Saint Who?
Saints Who Battled the Devil
Saint Philip Neri
Priest and founder († 1595)Feast Day: May 26
Philip Neri grew up in a happy home. He was known as “good little Phil.” When he was eighteen, a wealthy uncle offered to train him to bring him into his business. But Philip, inspired in prayer, soon abandoned this golden ticket and headed to Rome.
In Rome, the Church was in a very bad way: Prelates were very worldly, many priests rarely offered Mass, and Catholics were caught up in the fashionable neo-paganism of the Renaissance. Philip became a kind of hermit-tutor, then a street preacher. Years later, at the behest of his confessor, he was ordained, and began the community known today as the Oratory. He was a skilled fighter against one of the devil’s most powerful weapons: gloom. “I’ll have no sad saints in my house!” he used to joke. A magnet of joy, he drew souls from the pursuit of empty pleasures to a rich and robust piety, full of music and laughter.
It is said the devil harassed Philip whenever he prayed or did a good deed. He would scatter dirt on his clothes and extinguish his candle when he lay sick in bed. Philip’s sovereign remedy was to appeal to his Mother. “The devil tried to frighten me last night, but I recommended myself to the most holy Madonna, and she delivered me.”
Holy Mother, through the prayers of Saint Philip Neri, save us from the devil’s gloom
and grant us holy joy in the cross.
