriguez was also very devout to the Blessed Virgin, particularly to her Immaculate Conception, and copied out by his own hand the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary for the people who asked him for it. Graces of the mystical life, ecstasies and visions are reported of him, which he kept hidden.^[30]

Rodriguez is recognized venerable as early as 1626. In 1633, the general council of Majorca chooses him as one of the special patrons of the city and the island. In 1760, Pope Clement XIII decrees the heroicity of his virtues.^[31][32]

He is beatified on 12 June 1825 by Leo XII, then canonized on 15 January 1888 by Leo XIII. His liturgical feast is fixed on 31 October, the day of his death. He is invoked as patron of all Jesuit brothers.^[33][34][35]

His body rests first in the chapel of the Jesuit college of Palma de Majorca. When the Company leaves the college of Montesión in the twenty-first century, his memory remains one of the most lively in the city: the statue that represents him at the college is a witness to it, as is the entrance of the porter, which has remained a place of local devotion.^[36][37]

Saint Alphonsus Rodriguez is commemorated on 31 October, the day of his death at the college of Montesión. This date is given by Wikipedia FR (“Liturgically he is commemorated on 31 October”), confirmed by Wikipedia EN (died 31 October 1617), by the Catholic calendar of the year and by CatholicCulture, which carries the entry “St. Alphonsus Rodriguez, Religious” on 31 October.^[38][39][40]

The Ignispedia calendar initially placed this figure on 30 October: the discrepancy was noted on 11 October 2026 on the cited sources, and the entry was corrected to 31 October. 30 October remains the day of the Blessed Benvenuta Boiani, Dominican virgin of Cividale del Friuli (Nominis writes “Bienvenue Bojani”; see the article for the spelling gap).^[41][42]

The iconography of Saint Alphonsus Rodriguez shows him almost always as a Jesuit brother, in the habit of the Company, often at the door of the college, or receiving visitors. The engraving after Anton Wierix II, of the seventeenth century, depicts him thus, in bust.^[43] The engraving of the series of Jesuit saints kept at the Rijksmuseum shows him aged, under the Latin title Alphonsvs Rodrigvez segobiae, that is, “Alphonsus Rodriguez of Segovia”: the mention of his native city identifies him formally.^[44][45][46]

Two historical scenes are sometimes illustrated: the hospitality of the door, where he receives the poor and the students, and the conversation with Peter Claver, where the old porter encourages the young Jesuit to leave for the missions of America. The statue of Palma de Majorca represents him standing, as a brother of the Company.^[47][48]

• Saint Peter Claver (1580-1654): the student whom Rodriguez sent toward the missions of America, who became the apostle of the slaves of Cartagena.
• Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556): the founder of the Society of Jesus, of which Rodriguez is one of the best known brothers.
• The foundation of the Society of Jesus: the religious framework in which the life of the porter of Montesión is set.
• Saint Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787): Doctor of the Church, not to be confused with our saint.
• The Sacred Heart of Jesus: the devotion dear to Rodriguez.