At Rome, Saint Stanislaus Kostka, who, a Pole by birth and longing to enter the Society of Jesus, fled his father’s house and made his way to Rome on foot. There, admitted to the novitiate by Saint Francis Borgia, he was soon worn out in the performance of the humblest duties and died, illustrious for his holiness.
Lifespan: 1550–1568
Beatified: 8 October 1605 by Pope Paul V
Canonized: 31 December 1726 by Pope Benedict XIII, Vatican Basilica
Memoria liturgica: 15 August
“The missionary must have excellent shoes of mortification, a wide cloak of love of God and neighbor, a hat of patience as a defense against adversity.”
Stanislaus was born near Kraków in 1550, son of Prince Kostka, a military commander and Senator of the kingdom of Sigismund Augustus. At the age of fourteen he was sent to study in Vienna at the college of the Society of Jesus, which was still in its early years: Saint Ignatius had died not long before, but already the Jesuits had distinguished themselves as profound theologians and as initiators of a genuine cultural renewal within the Church.
After a stop at Częstochowa, Stanislaus arrived in Vienna as a guest at a college of the Society. With him were his tutor and his elder brother Paul. Life together soon became difficult, owing to his brother’s worldly inclinations, which clashed with Stanislaus’s sober bearing — a young man who felt himself “born for greater things.”
During this period he studied diligently, lived intensely in the spirit of the Gospel and in devotion to Mary, and bore witness through his life and his work. The Lord’s call was making itself felt within him — a call he heard in the many hours he devoted to prayer, in his attendance at Mass and Vespers, and in the Spiritual Exercises he practiced according to the celebrated work of Saint Ignatius of Loyola.
One day Stanislaus fell gravely ill, and during his illness extraordinary wonders occurred — manifest signs of the work grace was doing in him. One night he received a visit from Saint Barbara, accompanied by two angels, and from her hands he at last received the Eucharist. He had ardently sought it during his fever, but had been unable to obtain it, because he and his brother and tutor — following the requisition of the Jesuit school by the Habsburgs — had been forced to move into rented lodgings: the landlord was a Lutheran and did not look kindly on his three Catholic tenants.
Another night Stanislaus received a visit from Our Lady with the Christ Child; the moment he took the Child in his arms he felt himself completely healed, confounding all the physicians who had given him no hope of recovery. The Virgin, as she took her leave of him, revealed that his path lay in the Society of Jesus.
By now Stanislaus was certain of his choice, but he knew his father would never approve, and so he fled. After twenty days on foot he reached Dillingen in Germany, where he was welcomed at the local Jesuit house and where he met Father Peter Canisius, who at the time was Provincial of northern Germany; the Jesuits were struck by this extraordinary young man. Stanislaus was sent on pilgrimage to Rome together with two companions, and there, at last, he was able to begin his novitiate and pronounce his vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
One day he was asked to describe the figure of the missionary, and this is how he outlined his spiritual kit to the other novices: “Excellent shoes of mortification, a wide cloak of love of God and neighbor, a hat of patience as a defense against adversity.” Before long, however, he fell ill and died, at barely eighteen years of age, on the feast of the Assumption in 1568.
He was buried in the church just built beside the novitiate: Sant’Andrea al Quirinale. Proclaimed a saint by Benedict XIII in 1726, he is, together with Aloysius Gonzaga and John Berchmans, patron of novices and of all youth.