St. Jerome Aemiliani aspired to be a great military officer, but God had other plans for him. The Lord called this man to a life of charity and service; God called him to religious life and to priesthood. God both inspired him to found a religious community of canons, and the Lord gave St. Jerome Aemiliani a fervent love for poor orphans.
Falling into the hands of the enemy, he was imprisoned in a dreadful dungeon. Miraculously, he was delivered by the visitation of Our Lady. As Mary brought the joy of Christ to her cousin Elizabeth at the Visitation, Our Blessed Mother visited St. Jerome Aemiliani with the love of her Divine Son, and she, by her miraculous power, freed him from his captors. Once free, he hung those shackles and chains on our Lady’s altar as a perpetual reminder to both himself and to all his devotees that it was Our Blessed Lady who freed him to serve her beloved Son.
Once freed, he devoted himself to the practice of the corporal works of mercy in Venice. When he saw the orphans denied food and shelter, treated like dogs, made to beg even for the scraps that fell from the table, he resolved to do something about it. And so, he established homes for orphans. He saw that orphans need parental love and Christian example, not just food and shelter.
He understood that, even if the state might be competent to care for these poor orphans, these children needed something that no government agency could provide – they needed the love of God as Father, and they needed the love of the human heart. He reminded the children that God is their Father, and that God has adopted them as his own dear children.
To assist him in the life of charity, and to serve the poor, he founded the Canons Regular of Somasco, and he and his brother canons became great apostles of charity. While serving the physical needs of those afflicted by the plague, he died on February 8, 1537, at the age of 57, freed from the chains of ambition and worldly allurements, and fortified by the Marian virtues of humility, simplicity, and charity.
As Our Blessed Lady visited St. Jerome Aemiliani, so she wants to visit us to free us from whatever chains us. She wants to free us from the mindset of this world, which is passing away. The Mother of God wants to enliven our minds with the Light of Jesus Christ.
Let us, by the intercession of St. Jerome Aemiliani, hang up our chains today on Our Lady’s Altar, so that, after his example of charity, we too, may visit our neighbor, especially the poor, the widows and the orphans, with the works of mercy, and even with the loving touch of Christ our Savior.
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