The Life of St. Stanislas Kostka

The difference between the two brothers' tastes and characters daily increased, and Paul's pride and rage rose almost to madness. Not content with reproaches and insults, he assailed him with blows and sticks. To all this inhuman conduct Stanislas opposed only meekness and patience. His simple and cordial answer to all his brother's and his tutor's bitter taunts was: "I was not born for time but for eternity; for that I desire to live, and not for this."

But all this generosity seemed to be lost upon Paul, and all these sacrifices thrown away. And yet it was not so, as time was at last to show. The seed then sown was to bear glorious fruit, when the sun of Grace should come and warm it, and draw down upon it the fertilizing dew of penitent tears. How often may it not be so in cases where it is not given to us to know the end and history of those upon whom tears and unrequited love seem to have been spent in vain, to win them to God!

Before his birth Stanislas had been, as it were, mysteriously devoted to the Society of Jesus, the sacred name having been mysteriously engraven [...]. And every day his vocation to enter that Order became more decided. But how was he to declare it, knowing that his father would never give his consent, and that the Order would never receive him without it? For this reason he hesitated long to declare his vocation, but at last, feeling that his conduct was ungrateful toward God, he took courage to speak and opened his heart to his confessor. No sooner had he spoken those words than he felt himself as it were inundated with spiritual consolation.

"Such," writes his biographer, "is often God's way of dealing with His servants, especially with those for whom He has designed high vocations, or for whom He has some great work in store. He solicits their consent, as He did that of Mary by the ministry of Gabriel; He puts compulsion on no one; and then, when the soul brings at last its good-will and acquiescence, He fortifies it to do His will and accomplish His purpose, and gives it a sweetness besides which at the moment more than compensates for the sacrifice." His confessor, however, could see no way of helping him to attain the object of his wishes; but Stanislas had been assured in a vision of his ultimate success, and was not discouraged.

He had been always specially devoted to St. Barbara, and this year he hoped much from her intercession. For this reason he studied the Saint's life with loving attention — the attention of the heart, the effects of which are so widely different from those of the closest intellectual application. Thus it is that Saints read; and thus it is that with them reading is prayer. [...] And soon after, St. Barbara's intercession procured for him [...].

At last Stanislas decided to leave Vienna, [...] to announce to his brother [...] no longer to endure [...] treatment at his hands; a treatment which would compel him to fly and seek freedom [...]. So, disguising himself in the dress of a peasant, he started on foot for Augsburg. When his flight was discovered, [...] alarmed [...].

[...] On his arrival at Augsburg he learned with dismay that the Provincial had already gone on to Dillingen. Thither, undauntedly, Stanislas followed him; and at once those two souls understood each other. To test the reality of his vocation, however, Canisius desired him to help the servants of the College in the domestic work of the house. He knew [...] that these fervent souls, so firm while there is something to oppose, resist, or even endure, in order to compass the desired object, will not seldom flag under a dull, daily round of tasks which are humiliating to self-love, and which supply no possible food to enthusiasm or secret self-exultation.

But Stanislas, who delighted in nothing more than in mortifications and humiliations, accepted the post with exceeding joy. In this menial capacity he not only did everything extraordinarily well, but set such an example to all, both students and servants, that he drew their hearts, as it were irresistibly, to God. Canisius, satisfied after a fortnight's trial of the character of the young nobleman, decided to send him to the General of the Order, who was no other than St. Francis Borgia [...].

The Rector of the College at Vienna wrote of him: "Dear to all, offensive to none; in age a boy, in prudence a man; in person small, in spirit high and exalted."

St. Francis Borgia, even before reading these letters, with the prescience of a Saint, had at once detected the superhuman virtues of the youth who knelt humbly before him, and openly blessed God for having sent such a soul to the Order of Jesus. He decided to admit him without delay to the novitiate, and Stanislas was clothed with the holy habit only three days after his arrival in Rome. But his father's exasperation knew no bounds; he considered that his noble house was disgraced by his son's act. "What a thing," he cried, "for a Christian to entertain — that the nobility of a house should be dishonored by a son being in the service of the eternal Monarch of Heaven!"

His obedience to his superiors was no less admirable than all the rest, for it was as hearty as it was prompt. "If you were commanded to start immediately for the Indies, what provision would you make for the journey?" asked the Superior of him one day. Without hesitation, Stanislas answered: "I would provide myself with a good store of patience, a double mantle of charity to God and to my neighbor, and a strong pair of shoes of mortification; and then off at once." His soul was so filled with divine love, and so entirely absorbed in God, that no exterior occupations ever diverted his mind for one moment from this intimate recollection and realization of the Divine Presence. Not a cloud ever saddened this joyous, loving soul.

[...] which consumed him was soon to obtain its fruition. This soul, the object of Mary's special predilection, was to be summoned to share with her the happiness of Heaven. Canisius came to Rome in the summer of 1568, and, addressing the students, suggested to them to celebrate the first of each month by selecting the name of some special Saint on that day, whose virtues they should imitate and whose intercession they should plead, and moved them so to enter on every month as if it should be their last. When Stanislas heard this, he [...]

"The maxim which that man of God inculcates may be said to be a salutary monition for all; but for me, who am to die this month, it is the very word of God."

On the first of August, St. Lawrence fell to his lot; with the virtues of patience for the dying, which confirmed the hope of our Saint that he should keep the Feast of the Assumption in Heaven. A fever came on, at first of so slight a character that those around him laughed at the idea of danger. But its course was sudden; though so young, he fulfilled his appointed days, and [...] was to receive his reward. His death was the crowning act of his beautiful life; like his life, it was all joy and hope and love. "My heart is ready, O God! my heart is ready," was the cry of his longing spirit. Up to the very last moment he kept [...] the Church's prayers in Latin, that consecrated language of prayer, which has, so to say, an inimitable savor of devotion. And then all of a sudden he became silent, and his face assumed the expression of one in ecstasy. He remained motionless, save that his lips gently moved, and his brilliant eyes, in which heaven's joys seemed mirrored, [...] as though beholding sights of unimaginable splendor and loveliness.