Last year I stumbled upon a different volume in this series, 15 Days of Prayer with Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati by Père Charles Desjobert, OP, and really enjoyed it. I did some research on the series and this was the eleventh volume I have work and prayer through. In my research to date there have been at least 40 volumes in this series. Many written in French and then translated, including this volume, this book was first published in French in 2018, the English edition appeared 2024. I am thankful there is an eBook edition of this volume, with my dual form of dyslexia the eBooks make reading so much easier, my son has eye tracking issues and our deacon has low vision. eBooks help with all of these and other issues.
I believe as of the writing of this review there have been 40 volumes in the series; the earliest I found was from 1999 through to a volume which was published in 2025. The earlier editions were published by Liguori, but they have now moved to New City Press which is now part of Focolare Media. Only about a dozen seem to be in print currently and of those only a handful appears to have eBooks. With my dual form of dyslexia this is disappointing. I greatly prefer eBooks so I can change the font, and the colour of font and page to make reading easier. I have added all the eBook editions I could find to my wish list. About the Series we are informed:
“15 Days of Prayer Series
On a journey, it’s good to have a guide. Even great saints took spiritual directors or confessors with them on their itineraries toward sanctity. Now you can be guided by the most influential spiritual figures of all time. The 15 Days of Prayer series introduces their deepest and most personal thoughts.
This popular series is perfect if you are looking for a gift, or if you want to be introduced to a particular guide and his or her spirituality. Each volume contains:
• A brief biography of the saint or spiritual leader
• A guide to creating a format for prayer or retreat
• Fifteen meditation sessions with reflection guides”
The description of this specific volume states:
“The “Apostle of Rome,” the “Reformer of the Church,” the “Saint of Christian Joy”—these and many other titles are given to Saint Philip Neri (1515–1595). A priest at the age of thirty-six, he never ceased to bring to Rome and the world the fire of the Holy Spirit that burned in his heart. In 15 Days of Prayer with Philip Neri, you will discover a joyful companion who lived out his baptismal call with spiritual intensity and pastoral charity. Canonized in 1622 along with St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Francis Xavier and St. Teresa of Avila, he is celebrated on May 26. Too often forgotten by the Church today, the example of this saint is relevant and inspiring for our times.”
About the authors on the back cover we are informed that:
“Father Jean-François Audrain studied in Pontivy, at Saints-Anges and Saint-lvy. He was ordained a priest in 1989. Father Audrain was an instructor for four years at the Pontifical Seminary in Rome, where he trained young people preparing to become priests. In 2023 he helped establish an Oratory of St. Philip Neri at Lorient, France, where he lives and works as an Oratorian priest.”
The chapters in this volume are:
How to Use This Book
A Short Biographyof Saint Philip Neri
Introduction
Abbreviations
1 Florentine Heritage
2 Taking Leave
3 The Second Conversion
4 Hermit at the Heart of the Holy City
5 Pentecost of 1544
6 The Brazier and the Consecrated Bread
7 The Joy of the Confessional
8 The Word of God Daily and Familiar
9 The Oratory: The School of Prayer
10 Humility and Obedience
11 The Modesty of Intelligence
12 Patience in Love
13 To Love Is to Serve
14 The Apostle of Rome
15 Free to Love
Conclusion
“Day and Night”
I highlighted a number of passages while reading this volume some of them are:
“The hardest part is simply getting started. Beginning something difficult is doubly hard when the journey ahead is lonely, which is why this book is so valuable. We are invited to make a beginning and go our way in the company of a joyful saint, one whose presence became for those around him a source of inspiration, sympathy, solidarity, and friendship.”
“Each “day” with Philip is brief, but full of tremendous grist for the mill of prayer. Fr. Audrain supplies us with quotes from the Scriptures, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the wisdom of the saints and that of recent popes such as St. John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis.”
“An undistracted natural setting might be exactly the kind of deserted place where the Lord can speak to us. In the end, it may be that visiting and revisiting the book in varied contexts is the best way to receive all it has to give us.”
“As we set ourselves to read this book, let us resolve to be patient with silence and know that the solitude we feel there is the space where St. Philip can enter in and become our companion.”
“Whatever our approach, whatever our method, we must not forget that the goal of these days is simply to meet Philip, come to know him, and allow him to do for us what he did for so many others: lead us to Christ.”
“The young Philip loved to pray and read the Bible, especially the Psalms, but he never spoke of being a priest. On several occasions he had powerful experiences of
“Philip’s Oratory was first a location, then a spiritual exercise, and finally the name of a group of young people gathered around their spiritual father for the sake of encouraging each other in the way of holiness.””
“Even so, it was not until 1575 that Philip’s Institute was formally established and took the name, The Congregation of the Oratory (the name it bears today with the important addition, “of St. Philip Neri”). The idea of Philip’s Oratory is simple. An Oratory is a community of priests and brothers who live together in the absence of religious vows. Philip wished their bond with each other to be based on nothing except fraternal charity.”
“Other holy figures among the Dominicans contributed to the human and spiritual formation of Philip. From them he acquired his taste for the prayerful reading of Scripture and the lives of the saints, as well as his attraction to the arts. These diverse and powerful influences contributed to the development of Philip’s deep interiority and cultivated in him a spiritual humanism that maintained God as both its center and its goal.”
“And so we may say that the Good Shepherd is also the Beautiful Shepherd (Jn 10). Should we not suppose, then, that the name Pippo Buono that followed Philip throughout his life owed as much to the environment of Florence as to the joyfulness of his natural disposition?”
“Each time he visited the friary at San Marco, he passed alongside the little church which housed the tomb of Arlotto (d. 1484), an eccentric priest that made use of humor to attract and lead souls. All his life Philip would read or have read to him Arlotto’s clever witticisms. So much was this the case that Philip’s volume of Arlotto came to be the most well-worn of all the books in his library.”
“We see in Philip that a saint does not fall from the sky. He has a history, a geography, a family that leaves an indelible impression on him, that fashions him and disposes him to grace. It provides for the distinctiveness of his character; it gives to him a “face.” So too each of us is indebted to the human, cultural, and spiritual environment in which we are placed by providence.”
“Did the upheavals witnessed by Philip and which caused so much suffering to his family give rise in him to a desire for a more stable reality? All seemed to be crumbling around him: after the sack of Rome that shocked the whole world, the Florentine Republic fell. Disease and war carried off many of his friends and family.”
“The term “conversion” might seem too strong to describe a young man already so devoted to the Lord, but the journey to San Germano did indeed occasion another decisive change in young Philip, an abrupt change of course that followed upon his already radical choice to leave Florence, his family, and his friends: “Like another Abraham, he abandoned his disappointed uncle and all hope of earthly things in order to find Christ” (PC I, 173). Several factors contributed to this re-direction.”
“To conquer the temptations of the flesh, there are five remedies: first, flee the occasion; second, do not treat your body delicately; third, flee idleness; fourth, pray often; fifth, go to Confession and Communion. The true guardian of chastity is humility [. . .]. The temptation of the devil, the proud spirit of darkness, is not better defeated than by humility of heart and in presenting sins and temptations to one’s confessor—clearly, without trying to hide them (C 77).”
“Very quickly he realized that God wanted from him something else, and that what he truly needed was more time for prayer.”
“Philip sold his books and gave the proceeds to a needy classmate. He devoted the time gained from his abandonment of study to long periods of prayer. He spent his days, and especially his nights, seeking God in silence.”
“Obviously, all of this did not take place without struggle for the young Philip. As he grew in the favor of the Lord he faced powerful temptations. As Gallonio describes, “he had to endure many demonic attacks” aimed at frightening him from his course of life, or at least chilling his fervor (G 9).”
“We have three means by which to resist temptations and sins: by sheer force of will, facing them head on and resisting them; by despising them; and by fleeing from them. In resisting them, we will conquer pride, anger, greed, gluttony, envy, and sloth; by giving them low esteem and by despising them, we will conquer scruples that very often disquiet and lead the conscience astray. The sins overcome by flight are those of the flesh (C 76–77).”
“Philip was now a man of twenty-nine years. During the Church’s great novena of prayer between the feasts of the Ascension and Pentecost, he made his way beyond the walls of Rome and deep into the catacombs of San Sebastiano. Once again he prayed intently and humbly that the Holy Spirit would come to him, fortify him with his gifts, and set him ablaze with the fire of His love. This prayer would be answered in a way that Philip could not imagine.”
“More astonishing than any of these amusing details is the reality they point to: Philip lived fifty years of his life in a wild fervor of divine love (G 17).”
“He introduced in Rome the Forty Hours Eucharistic devotion that had been developed in Milan. A witness relates that Philip spent the entire night in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament.”
“Testimonies concerning these episodes make reference to the fact that even as Philip displayed these extraordinary charismatic gifts, he also exhibited a strong aversion to becoming a spectacle for the curious. He attempted to avert attention from his tears, for example, by saying that they were of no importance and certainly not a sign of devotion or sanctity, and that even women of immoral life weep.”
“Once a priest he would spend the entire morning in the confessional, often beginning before dawn and returning to it in the evening as well. He remained available at all times to administer the sacrament to which he devoted long hours throughout the entirety of his life as a priest.”
“For this reason he pointed to Confession as the chief means by which to experience the love of God, spiritual reawakening, and progress in sanctity.”
“Perhaps on this seventh day of our spiritual journey with St. Philip, the time has come for a plan of Penance and Reconciliation, to have recourse to the sacrament that gives us the means by which to rediscover the vitality of our Baptism, the harmony and elegance of grace, and full communion with God, “the Father of mercy and all consolation” (2 Co 1: 3).”
“These young people were no longer children, but they were not yet old enough to be busy with worldly pursuits. Philip realized that the greatest danger they faced was their own idleness, and he did all he could to draw them away from it.”
“At the first Oratory the word of God was prayed and sung in order to be interiorized personally. As Philip said, “The wisdom of Holy Scripture is learned by prayer rather than by study” (M 405). Thus, he agreed with the monastic tradition of Lectio Divina: the reading of the Bible leads to meditation, then to prayer, and finally to contemplation in a pure openness to the work of the Holy Spirit.”
“In the extended readings presented at the Oratory, whether they were those of Sacred Scripture, the Fathers of the Church, or spiritual writers, advice concerning prayer and its methods was never lacking.”
“In his dress Philip was always clean, but his clothing was typically coarse and ill fitting. It was likewise for his rooms and his food, as well as for his dish and cup. He used nothing of great value. He wished even for the chalice he used at Mass to be small and without embellishment.”
“Philip used humor, mockery, buffoonery, and other eccentricities to shake things up, to remove himself from the center so as to give the first place to God. He recalled often, and lived in a surprising way, the counsel of the medieval spiritual writers: Spernere mundum, spernere nullum, spernere seipsum, spernere se sperni (despise the world, despise no one, despise yourself, despise being despised).”
“Cardinal Newman would later describe Philip’s “And then…?” as his “wonder-working words” because of their ability to mortify worldly ambitions and turn one’s heart away from “the empty fleeting things of earth.””
“While reading the testimony recorded for the sake of the canonization process, one is struck by the patience that characterizes Philip’s exercise of charity.”
“John Henry Newman, the great English Oratorian, summarized this Philippine “method” in the episcopal motto he chose for himself: Cor ad cor loquitur (heart speaks to heart). It is first the heart of God that speaks to the heart of man, so that the heart of the “man of God” can speak to the heart of every man, so that all men can speak to the heart of God.”
“But it also had a very simple character, so simple as to seem familiar, even natural. It was the fruit of constant work, of fidelity to a place and time, to friendships rooted in the Lord. It is astonishing to realize that in the course of his life Philip accomplished what has been described as “reform in the Church by means of Rome, in Rome by means of the Curia, in the Curia by means of the clergy, and in the clergy by means of the Congregation” (PB 234). It is still more astonishing to realize that Philip accomplished this without ever intending it.”
“Persons were what he saw first and foremost, not ideas or projects. This is one of the most wonderful aspects of his personality, but it is also a powerful sign of the authenticity of his spiritual experience.”
“This is the grace that we ask for this day: an attention to the one right at hand, to our neighbor; not to dream to do good in some imaginary future but simply to do it, here and now.”
“If the vocation of St. Philip unfolds from the mystery of Pentecost, the vocation of the Oratory is rooted in the communion of the Church in its infancy, at prayer with Mary in the Upper Room awaiting the descent of the Spirit. John Henry Newman speaks of it as a simple household of charity, which is made luminous by love.”
I hope those quotes give you a feel for this volume. It is an excellent read.
This is a great volume in a wonderful series. Spending these 15 days with Saint Philip Neri was well worth the time and effort. It was inspiring and challenging. I just really wish all of the 40 volumes were available as eBooks, I would work through them all if so. If you read all 40 volumes back to back without tasking a day for the introduction, and biography between it is 600 days of praying. If you do take extra days for those sections, or end up missing a day here or there, or choose to reread a day from time to time it would take close to 2 years to work through the collection. They are excellent books. As mentioned I just wish they were all in print and available digitally!
A wonderful read in an excellent series!
Saint Francis of Assisi - Thaddée Matura O.F.M.
Saint Martín de Porres: A Saint of the Americas - Brian J. Pierce
