Link Here to view Jeff's last blog post on our saint of the day - be sure to read all the links Jeff posted!
Here is a short biography I found on the saint.
And let me add the following comment on St Philip as well a quote from the saint in honor of Jeff.
St. Philip Neri has often been called the patron saint of joy for the deep and very human and humble spirit of joy that characterized his life. Here is a brief description of this quality of his from Meriol Trevor’s, Apostle of Rome:
“Cardinal Newman said Philip’s mission was not to evangelize but to restore…He converted Christians to Christianity–a mission ever necessary and imperative in Rome of that time. What he did was done without any means of power. He never held an important office [and] wrote no books. He was in no sense a popular preacher or leader…his work was done by personal influence alone…Philip had the lovable qualities of sympathy and honesty, shrewdness and humor. He never denounced; he made contact with affection. He rarely commanded; he preferred to elicit cooperation. He hated coercion, hated pretense and pretension. He loved spontaneity. He disliked solemnity and made fun of the dignified. His lightness of heart and sense of humor shocked some earnest people, much to his delight. For he liked to be taken for a fool.”
The following is from The Magnificat:
Words of St Philip Neri from: If God Be With Us: The Maxims of St. Philip Neri
St. Peter and the other apostles and apostolical men, seeing the Son of God born in poverty, and then living so absolutely without anything, that He had not where to lay His Head, and contemplating Him dead and naked on a cross, stripped themselves also of all things, and took the road of the evangelical counsels.
Nothing unites the soul to God more closely, or breeds contempt of the world sooner, than being harassed and distressed.
In this life there is no purgatory; it is either hell or paradise; for to him who serves God truly, every trouble and infirmity turns into consolations, and through all kinds of trouble he has a paradise within himself even in this world: and he who does not serve God truly, and gives himself up to sensuality, has one hell in this world, and another in the next.
To get good from reading the Lives of the Saints, and other spiritual books, we ought not to read out of curiosity, or skimmingly, but with pauses; and when we feel ourselves warmed, we ought not to pass on, but to stop and follow up the spirit which is stirring in us, and when we feel it no longer then to pursue our reading.
To begin and end well, devotion to our Blessed Lady, the Mother of God, is nothing less than indispensable.
We have no time to go to sleep here, for Paradise was not made for cowards.
We must have confidence in God, who is what He always has been, and we must not be disheartened because things turn out contrary to us.
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