St. Philip Neri-pray for us!

Today is the feast of St. Philip Neri. I knew basically nothing about him until today! Haha. Fr. Justin (one of our chaplains) has a strong devotion to him (he's a BIG fan). He celebrated mass at St. Jerome's which is where St. Philip began the Oratorians. They are kind of diocesan priests but they live in community.
he was very very prayerful, he counseled many people, especially popes
he had the gift of prophecy and knew who the next pope would be so he'd counsel them a great deal beforehand so they would be ready. This was especially important because it was right after the Reformation
the most amazing thing was that he often went to pray in the catacombs of St. Sebastian and once while praying he asked to love like Christ and the Holy Spirit came in a ball of fire into his mouth and to his heart and physically expanded his heart
which broke some of his ribs
haha pretty crazy
but people said when you’d go in the room where he was you could hear his heart beat because it was so big. and even in the cold his room would be so hot because of the heat his body emitted
haha yeah!
and apparently after he died they examined him to see if his heart really was enlarged and it was
but he celebrated mass at the place where the Oratorians were started then we crossed teh street where his body was and the chapel where he would say mass later in his years. apparently he would go into these great estasies during the words of consecration
that he was too embarrassed to say mass publicly
so at consecration when he would go into ecstasy the servers would leave the chapel and it would be many hours later before he would ring a little bell and they would come back to assist him in finishing mass
and also he would run past the chapel or dance past it or crack jokes because otherwise he would go into ecstasy
but yeah so it was neat going through it all with fr. justin because he knows so much about him it was like getting to know his best friend lol

for more about him go to http://www.the-oratory.org/history.html