🙏Born in Alcantara, Spain, in 1499, St. Peter showed a profound calling to religious life from an early age, entering the Franciscan Order at sixteen. His life was a radical witness to the Gospel, marked by extraordinary austerity and a deep life of prayer and penance. Not content with common observance, he became the central figure of a reform within the Order, the Discalced Franciscans (or Alcantarines), who sought a return to the purity and rigor of the primitive rule of St. Francis. His penances were so severe that St. Teresa of Ávila, for whom he was a spiritual director and a crucial advisor in the reform of Carmel, wrote of him: "He seemed to be made of the roots of trees." He saw mortification not as an end in itself, but as a means to unite himself more intimately with the Passion of Christ, his greatest devotion. Through his guidance, he strengthened St. Teresa in her moments of doubt, assuring her that her work of reform was from God. Consumed by divine love and zeal for souls, he died on his knees in prayer in 1562.
📖 Epistle (Phil 3:7-12)
Brethren, the things that were gain to me, I have considered loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as dung, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. I long to know Christ and the power of his Resurrection, and to share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.
✝️ Gospel (Lk 12:32-34)
At that time, Jesus said to his disciples: Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms; provide for yourselves purses that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
🤔 Reflections
🕊️By calling His disciples a "little flock," Christ is not necessarily referring to their number, but to the condition of humility and voluntary poverty they must embrace to receive the Kingdom. This smallness is a choice, a dispossession that makes them fit for the things above. (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Gospel of Luke). The command to sell one's possessions and make a treasure in heaven is the logical consequence of this choice; for, by transferring our treasure to heaven, our heart will inevitably follow it. Man cannot prevent his heart from being where his treasure is; therefore, wisdom consists in placing the treasure where the heart ought to be, and not the other way around. St. Peter of Alcantara understood this perfectly, making his life a continuous transfer of treasures to eternity, divesting himself of everything so that his heart would be fixed solely on God. (St. Augustine, Sermon 9).
📜St. Paul's statement that he considers all things "as dung" to gain Christ is the most radical expression of Christian detachment, which sees no value in anything that does not lead to Christ. This is not a denial of the goodness of creation, but the recognition of a hierarchy of values in which Christ occupies the absolute summit. The knowledge of Christ is not merely intellectual but a transformative experience that leads to participation in His sufferings as the path to the glory of the resurrection. (St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Epistle to the Philippians). The righteousness that comes from faith, mentioned by the Apostle, is the grace by which man is justified and enabled to perform meritorious works, not by his own strength, but by having been "made his own by Christ Jesus." The penitential life of St. Peter of Alcantara is thus the outward manifestation of this inner conquest, a continuous effort to conform himself to the death of Christ, driven by faith in the resurrection. (St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Epistle to the Philippians).
🏛️The doctrine of the Church, as set forth in the Roman Catechism, teaches that in addition to the precepts binding on all, Christ proposed the evangelical counsels—poverty, chastity, and obedience—as a surer and more direct path to Christian perfection. Voluntary poverty, embraced so heroically by St. Peter of Alcantara, is exalted as a powerful means to free the soul from earthly cares and the snares of greed, which weigh down the heart and divert it from the love of God. By selling all and giving to the poor, the faithful not only performs an act of charity but also transfers his "treasure" to heaven, in accordance with the day's Gospel, aligning his heart with the ultimate end for which he was created. The life of St. Peter of Alcantara demonstrates that the radical observance of this counsel is not a loss, but the supreme "gain" of which St. Paul speaks: union with Christ. (Roman Catechism, Part III).
🔍See English version of the critical articles here.
