For Greater Things: The Story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka

Paul was the worst at this teasing; nor did it stop at mere teasing. He was not a really bad fellow, but he was selfish, set upon having his own will in everything, and had a ve...

Most of us, perhaps, think of the saints as men and women who accomplished visibly great things. Saint Paul, Saint Augustine, Saint Patrick, Saint Theresa, Saint Philip Neri, Sa...

Mid-August in Vienna, the year 1567: when Shakespeare was still a little boy; twenty years before Philip II fitted out the Spanish Armada; forty years before the first English c...

It was well on in the afternoon of August 30th or 31st when Stanislaus arrived at Augsburg. The town was strange to him. He had to ask his way to the Jesuit house.

Stanislaus lacked six or eight weeks of being eighteen years old when he died. He had not been a preacher or writer or engaged in any public work. Only a handful of people in Ro...

Bilinski and Paul Kostka went back to Vienna, much troubled at heart. They really loved Stanislaus, for one thing, though they had been pretty rough with him. And for another, t...

Two years of loneliness; when his brother and his cousins and his tutor, who should have been his comrades, were his persecutors; two years in which he was always under a strain...

Meanwhile, there was a hubbub in Vienna. Stanislaus had lived in that city about three years with his brother Paul, who was about a year older than he, and in the care of a tuto...

Vienna WAS a great city, even in those days, since for a long time it had been the residence of the Roman Emperors of the West. It was a Catholic city, though even in 1564, litt...

When Stanislaus had been a novice nine months, Peter Canisius came one day to Rome on business. At this time Stanislaus was living in the noviciate proper, Sant' Andrea on the Q...

The house which the Jesuits in Vienna used for their boarding college was not theirs. It belonged to the Emperor Ferdinand I, who had merely loaned it to them. Now the Emperor F...

Canisius kept Stanislaus at his work in the kitchen and about the house for a couple of weeks. He noted his cheerfulness, his love of prayer, his readiness to do any sort of wor...

When our Lady came to cure Stanislaus, she told him absolutely that he must become a Jesuit. That was not the first idea Stanislaus had had of his vocation. Even some months bef...

He was going to run away. But he was not going to sneak away. He was just as kind and forgiving to Paul as he had always been. He bore him no ill-will for his three years of abu...

In this way Stanislaus went on until he was nearly fourteen years old and his brother Paul was approaching fifteen. Then the Lord John Kostka thought his boys had better continu...