If you really wanted to torture St. Philip
Neri, force him to celebrate Mass in public. The Renaissance mystic suffered this nagging defect: he couldn’t commemorate our Lord’s sacrifice without
falling into ecstasy, often levitating for hours. Being a spectacle was his biggest cross.He dreamed up a solution though, which involved the creation of a new liturgical figure: the altar jester, whose mission it was to whisper humorous trifles steadily in to the saint’s ear in order to keep his feet on the ground.
This fact contains a lesson for the rest of us,
who labor to lift up our hearts. If distraction
is what keeps us from immersing ourselves in the mysteries that would sanctify
us, then all we have to do is expel the “jesters” in our prayer lives. It couldn’t be simpler.
“To set about hunting down distractions would
be to fall into their trap, when all that is necessary is to turn back to our
heart: for a distraction reveals to us what we are attached to, and this humble
awareness before the Lord should awaken our preferential love for him and lead
us resolutely to offer him our heart to be purified” (CCC 2729).
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