Saint Peter of Alcantara, Confessor
S. Petri de Alcantara Confessoris
Saint Peter of Alcantara, a Spanish Franciscan of extraordinary penance and prayer, reformed his Order in the spirit of poverty and was a wise counsellor to Saint Teresa of Avila.
Saint Peter of Alcantara was born in 1499 at Alcántara, in Estremadura, Spain, of a respected family. Drawn from his youth to the service of God, he entered the Order of Friars Minor — the Franciscans — while still a young man, and gave himself wholly to a life of poverty, penance, and prayer. He was esteemed for his learning and was in time ordained and entrusted with the governance and preaching of his Order; yet his heart was set above all upon austerity and the hidden life of contemplation.
A man of penance and prayer
Saint Peter is renowned for the severity of his penances and the depth of his contemplation, in which he was favoured with the gift of prayer in a singular degree. He embraced the most rigorous poverty and bodily mortification, treating his own body with great hardness for the love of God, and he sought always the lowest and most laborious place. Moved by zeal for a stricter observance of the Franciscan rule, he undertook, amid difficulties, the reform of his Order, establishing houses of the strictest poverty and recollection, whose friars came to be known for their austerity of life. In this work he laboured to restore the primitive spirit of Saint Francis.
Saint Peter is remembered also for his close friendship with Saint Teresa of Avila, whom he counselled and encouraged in her own reform of the Carmelite Order and in her interior life. She held him in the highest esteem, and bore witness in her writings to his holiness, his spirit of prayer, and the wisdom of his guidance, esteeming him a true master of the spiritual life. He wrote also a treatise on prayer and meditation that was long valued among the faithful for its sound and practical doctrine.
His death and veneration
Worn out by his penances and labours, Saint Peter of Alcantara died on the eighteenth of October, 1562. He was afterward canonised, and is venerated among the great penitents and contemplatives of the Franciscan Order. The collect of his feast praises God who adorned blessed Peter with the gift of wonderful penance and of the loftiest contemplation, and asks that, by the help of his merits, we who are mortified in the flesh may the more easily lay hold of heavenly things.
In Saint Peter of Alcantara the Church honours a friar who took the poverty and penance of Saint Francis in deepest earnest, a contemplative rapt in the love of God, and a wise guide of souls, who shows the faithful that the way of self-denial opens the heart to the things of heaven.
The Collect
O God, who didst vouchsafe to enrich blessed Peter thy Confessor with the gift of wonderful penance and of the loftiest contemplation: grant, we beseech thee; that, helped by his merits, being mortified in the flesh, we may the more easily lay hold of heavenly things.
Deus, qui beátum Petrum Confessórem tuum admirábilis pœniténtiæ et altíssímæ contemplatiónis múnere illustráre dignátus es: da nobis, quæsumus; ut, eius suffragántibus méritis, carne mortificáti, facílius cœléstia capiámus.
Patronage
He is venerated among the saints of the Franciscan Order and is honoured as a patron of those devoted to penance, of night watchmen, and is invoked by those who seek growth in prayer.
In the Modern Calendar
In the modern calendar he is no longer kept on the universal calendar, though he continues to be honoured within the Franciscan family and by those devoted to him.
Common Questions
When is the feast of Saint Peter of Alcantara?
His feast is kept on 19 October in the calendar of the 1962 Roman Missal, as a Third Class feast.
Who was Saint Peter of Alcantara?
He was a sixteenth-century Spanish Franciscan friar renowned for his extraordinary penance and his gift of contemplative prayer, who reformed his Order in the spirit of strict poverty. He was a friend and counsellor of Saint Teresa of Avila and wrote a valued treatise on prayer. He died in 1562.
What was his connection to Saint Teresa of Avila?
Saint Peter was a trusted counsellor and encourager of Saint Teresa of Avila in her reform of the Carmelite Order and in her life of prayer. She esteemed him highly and praised his holiness and wisdom in her writings, regarding him as a true master of the spiritual life.
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