Deepertruth: Stand In The Gap With Us And Saint Aloysius Gonzaga

Stand In The Gap With Us And Saint Aloysius Gonzaga 6/21/2024.  Gonzaga was born the eldest of eight children.

As early as age four, Luigi was given a set of miniature guns and accompanied his father on training expeditions so that the boy might learn "the art of arms".

At age five, Gonzaga was sent to a military camp to get started on his training. His father was pleased to see his son marching around camp at the head of a platoon of soldiers. His mother and his tutor were less pleased with the vocabulary he picked up there.

He grew up amid the violence and brutality of Renaissance Italy and witnessed the murder of two of his brothers.

Aloysius Gonzaga (Luigi Gonzaga, 1568-1591) gave up a privileged life and a princely inheritance to live the vows of religious life even to the point of contacting the plague because of his selfless care for people already sick with it.

The Lord can make saints anywhere, even amid the brutality and license of Renaissance life. Florence was the “mother of piety” for Aloysius Gonzaga despite his exposure to a “society of fraud, dagger, poison, and lust.” As a son of a princely family, he grew up in royal courts and army camps. His father wanted Aloysius to be a military hero.