Honour is flashed off exploit, so we say;
And those strokes once that gashed flesh or galled shield
Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field,
And, on the fighter, forge his glorious day.
On Christ they do and on the martyr may;
But be the war within, the brand we wield
Unseen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,
Earth hears no hurtle then from fiercest fray….
Those years and years by of world without event
That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), In honour of S. Alphonsus Rodriguez, Laybrother of the Society of Jesus.
'I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than live in the tents of wickedness' (Psalm 84:10). Gregory the Great wrote of our temptations; 'Although persecution has ceased to offer the opportunity, yet the peace we enjoy is not without its martyrdom; since even if we no longer yield the life of the body to the sword, yet we do slay fleshly desires of the soul with the sword of the spirit.' According to Henry Foley, his biographer, the Jesuit 'doorkeeper 'Alphonsus Rodriguez (c.1533-1617) struggled with spiritual and moral temptations: 'During the space of seven years God permitted the devils to pursue a most unrelenting and cruel war against his body to overcome his chastity... with the most horrid and impure forms, gestures, and actions... he was reduced to such terrible straits, pain, and weaknesses from the violence of his efforts to resist them, that he must have died, if God had not put his enemies to flight.' Rodriguez disciplined his eyes never to look man or woman in the face. W.B. Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, wrote: 'A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself.'
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