The Ball of Fire Saint

​“St. Philip Neri, the most laughable and laughed at saint in Saintdom...

“Neri often visited the Catacombs to pray and meditate, and it was there in the month of May or June 1544 that he was mysteriously thrown to the floor and a ball of fire ‘entered his mouth and lodged in his chest.’

“Soon recovering from the shock, he put his hand to his left side and found a swelling as large as his fist. St. Philip Neri was a mystic even before this, but at this time in his life his mystical experiences reached a climax and left the visible mark he carried to his grave.

“... a heart so inflamed with the love of God that it forced two ribs into an arch over his heart to give the appearance of a tumor.

“Doctors learned this only at an autopsy on the day of his death. ‘...[T]here has never been more than one case of a heart so inflamed with the love of God as to break the ribs of the encasing body.’”

By Philip C. Fenton, S.J., excerpted from an article published in the May 1958 issue of Extension magazine​