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Dear Friends in Christ,

The saint in whose church we are blessed to celebrate Mass today, is not one well known to us in the West. Stanislaw Kostka was a young man, with a powerful father, and his father opposed his one goal in life - to serve the Lord as a priest. But Stanislaw stuck to his ideals, and listened only to the Voice which was calling to his soul. He finally made his way to Rome, and eventually was accepted into the novitiate of the Jesuits. But his travels had weakened him, and in Rome, after less than a year of studies, he died of malaria, at the tender age of seventeen. Many wonderful things were told of this young boy - that in his hardships and deprivation, God sent the angels to give him Holy Communion - that because of his estrangement from his unyielding family, the Virgin Mary visited him, and let him hold the infant Jesus, that he might know the comfort of begin a part of the Holy Family - and also that when he left his school in Vienna to flee to Rome, and seek there the priesthood, an angel of God held back the horse of his brother, who was trying to catch him, to prevent him from carrying out his dream.

These are wonderful stories, and we who love the saints, love hearing of the miraculous favors granted them by God in Heaven.

But the important thing to remember about this young man, Stanislaw Kostka, the important thing about him that we can imitate, is the incredible fidelity that he showed to the will of God in his life. In the Gospel today, our Lord speaks of building one's life on the surest foundation, and tells a simple story of the

wise man who built his house upon the rock; and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.

St. Stanislaw Kostka's life was exposed to some of the most terrible storms that can befall any of us - the rejection of a father because his son loved God too much, the opposition of his family to everything that he desired, the necessity of leaving his home and then his school, and risking his life to journey great distances in order to find a place where he might live out his vocation. And then, almost before his life had really begun, the burden of mortal illness, and an early death at the age of seventeen. St. Stanislaw might have buckled under the pressure of any of these cruel storms - and like the house built on sand, the waters of earthly opposition might have swept away his deep, yet constantly persecuted desire to serve the Lord as a priest. But he did not buckle - his house, the house of his soul was built on an unwavering conviction that God was calling him, and that he must follow that call, no matter what the cost.

In our lives, we are often beset by circumstances that try to nudge us from the path of Christian commitment - we are assailed by the worries of the world, its terrible needs, its wars, and its blind ignorance of those principles which might produce peace and justice - and we are tested by the circumstances of our daily lives, the needs of our children, of our aging parents, of sick friends, or just the everyday necessities of keeping everything in place, in working order, the bills paid, the grass trimmed, the refrigerator stocked. Great or small, there are thousands of things that might break our patience, that might draw our eyes from the goal, and from practicing those virtues that will get us to the goal - the virtues of patience, of compassion, of self-sacrifice - the virtues taught by our Lord, and to which we are committed by our Baptism, and our living Faith.

So during this pilgrimage, as one of our prayer goals, let us ask the Lord to help us daily to reinforce the foundation of our lives - the foundation of the will of God, by hearing His word, by holding close in friendship to this community of believers we have formed for these few days together, and above all, by receiving, as we will at this Mass, the Body and Blood of our Lord. We may not be called upon to face the trials and tests that beset the young St. Stanislaw - but our needs, and the needs of every man, for the help of God, are just as great as his were.

Let us believe, that God will help us, and that whether we live seventeen or seventy-seven years, we will stick fast to the foundation of His love, and that when the end comes, we will find the dream God has planted in our hearts, and be able to share it with Him for all eternity.

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