The Virtual Oratory

May 26th is the feast of the saint who accidentally founded the Oratory. Monsignor Ronald Knox, dry witty and wise preacher, former RC chaplain at Oxford, was often a preacher at the Brompton Oratory (snuggled between Harrod's and the Victoria and Albert Museum). He was the one who said that Philip absent mindedly founded the community since it was done without plan or intention. It just happened.
Newman much earlier in his brilliant sermons on the Mission of St Philip said that Philip wanted to save people in the world, not from it. He was a secular priest who kept the Oratory secular, a contemplative without a cloister, a mystic who left the key to his room under the doormat so people had access to him (as long as they did not mind the dog and the cat companions).
He also had some birds given to him as fresh meat but he kept them for pets also. He survived very well on the great olives of Italy, bread, the great bread of Italy, and a flask of wine, the great wine of Italy. He lived to be 80 on that diet.
Philip could be very tough on people though it was usually his favorites who got that special treatment. Otherwise he is known for cheerfulness, pranks, and anything that would deflate, gently or mercilessly, the over blown egos of the day. The lace collars were the flags of the dispositions of these egos: high, starched, easily crushed, and ostentatious. So unlike ourselves today. Not.
Anyway, mostly laity, priests and brothers, ruined their siesta time every day in Renaissance Rome to share their faith, sing, read together, pray together, and disperse to the highly infectious dormitories that passed for hospitals in those days, all the while dodging zealots who thought they must be Protestants. They had to keep their spirits up because it was a mean spirited time. Holy Mother Church looked like the Whore of Babylon, the cardinals like the very devil who liked to wear red. St Philip keep us cheerful in the service of God.

The best introduction to Philip Neri is anything by Meriol Trevor, an English amateur historian with a flair for writing. Her obit is here.

Her children's books are in print in the UK but  most of her church writing is out of print but avaialble in Alibris and ABE.

The best sermon on Philip is by, of course, Cardinal Newman. Part I. Part II. 

www.oxfordoratory.org.uk is a good contact for Oratorian saints and a hearty and traditional Oratory community in Newman's beloved Oxford. The Church of St Aloysius which the Oratorians now staff is a former Jesuit mission where the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins was stationed for a little while. 

Philip Neri, said one preacher, "absent mindedly" founded the Oratory. The Oratory began as a lay movement gathering in an oratory, a place of prayer, and some members got ordained to keep it going after lay leadership in the Church got a bad reputation from the Protestant Reformation. Philip did not intend to found it. 

He is a non-cloistered mystic, a secular priest, not a monk, allowing a community to gather around him that consisted of laity (secular Oratorians), priests and brothers (congregational Oratorians).

He is the patron saint of joy but it is hard to find a picture of him looking joyful! If you find one, let us know!

He lived from 1515 until 1595. He was born in Florence and came to Rome as a young man. This section will highlight what others have said of Philip who had great faith in the work of the Spirit in secular life.  

 This is being posted in honor of Sept 8th, a Marian feast day. The subject is the meeting of a pregnant virgin, Mary, and a pregnant senior, Elizabeth, her cousin. These two women have more faith than the apostles chosen by Jesus. The apostles will only catch up with them after the Resurrection. In the meantime, the mother of Jesus and the mother of John the Baptist, embrace and help make it all possible. 

The picture is by F. Barocci and it is part of a side altar in the Oratorian church, the Chiesa Nuova, in Rome. Thanks to PW for introducing Fr. Hal to this colorful and humane artist. 

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 In an old etching Philip who wanted to the missions with Francis Xavier was told by a monk to stay in Rome..."Rome will be your Indies."

"The whole of Philip's work grew out of the gathering in an upper room, an oratory, the informal learning together of the way of the Gospel, the way of the Spirit. Even the priests who eventually formed the Congregation which called him founder--though he often said he never meant to found anything--became 'Fathers of the Oratory.' It was their  vocation to keep the Oratory going, and the Oratory itself was a centre for priests and people to learn how to pray and how to live in the Spirit while still living in the world."

MERIOL TREVOR, The Apostle of Rome, St Philip Neri