St. Philip Neri

Who they were

Philip was a Florentine who walked away from a merchant inheritance, arrived in Rome at eighteen, and spent seventeen years as a layman: tutoring, studying, praying nights in the catacombs, and roaming the streets striking up conversations that ended, somehow, with bankers and street children alike following him to serve in hospitals. His question, well brothers, when shall we begin to do good, refounded lay Christianity in a cynical city.

Ordained at thirty six, he became Rome's confessor, spending hours daily in the box and handing out penances as likely to be serve the sick cheerfully as anything austere. The famous humour was strategy. He assigned ridiculous penances to the vain, walking a cat through the streets, reading joke books in church, precisely to kill pride; he wore odd clothes so that no one would venerate him; and he insisted that a joyful heart is more easily made perfect than a downcast one. The Oratory he founded, with its music filled evening gatherings of prayer and talk and laughter, gave its name to the oratorio. At his death in 1595 Rome called him what history kept: the Apostle of Rome. The tradition of his heart, found enlarged at autopsy and attributed to his Pentecost experience of 1544, is told as the tradition it is.

Why people turn to St. Philip Neri

People whose spirituality has gone grim, whether scrupulous or anxious or joyless, and who need a serious witness that levity and holiness are allies. He pairs with Alphonsus Liguori, and between them they are this site's two prescriptions.

How to ask their intercession

His own assignments work as prayers. Do one kind thing cheerfully today, and let one chance to be impressive pass by unclaimed.