Humble Saint Used Power for Good

November 4th [was] the Feast of Saint Charles Borromeo, a leader of the Counter-Reformation who served as Archbishop of Milan from 1564 to 1584. From a wealthy and influential family, Borromeo spurned worldly power at every turn, choosing instead to walk in the footsteps of Christ and to call others to do the same. He dedicated his life to the Church at the age of 12, and it was around this time that he assumed financial control over the prosperous Benedictine Abbey of Sts. Gratinian and Felin. He refused to utilize any revenue from the abbey to enrich his family or for secular purposes, instead giving to the poor all excess funds not needed for his education.

When his uncle, Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Medici, became Pope Pius IV, Borromeo was summoned to Rome and made a cardinal at just 21 years old. He emerged as the new pope's closest advisor during a time when such familial ties were relied upon to ensure loyalty. Unlike many from such powerful families, Borromeo continued to renounce worldly things, focusing instead on reforming the Church. He played an important role in the Council of Trent, which helped return the faithful to a focus on humility and the call to repentance at the heart of Christ's message.

Upon being made Archbishop of Milan, Borromeo immersed himself in an effort to revive the faith of the city's people. When Milan was hit by famine and a plague in the same year, he turned everyone's attention to God in prayer, at one point walking barefoot in a procession, inspiring those who were suffering to unite themselves with Christ on the cross; and he put prayer into action by marshaling all resources at his disposal to feed tens of thousands of suffering people.

Cardinal Borromeo once told the priests of his archdiocese, "If a tiny spark of God's love already burns within you, do not expose it to the wind, for it may get blown out. Keep the stove tightly shut so that it will not lose its heat and grow cold. In other words, avoid distractions as well as you can. Stay quiet with God."

This bit of advice contains words of wisdom that apply in any era, but that spoke in a particular way to challenges of his time. They also speak poignantly to the challenges of distraction we face today. In Cardinal Borromeo's time, those distractions came from the flourishing of society that took place during the Renaissance, resulting in certain excesses that he identified as distractions from the message of Christ. In our own time, we might easily identify technology as our primary distraction, but distractions come in all forms. The key is to be on guard so the things we train our attention on do not distance us from what is most important.

By putting the Gospel message into action, Saint Charles Borromeo showed how to move beyond distraction to a focus on loving God and neighbor. During a time when iconoclasm was taking hold among the followers of Luther and Calvin, Borromeo set about to reform the excesses of art and adornment to train the minds of the faithful on Christ, inspiring a measured reform rather than outright destruction.

And here Borromeo gives us a powerful example, because we are called as Catholics to constantly be pruning the Church from within as we strive together towards God, never abandoning each other, and always seeking to work in unity as one family in Christ.

This essay is a recent "Light One Candle" column by Father Ed Dougherty, M.M., The Christophers' Board of Directors ; it is one of a series of weekly columns that deal with a variety of topics and current events.

Background information:

The Christophers