Our holy father St Philip liked to tell anyone who tried to praise him that they would one day see him hanged in Rome. Those hearing this who outlived him for long enough would have seen this strange prophecy come true on 12th March 1622, when his effigy was emblazoned on a banner suspended from the interior of the dome of St Peter's Basilica for his canonisation. This ceremony has been described as the most impressive event of its kind in the history of the Church. Canonisations at this time were few and far between. Only three saints had been raised to the altars between 1492 and 1587, each at separate ceremonies. In March 1622, St Philip's banner was accompanied by those of St Ignatius Loyola, St Francis Xavier, St Teresa of Ávila and St Isidore Agricola. Afterwards, the Romans quipped with characteristic chauvinism that Pope Gregory XV had canonised four Spaniards and a saint.
This month, we celebrate the four-hundredth anniversary of this magnificent occasion in the life of the Church and of the Oratory. The Oratory Parish Magazine from April 1922 contains detailed information of the tercentenary celebrations when 'the children of St Philip gathered in their thousands' in the church. The author of the account writes that finding the Oratory in such a festal mode on a Sunday in Lent, strangers coming into the church 'may well have thought that we had all gone mad'. Even those visitors who did not question the sanity of the Fathers may have been a little startled to hear the Alleluia being sung at the High Mass during the penitential season. 1922 was a particularly significant anniversary, being marked in Rome by the transference of St Philip's body to a new crystal casket, which was carried in solemn procession through the quarters of Rome most associated with the saint, before being placed under the altar in St Philip's chapel at the Chiesa Nuova.
Three of the Spaniards canonised with St. Philip were his contemporaries: St Teresa of Ávila, St Ignatius Loyola and St Francis Xavier. While still a layman in Rome in the 1540s, Philip made the acquaintance of St Ignatius, whose face he described as 'resplendent', and who nicknamed him 'the bell'. St Ignatius seems to have meant by this that just as a church bell summons others into church while remaining in the belfry, so St Philip directed men into the religious life (including a good number into the Society of Jesus), while remaining outside himself. The Society of Jesus had been formally established in 1540, and St Francis Xavier, the Church's greatest missionary since St Paul, had been hard at work evangelising heathens in the east for a good decade by the time St Philip was ordained to the priesthood in 1551. As the first Oratory crystallised around him in his rooms at the church of San Girolamo Della Carità, where his disciples came for confession, prayer and meditation on the word of God, the reading out loud of letters sent back to Rome from the Jesuit missionaries in the East became a staple part of the early exercises of the Oratory.
For St Philip and his companions, the hardships endured by the Jesuit missionaries were reminiscent of the trials faced by the early Christian martyrs whose relics were being excavated in the Roman Catacombs at this time to be distributed around Christendom for the veneration of the faithful. So inspired were the members of the embryonic Oratory that they resolved to offer themselves for missionary service overseas, where they prayed that God would give them the grace to shed their blood in the service of the Gospel. This was not to be. A Cistercian mystic informed St Philip that his Indies would be Rome, where his mission was to contribute to the renewal of holiness within the eternal city. As the Oratory became a force within its own right in the glorious revival in the Church's life which came to be called the Counter-Reformation, St Philip faced many tribulations, misunderstandings, calumnies and, on occasion, downright persecution at the hands of the ecclesiastical authorities. Throughout these challenges, the trials endured by St Francis Xavier and the agonies which the Jesuit missionaries faced on their missions always remained a source of inspiration and encouragement to St Philip and the early Oratorians.
On Saturday 12th March, we shall celebrate a Solemn High Mass at 11am to mark the quatercentenary of the canonisation of St Philip, in gratitude especially for all of the blessings which the intercession our holy father has gained for us at the London Oratory. We share our joy with the Society of Jesus, remembering the significant, if indirect, contribution the missionary efforts of Saints Ignatius and Francis Xavier made to the formation of our own institute; and with the Carmelites, as we all give thanks for St Teresa of Ávila and the extraordinary enrichment of the Church's spiritual life which God achieved through her. In these troubled times, we beg the intercession of Our Lady, St Philip and all the four Spaniards canonised with him, especially for peace in the world. By the grace of God, may the Oratory still be ministering to the faithful in Brompton in 2122 for the 500th anniversary, and beyond.
Father Julian Large