Homily for the Memorial of
St. Charles Borromeo
Nov. 4, 2023
Collect
Provincial House, New
Rochelle
In
today’s collect, we prayed that God’s Church might “be constantly renewed” and
show the face of Christ to the world.
St. Charles Borromeo is generally regarded as the paragon of the
Church’s absolutely needed renewal in the 16th century. St. Francis de Sales held him in the highest
regard.
Charles, born into a noble family in 1538, was related to the infamous Medicis and thus was an unlikely candidate for the role of reformer. He benefited immediately from nepotism when his uncle became Pope Pius IV in 1559 and, following a common practice, immediately made his nephew a cardinal, administrator of the vacant archdiocese of Milan, and secretary of state. He was 21 years old and only in minor orders.
Altho
he had his faults, Pope Pius did promote church reform, reconvening the Council
of Trent in 1562 after a suspension of 10 years. He entrusted its direction to Charles, who
guided it for 22 months to a successful conclusion in December 1563. In that period, Charles himself experienced
something of a conversion—tho he’d never been corrupt or immoral—and went ahead
with priestly and episcopal ordination and a firmer commitment to asceticism
and prayer. He bore special
responsibility for the catechism that the Council published.
Pius
IV kept Charles in Rome, however, until he died in 1565. The new Pope, St. Pius V, finally allowed him
to take possession of his archdiocese in 1566; it had not had a resident bishop
for 80 years. That bishops should
actually be in their dioceses and not just collect the revenues was one of
Trent’s reforms. Milan’s 600,000 souls,
3,000 priests, and thousands of religious were sadly in need of reform: moral, catechetical, formational. Charles undertook all that, meeting such
initial opposition that one monk even tried to assassinate him during a Vespers
liturgy.
He
promoted the establishment of seminaries thruout his ecclesiastical province,
compelled his priests to reform their lives, likewise the religious, organized
catechism classes in every parish, made his own household a modest one,
convened regular diocesan synods—almost annually—and practiced charity to the
poor and the sick, even at times personally nursing plague victims. He constantly urged prayer and perseverance. He told priests, religious, spouses, and all
the baptized to “be what you promised to be.”
Worn out by his work, he died at age 46 in 1584.
Pope
John Paul II, whose personal name was Charles (Karol), called St. Charles “a
servant of souls.” To help Christians be
conformed to Christ was the purpose of all Charles Borromeo’s reforms.
And
that is the purpose to which Fr. Angel Fernandez is calling us thru GC29: that all Salesians might “transmit more
light, be more and more passionate about God and about the Lord Jesus. . . . We have a wonderful opportunity to seek to
live more and more in fidelity, simply and authentically, enthusiastically and
with commitment, and at the same time, with deep faith and prayer … convinced
as we are that God accompanies us. . . .
It will only be important to serve in the name of the Lord, to do
everything for Him in love, and to devote ourselves wholeheartedly to those to
whom we are sent, their families, and those who have no family, no voice, and
no opportunity. So we will be a bit more
prophetic (or very prophetic).”[1]
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