The Spirit with which Saint Charles Borromeo Was Filled

Today we celebrate Saint Charles Borromeo, a great Saint for his times. The Lord filled him with a mighty spirit, a spirit that we should pray that the Lord would continue to guard within His Church. We are immensely indebted to this great Saint who was a central figure in the Council of Trent and in the creation of the Roman Catechism, which remains one of only two universal catechisms of the Catholic Church.

What was this spirit that the Lord gave him? The spirit with which God filled Saint Charles was, simply put, the spirit of the great Catholic Reform or, if you prefer, the spirit of the glorious Counter–Reformation.

What were its fruits? An epiphany of the beauty of holiness; the restoration of order and splendour to the sacred liturgy; a luminous presentation of Catholic doctrine in all its purity; the re–direction of the diocesan clergy into paths of discipline, virtue, learning, and apostolic zeal; the reform of monastic life; the alleviation of poverty, ignorance, and disease in an unprecedented flowering of works of mercy; the expansion of missionary enterprises to the ends of the earth.

All of this was as daunting a programme in Saint Charles’ day as it is in our own. We should ask God to preserve among us the spirit with which He filled the Bishop Saint Charles Borromeo, for “God does not repent of the gifts he makes, or of the calls he issues” (Romans 11:29). “Every best gift, and every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration.” (James 1:17).

In Saint Charles, we continue to recognise God’s plan for a Church constantly renewed, and conformed to the image of Christ. We can recognise this in Saint Charles’ devotion to the mysterious Shroud of Turin. Saint Charles venerated the Holy Shroud in Turin on October 10th, 1578; he was profoundly affected by the experience. It would seem that the spirit with which God filled the great reforming bishop was, in some way, bound up with his contemplation of the mysterious Face of the Shroud. We should also pray that the Church may show the Face of Christ to the world. What better way to do this than by recognising by faith that same Face of Christ in our adoration?

There are, of course, myriad and manifold ways of showing the Face of Christ to the world. All of these, however, mirror the one essential showing of the Face of Christ that, by God’s design, rests in the hands of the priest. The heartfelt cry at the elevation of the Mass often heard in medieval England, “Heave it higher, Sir Priest!”, is the voice of the multitude rising from every corner of the world: a yearning to behold the Face that every man was created to see. The sacramental showing of the Face of Christ is the essential work of the priest. It is the Opus Dei to which, as Saint Benedict says, nothing is to be preferred. We should never doubt this. If priests do this as Saint Charles did it, all the rest will be given besides, “good measure and pressed down and shaken together and running over” (Luke 6:38).