Thursday of the Thirty-third Week of Ordinary Time

Saint Alphonsus Rodriguez was born on July 25, 1532, in Spain, the son of a wool merchant. As a boy he encountered the early Jesuits when Saint Peter Faber visited his city and even prepared him for First Communion. Though he began studies at a Jesuit college, family duties drew him home after his father’s death. He married María Suarez and had three children, but within a few years his wife and two children died, and later he lost his last child as well. These sorrows opened his heart to a life of prayer, penance, and total surrender to God. Lacking education and weakened by austerity, he still persevered in his desire to join the Society of Jesus and was finally received as a lay brother in 1571. Sent to Mallorca, he served for forty-six years as the college porter, greeting each visitor as though Christ Himself were at the door. His humble counsel shaped countless lives, including Saint Peter Claver. Deeply devoted to the Sacred Heart and the Blessed Virgin Mary, he was revered for holiness and mystical prayer. He is a patron of Mallorca. Saint Alphonsus died on October 31, 1617; his feast day is October 31.

Saint Elizabeth of Hungary was born on July 7, 1207, in the Kingdom of Hungary, traditionally at Sárospatak (though some place her birth at Pozsony, today Bratislava). Daughter of King Andrew II, she was sent as a child to the court of Thuringia in Germany and, at fourteen, married Louis IV, the landgrave. Their marriage was marked by a shared openness to God’s will, and when Franciscan friars arrived in 1223, Elizabeth embraced the spirit of Saint Francis with ardent love for the poor. During years of famine and plague, she distributed alms freely, even giving away courtly treasures to relieve suffering. Widowed at twenty when Louis died on the way to the Crusade, she chose a life of simplicity and vowed herself to Christ. With her recovered dowry she built a hospital at Marburg, where she personally served the sick and destitute. Elizabeth died there on November 17, 1231, only twenty-four years old. Miracles of healing soon surrounded her tomb, and she was quickly canonized. She is honored as a patroness of the Third Order of Saint Francis and is venerated in places dedicated under her name. Her feast day is November 17.