Fr Robbie Paraan SJ challenges ASHS students to commit their whole selves to God in St Aloysius Gonzaga Feast Day Mass

The Ateneo de Manila Senior High School community celebrated a schoolwide Mass for its patron, St Aloysius Gonzaga, on the 3^rd floor of the FLC building at 9:20 am of 7 November 2024. The celebration was made even more significant with the presence of a first class relic of St Gonzaga, a fragment of his bone. St Gonzaga is also the patron saint of the youth.

In his inspiring homily, Fr Robbie Paraan SJ – an Ateneo de Manila alumnus – offered St Aloysius “Luis” Gonzaga and Ressa (a formator who works in Bukidnon) as models of devotion and faith for youths like the ASHS students.

Fr Robbie began by summarizing St Gonzaga’s life, explaining that he was one of the Jesuits who provided care for the sick when a plague struck Rome in 1591. Because many Jesuits tended personally to their patients, many of these Jesuits caught the disease and died, among them Gonzaga, who died at the age of 23. As for Ressa, Fr Robbie shared that she is a member of the lumad Higaonon tribe in Bukidnon who dreamed of being the first person in her entire clan to graduate from college. Orphaned when she was very young, she faced many demoralizing and daunting obstacles and challenges to fulfill her dream, among them working as a kasambahay, asking for spare change from classmates to finish school projects, walking eight hours one way through muddy roads and rivers just to be with her family on weekends, and dealing with despair and rejection many times. But she persevered, finally graduating from college at the age of 27. Ressa is now the formator of high school lumad scholars supported by Jesuits in Bukidnon.

Fr Robbie then challenged the ASHS students to CHOOSE and to choose well – as Luis Gonzaga and Ressa did – how they will live their lives while they are still young. “Choose and commit to that choice with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind,” he said. “Among the many choices you make, choose the Lord, and commit your whole self to God. (Choose) to love God above all things and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves,” he emphasized.