Stanislaus Kostka's burning love for God

Stanislaus Kostka, the scion of the best Polish nobility, died in Rome on 15 August 1568, before he was eighteen, a novice in the Society of Jesus. His family and friends put every possible obstacle in the way of his religious vocation, threatening and using violence, but they never made him change his mind. If his short life was marked by a series of providential graces and miraculous events, if his rare and perfect chastity, which earned him the patron saint of Catholic youth, was manifested in the incorruptibility of his body, Stanislaus also belonged to another, smaller, extraordinary circle: that of mystics so consumed with love for God that their hearts radiated almost unbearable heat. We call this phenomenon hyperthermia, or more beautifully incendium amoris, the fire of love.

Saint Stanislas Kostka / © Shutterstock/Zvonimir Atletic

Reasons to believe:

Several people close to Stanislaus witnessed these spectacular "crises" and reported them during the canonical enquiry. In addition to his superior at the juvenate (equivalent to the Jesuit novitiate) in Augsburg, they included his brother and his tutor. At the time of the events, both were not only far removed from religious practice and even hostile to the Catholic faith, but were also determined persecutors of the young man, whom they considered to be a disgrace to his family - proof that they were not inventing a mystical phenomenon they did not believe in.

It is impossible to confuse the symptoms of love's fire with those of death by cold, which are paradoxical in that, once they reach a certain stage of chill, sufferers have the sensation not of freezing but of suffocating in the heat, to the point of undressing completely despite the polar temperature and complaining of being too hot. Even at the height of these attacks, Stanislaus, with his uncommon modesty, would never take off a single item of clothing and would simply say that he was "burning", as evidenced by his temperature, with the result that the remedies used before the development of febrifuge drugs (to bring down fever), namely ice baths or cold compresses, were applied to him without result.

He was not the only one to experience this intense burning of love. Among these saints are the Italian mystic Angela of Foligno, and Bernadette Soubirous, who, at the first apparition of Our Lady in Lourdes on 18 February 1858, crossed the Gave River barefoot, telling her sister and friend who were accompanying her, and who had complained about the icy water of the Pyrenean torrent: "It's as warm as dishwater!" Closer to our time, Padre Pio, to the astonishment of incredulous doctors, all his life shattered thermometers that could not rise as high as his own temperature. At autopsies in some cases, surgeons claimed to have burnt themselves severely by touching the mystic's heart, whose ardour did not get extinguished by death itself.

Stanislaus' decision to join the Society of Jesus was linked to a mystical experience that took place in December 1566, when he was very ill and prevented from receiving the last sacraments. In prayer, he turned to Saint Barbara, who brought him communion accompanied by two angels. To everyone's surprise, Stanislaus recovered, and he made the firm decision to join the Jesuits, despite the strong hostility, persecution and denial that his decision provoked in his family.

His desire for heaven being so great, Stanislaus Kostka wrote a prayer to the Virgin Mary at the beginning of August 1568, asking to die on the day of the Assumption. He kept this letter with him until his death, which occurred as he had requested on 15 August. He was eighteen at the time.

Summary:

Stanislaus Kostka was born on 28 October 1550 in Mazovia, into a family of Polish nobility, perhaps attracted by Protestantism, but even more concerned with social climbing. As the eldest son, Stanislaus was destined to succeed his father and hold high office. To prepare for this, in 1664 his parents sent him to study at the Jesuit College in Vienna, which attracted the young elite of Central Europe.

Although he studied seriously, Stanislaus' favourite part of the school was that he was able to pray at length and receive communion frequently, as he had obtained permission to do so, which was rare at the time. This piety annoyed his brother, and even more so his tutor, who was responsible for his masters' two sons and worried about the religious vocation he saw emerging before him. He did everything in his power to thwart it: With the boarding school closed, the tutor moved in with his pupils in the house of an intolerant Protestant who, for example, refused to let a Catholic priest into his home. Nor did he miss an opportunity to ridicule Stanislaus's fervour.

Did that tutor ever see the connection between Stanislaus's exceptional fervour and the strange 'fever attacks' which his pupil regularly experience, forcing him to wrap his chest, from which a strange warmth emanated, in cloths soaked in ice water? Apparenty not, because the vexations multiplied. So much so that in 1566, when Stanislaus fell so ill that he was thought to be dying, his tutor and landlord agreed to prevent him, despite his pleas, from receiving the last rites, which were considered to be a shameful Catholic superstition. Worried about dying without receiving the viaticum, Stanislaus prayed to Saint Barbara, patron saint of firefighters and everything to do with fire - a wise choice for someone in the grip of a particular kind of fire - but also of the brotherhood of young men to which he belonged (the Marian congregation of Saint Barbara).

Shortly afterwards, the martyr appeared to him, accompanied by two angels, one of whom gave Stanislaus communion. Against all medical predictions, Stanislaus recovered and decided to join the Jesuits. His relatives did everything to prevent him from doing so, making so many threats that the Viennese superiors, worried about the repercussions of the fury of the powerful Kostka family, advised the young man to go and do his novitiate in Augsburg, away from his father's wrath. It was there, on a bitterly cold winter's day, that he felt so engulfed by divine love that, unable to bear it any longer, he went down to the garden without a coat, wandered around, unaffected by the cold, and ended up rolling in the snow in front of the astonished superiors. To their questions, he answered, as if it were obvious: "I'm burning!"

More familiar with mystical phenomena, convinced of the novice's sanctity and having learned of the presence in Dillingen (Germany) of one of the great figures of the Order, Peter Canisius (engaged in a ceaseless struggle to wrest the Germanic world from Lutheran influence), the Jesuits in Augsburg advised Stanislaus to go and meet him to see whether or not it would be possible to admit him into the Society. This was the start of an incredible journey, on foot, disguised as a beggar, which took Stanislas to Rome at the end of the summer of 1567. Pursued by his brother and tutor, who were to take him back to Poland, he passed close to them without being recognised, and reached the city where the Jesuit general, Francis Borgia, was waiting to welcome him. Also waiting for him was a letter from his father disowning him: "You have dared to cross Germany and Italy disguised as a beggar, dishonouring our illustrious family by your foolish behaviour. If you persist in this folly, never attempt to return to Poland!"

Stanislaus never had the chance. During his months of novitiate, his love of God and his desire for Heaven grew, if that were still possible, to such an extent that life on earth became abhorrent to him. On 8 January 1568, as a New Year's wish, he asked Our Lady to come and get him on 15 August, the feast of the Assumption, to take him with her to heaven. In fact, on 14 August, Stanislaus, who had contracted victim of malaria - one of the scourges of Rome at the time - died the next day, as he had wished.

If there was still a need to demonstrate his sanctity, his body was found intact two years later and, when his tomb was opened, spreading a delicious perfume that pervaded the entire chapel. Canonised at the same time as another young member of the Society of Jesus, Aloysius de Gonzaga, in 1726, Stanislaus is invoked to preserve the purity of youth, and is celebrated in the liturgy on 13 November.

A specialist in the history of the Church, postulator of a cause for beatification and journalist for a number of Catholic media, Anne Bernet is the author of over forty books, most of them devoted to sanctity.

Beyond reasons to believe:

In Hebrew, seraphim means "one who burns", i.e "of love for God", and this state is held to be the supreme degree of union between a creature and the Creator. It is therefore normal that the seraphim should belong to the first of the nine angelic choirs, the one whose celestial spirits are closest to God. While this burning of love is a delight for these spiritual beings, it is painful for humans, whose fragile, mortal flesh is not designed to tolerate it without suffering. However, as in all mystical phenomena, this suffering proves so sweet that its beneficiaries do not wish it to cease. Few souls, however, experience it. It was through incessant penance and his early and total contempt for the pleasures of this world that Stanislaus reached such a degree of sanctity at a very young age.

Going further:

The Life of St. Stanislas Kostka, of the Society of Jesus by Stanislaus Kostka, Legare Street Press (July 18, 2023)

More information:

The Life of St. Stanislaus Kostka: Of the Society of Jesus by Catholic Church and Brother Hermenegild TOSF, ‎ CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (March 14, 2015)
The Story of St. Stanislaus Kostka: Of the Society of Jesus by Henry James Coleridge (Author), Francis Goldie (Author), Legare Street Press (October 27, 2022)