served by the Congregation of the Passion (CP)
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Holy Cross
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| Roman Catholic Church,
Ardoyne, Belfast served by the Congregation of the Passion (CP) |
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Holy Cross Church Crumlin Road Belfast BT14 7EA Northern Ireland
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Saint Paul
of the Cross
Prayer was very meaningful to Paul. Even as a child he had the gift of prayer. He and his brother John Baptist found a spot in the attic which they made into "their chapel" and there they would pray. His prayer centred upon the sufferings of Jesus. Frequently the two brothers would perform various acts of penance, much to the concern of their parents. One day he heard a moving sermon on the sufferings of Jesus. This was a powerful grace for Paul. He called it his "conversion."
Now began for Paul a long series of ponderings and divine invitations. He gave himself to intense meditation and prayer. He mortified his flesh with fasting and other penances. He kept a strict watch over his senses. In other words he himself did what he would later ask in his rule of one who wished to join his community: "Let him first examine whether he be called by God to this sort of life. This he should do maturely by prayers, fasts and frequent reception of the sacraments. Withdrawing himself from worldly affairs, let him ask the advice of his confessor..."
Paul did indeed seek counsel from among the priests and religious of Castellazzo. Frequently he thought of hiding himself away in some mountain-side to live close to nature and with his God in solitary prayer. He continued to spend long hours in prayer. At times his prayer would be filled with peace and interior joy. More often he endured hours of profound inner darkness and fierce temptations.
His prayer upon the Lord's Passion opened new directions for him. It became for Paul an experience of the tremendous love God has for us. He also wanted others to know God's great love.He wrote: "Sometimes I had another inspiration to gather companions who would live together in unity to promote the fear of God in souls (this was my main wish)."
Paul realized that many of his contemporaries did not know of God's love. In eighteenth century Italy, Paul's century and country, life was not easy. The rich were very rich, the poor, very poor. For the sick there was little healing, for labourers few hours of rest, for ordinary folks fear of war and bloodshed. In the marshlands of the Papal States the poor lived at the very "margins" of society. Unfortunately, few people found spiritual strength in the ritualistic services of the church, even the Holy Eucharist. Few even dared to approach Holy Communion every week or even every month. Preaching was rare and usually too lofty to be understood by the poor.
Perhaps he should become a priest? But there were so many in Italy at that time that one more would make little difference. Few priests could preach or provide for the people. Seminary training was only slowly improving. Perhaps he should join one or another of the several religious orders in his home town? But monks seemed to live walled-in lives in their monasteries, afraid almost to minister to the people.
Maybe he should simply go away alone to live a life of meditation? Solitude continued a strong attraction for him. But then who would go to the poor, the sick, the neglected in the small villages and towns? Should he go from village to village, telling people about the meaning of their sufferings, so often like the sufferings of Jesus?
Paul struggled over this decision for a long time. This is how he described it twenty-five years later to a young man struggling with his own vocation: "Oh, if you knew the conflicts I went through before entering upon this way of life I am now living. I was really frightened. I felt deep sorrow for my family whom I was leaving in great need as their hopes for a better life focused on me. There were hours of desolation, melancholy and fear. I felt I would not be able to bear this new way of life. The devil kept insisting I was deceived, that there were other ways in which I could serve God, that this was not the life for me, and so many other things. Besides all this, I lost any sense of devotion at prayer; I was dry, tempted in so many ways. I just shuddered when I heard the church bells. Everyone seemed happy but me."
During the summer of 1720 Paul experienced several very powerful calls from the Lord to found a new religious order. He saw in vision the black habit of the Passion, and the white heart with the name of Jesus. On one occasion Paul saw in vision the Blessed Mother wearing the black habit. "You must be clothed in the same way and you are to found a congregation which will wear this same habit to mourn continuously for the Passion and Death of my dear Son."
Experiencing God's call, Paul asked himself: What should he do? Paul knew his own weakness. He felt helpless. But he was inwardly convinced that God was calling him. As a man of his times and a man of the church, he went to his bishop to tell him of his visions and dream. He sought his advice. The bishop at first hesitated. Paul did seem to have an authentic call but one must not be too hasty. The bishop decided that Paul could serve in the church as a "hermit," a "holy man."
On November 22, 1720, Bishop Gattinara of Alessandria clothed Paul in the long black robe that Passionists wear today. He authorized Paul to serve as a hermit in one of the churches of Castellazzo. As sacristan and custodian Paul would assist at the daily Masses and keep the church clean. During the day he would spend time in prayer and teach catechism to the children. He could advise those who came to him for counselling. He could even preach to the people.
But first Paul was to spend forty days in prayer and retreat at the Church of St. Charles. During that time he should write a rule of life for future companions. All this Paul did.
For forty days Paul prayed and fasted, keeping a daily journal or diary of his prayer and spiritual experiences. In it he gave expression to his hopes and dreams, his fears and doubts, the graces God poured into his soul.
Frequently he prayed for the Congregation he hoped to found. On Wednesday, November 27 he wrote: "I know that I had a particular urge to go to Rome for this great and wonderful work of God. I also asked my Sovereign Good if it were his will that I should write the rule for the 'Poor of Jesus.' I felt a strong urge to do so, with great sweetness. I rejoiced that our great God should wish to make use of so great a sinner. On the other hand I did not know where to cast myself, knowing myself to be so wretched. Enough! I know that I tell my beloved Jesus that all creatures shall sing his mercies."
The following day he described a vision he received: "During thanks- giving and prayer, I was moved even to tears, especially as I prayed to the Sovereign Good for the happy issue of the holy inspiration which by his infinite goodness he has given me and continues to give me. I remember that I kept praying to the Blessed Virgin, and to all the angels and saints, especially the holy founders. Suddenly I seemed in spirit to see them prostrate before the most holy Majesty of God praying for this... and then it all disappeared."
Finally, on December 2 he began to write the rule. He wrote rapidly and as one inspired from God. The words flowed from his heart. He was outlining a way of life for those who would, like him, walk the way of the Cross with Jesus. He was expressing in words the "dream" God had shared with him. When the retreat was over he presented the rule to the bishop for his approval. Paul was anxious to go to Rome at once to show the rule to the Holy Father and get his "religious order" started!
The bishop, however, advised Paul to proceed prudently. He knew the pope would not approve Paul's hoped-for order without further testing. The bishop asked several theologians to read the rule and offer suggestions and emendations. In the meantime Paul was to continue his way of life as outlined in the rule.
Finally, in September of that year, 1721, Paul was allowed to go to Rome. When he got there in his black habit and asked to see the pope, the guards, suspecting he was a vagabond, drove him away from the Quirinal, then the papal palace.
Stunned by this rebuff, Paul found his way to the nearby church of St. Mary Major. In tear-filled prayer he knelt before the famous painting of Our Lady in the Borghese chapel of that basilica. Suddenly he felt inspired to make a vow to spend his life in reminding people of all that Jesus has suffered for them. Somehow, someway, with Mary's help and protection, he would start a new community to proclaim the memory of the Passion. Peace flowed into his soul. He knew he could now fulfil his "dream."
This heavenly inspired vow would one day become the very heart of Passionist spirituality, the centre of Paul's special charisma. For on that September day in Rome in spite of the rebuff at the gate of the papal palace, Paul vowed to found the congregation precisely to proclaim the memory of the Passion. This was clearly now for Paul the main reason for the existence of the institute itself. In this sense, it is the seed from which our whole history has sprung.
The next ten years Paul and his brother John Baptist who had joined Paul lived as hermits in accordance with the rule Paul had written. For some time they lived at Castellazzo. Then they retired to a beautiful mountainside, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea north of Rome, called Monte Argentaro. They tried other places. Sometimes companions would come, try the life, stay a while and then leave. Again and again this happened.
Finally, they were offered a place in Rome as nurses for a new hospital for the sick-poor. Paul's rule said nothing about such a ministry, but in serving the sick and the poor, they would be serving the Lord who had become poor for us. They joined the nursing-care staff, still wearing the black habit of the Passion.
While in Rome Paul and his brother were ordained priests by Pope Benedict XIII, on June 7, 1727. Paul did not seek the priesthood, but when it was offered, he consented with readiness and conviction.
Shortly afterwards the two brothers returned to Monte Argentaro. Now as ordained priests they began to preach to the people on Sundays at the fishing villages at the foot of the mountain. Word got around that they were inspired preachers and kind confessors.
In a short time they were asked to give a mission at a town some miles along the coast. They were so successful that they were soon giving missions in most of the towns of the area. Paul realized how much the people needed this mission preaching. Through missions they could call sinners back to Christian living. There were also opportunities for explaining the truths of faith to those who were poorly instructed. But above all, missions offered Paul and his brethren the chance to teach people how to pray, to remember the Passion.
What also attracted Paul was that through this ministry he could serve the poor people of the marshlands. Later he would put in his rule that "the preachers should prefer to go to the poorer and more needy places, to solitary places, the marshlands, and other such places which are usually neglected by apostolic workers." To serve the poor would become an important ministry of his Congregation.
Paul learned from the poor the meaning of the vow he made at the basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome in 1721. In the oldest copy of the rule (dated 1736) Paul included the "vow to promote among the faithful the devotion to the Passion and Death of Jesus." This would become for his community a vow to engage in the apostolate, perhaps similar to what St. Ignatius gave his society by his fourth vow. It was his mission preaching among the poor that taught Paul this special identity of his Congregation in the Church. While evangelizing the poor Paul himself was being evangelized.
Paul and John Baptist realized that they needed a larger building than the small structure in which they were living. Friends in the nearby town of Orbetello offered to help with financing and constructing a monastery. There were many delays. When a war broke out and the mountain became a battlefield, Paul stopped building and ministered to the soldiers in both armies.
Finally the building was finished. The senior priest of Orbetello and many friends from nearby came up the mountain for the solemn blessing and opening of the first Passionist "retreat," as Paul called it. It was the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, in the year 1737.
Four years later, in 1741, Pope Benedict XIV approved the rule and Paul's way of life. The Congregation of the Passion was officially recognized by the church. It was a new religious community in the Catholic Church with a penitential community life of prayer and an apostolate of preaching and teaching the Passion to the poor.
The rule he had written twenty years earlier expressed the inspiration he had received, his "dream." Then he had been so enchanted with his "dream," so enthusiastic, that words had "flowed as from the heart." But during the long, difficult years of overcoming the problems he met in fulfilling this "dream" Paul had clarified a point here, an insight there. He became more specific. His words expressed, not a far-fetched dream, but a goal that he and others could attain. Paul was also aware of the demands of the Roman consulters as he "edited" his rule to present it to the pope. It was now a document more specific and legalistic than the original rule of 1720.
In this text Paul specified that his community would observe many of the traditional religious practices, such as abstinence from meat, perpetual Lenten fasting, going barefoot, wearing a rough habit, not using a hat. He also wanted the choral chanting of the Divine Office by day and by night. There would be hours of mental prayer, silence, and study, together with community chores and recreation periods.
Paul saw this rigorous communal life as the way to achieve the "dream" of centring one's life on the Cross of Jesus. Through such a way of life his religious could become contemplative and mystical lovers of the God who loves us so much. His achievement was to write a rule in which the structural elements are directly oriented to the mystical life. He moulded a code of spirituality that prepares one through ascetical practices for the graces of loving mystical union with God.
But Paul also designed this "observance" as a preparation for an intense apostolate of preaching. His religious must truly become "apostolic preachers" of the Passion of Jesus. He wrote in 1768 that the purpose of the Congregation is "to form zealous workers filled with the Spirit, that they might become fit instruments used by the almighty hand of God to sow virtue and to root out vice among the people with the powerful weapon of the Sacred Passion." In the solitude of his "retreats" his religious missionaries were also to spend hours each day in studying theology, in reading the Scriptures, in sermon preparation. Paul's "dream" always included this vision of "men totally God-centred, totally apostolic."
In the final rule Paul stated his ideal in this way: "the religious ... ought, in the first place, to provide for their own eternal salvation, in the manner prescribed by these constitutions. Then they should devote themselves with diligence to offices of charity towards their neighbour, doing with prudence and assiduity whatever, according to the circumstances of time and place, may be available for the promotion of God's glory, and their own spiritual advancement..."
This ideal had developed in Paul's heart over the years. Even after the first papal approval in 1741 Paul continued to make further revisions and adjustments. He heeded the recommendations of others, testing them by his own experiences and with the continuing inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Future Passionists would long debate the precise inter-relationship between the contemplative (Paul never used the word "monastic") aspects of his community and the works of the active apostolate for one's neighbour. For Paul there was no problem. The community exercises prepared one for the apostolate, while the apostolate demanded of each an ever deeper spirit of prayer and charity.
Again and again he returned to Rome to seek further and ever more solemn approval of his rule and community. Paul had wanted his community to be approved as a religious order in the church with solemn vows (like the Benedictines, the Franciscans, the Dominicans and Jesuits). He never obtained this. Instead, Clement XIV gave Paul's community the new canonical form of an exempt congregation with simple vows (including the Passion Vow) but with many of the privileges of the great orders. A final approval was given by Pope Pius VI in 1775.
Once the first retreat was established on Monte Argentaro and the rule was approved, Paul soon found that much more remained to be done. In the following years he opened eleven "retreats" or monasteries. The final one was a gift from Pope Clement XIV, the magnificent Roman basilica, monastery and garden of Sts. John and Paul on the Coelian Hill across from the Coliseum. Even today the successor of St. Paul resides there as the general superior of the entire Congregation.
Paul always found time to return to his beloved apostolate of preaching the Passion to the poor. Before he died he had preached missions in more than 800 churches of Italy
His final mission was at the Church of St. Mary in Trastevere, the poorest part of the Rome of his day. The church was crowded with cardinals, nobles, wealthy women - all mingling with the ordinary and poor people of the neighbourhood. It seemed that just everyone wanted to hear the famous missionary, Father Paul of the Cross, one of the greatest preachers of the eighteenth century.
Through preaching missions Paul accomplished a renewal of Christian life among the people of central Italy. He would convert hardened sinners, would inspire mediocre Catholics to strive for more dedicated Christian living. His discourses on the Passion could stir the coldest heart. Enemies would be reconciled, worldly people would give up their vain life.
Paul's secret was simply this: he was more than a preacher. He was especially a teacher. His teaching was not in a school or classroom, but on the mission platform, for he wanted to teach people how to pray, to meditate upon the Passion, to be ever mindful of the sufferings of the God who loves us. He very clearly stated in the opening chapter of the first rules that the purpose of the Congregation is "not only to devote ourselves to prayer that we may be united with God by charity, but also to lead others to do the same."
Paul taught a method of prayer that would inspire one to strive for a deeper following of Christ, a walking after him along the way of the cross. He would challenge his hearers to die with Christ in order to rise with him, to die the mystical death so as to some day rise up with Christ to a life of faith and love. His teaching on prayer could lead to highest union with God in a mystical life.
Even in an age when so many confused authentic mysticism with quietism and forms of passivism, Paul insisted that God does call Christians to mystical death and rebirth. For Paul Daneo was a man of suffering, of mystical prayer. He shared deeply in the sufferings of Christ. This was another side of Paul, hidden even from those close to him.
On the first day of his retreat (after his clothing in the habit) he had written in his journal: "There is only one thing I desire: to be on the Cross with Jesus." This desire grew through all the remaining years of his life.
"Being on the Cross with Jesus" meant being driven away from the papal palace in Rome; having companions come and go; not knowing where to begin his Congregation nor what ministry to undertake; seeing Roman prelates mitigate his rule. These are some of the things which kept Paul on the Cross.
"Being on the Cross with Jesus" also meant for Paul the labours of mission work: long hours in the confessional, the struggle to win the people to conversion, the weariness of daily preaching day after day. He knew moments of success but he also experienced failure, being misunderstood, made fun of and mocked. Paul knew that "dark night" and "mystical death" that accompany the dedicated missionary.
"Being on the Cross with Jesus" meant even more for Paul. He would remain on his knees for long hours in prayer. Prayer became the essential action of each day. But his prayer consisted of long periods of aridity and even interior desolation. For Paul to be at prayer meant remaining with Jesus in Gethsemani. Paul experienced something of the very abandonment by the Father that Jesus felt on the Cross. With the Lord he would cry out: "Why have you abandoned me?" He felt absorbed in the sufferings and wounds of Christ. He would say that he approached prayer "clothed in the very sufferings of Christ." Paul Daneo was indeed the Saint of the Passion, one mystically crucified with Christ, sharing in his sufferings. He lived his life "on the cross with Jesus."
Paul, the apostle and mystic of the Passion, was called to found the congregation to keep the memory of the Passion alive in the hearts of all. As a recent writer puts it: "Saint Paul of the Cross saw as the root of all evil in Catholicism the failure to remember the Passion. In his reform program St. Paul went back to the last and explicit will and testament of Jesus: remember him, celebrate his memory and the memory of his death. This is the reason why the congregation was founded. This devotion to the Passion, this continual remembrance, this memorial of the Passion, is the special grace and charism of his congregation. It is truly the Congregation of the Passion.
Death came to Paul at the age of eighty-one, on the Feast of St. Luke, at the monastery of Sts. John and Paul in Rome. It was 1775 - the year of Lexington and Bunker Hill. The Revolutions were not far away!
At a time when the Church was under attack on so many sides, when formalism and legalism and Jansenism stifled the love for Jesus in the hearts of so many of the faithful, God raised up this man to be a founder, a preacher, a mystic.
For certainly Paul of the Cross is God's gift to the Church in the century of "Enlightenment." And the Church has been well served by this man and his religious congregation. Yes, the Church did well to give to St. Paul of the Cross "the welcome and approval of her authority" (Religious Life, #1). For Paul's Congregation is "a divine gift which the Church has received from her Lord" (The Church, #43).
We close this chapter by briefly summing up the path Paul followed in receiving his charism.
First of all, we notice that the elements of the charism did not emerge all at once and in full stature. Over a period of time, as an earnest layman, hermit, nurse, priest, missionary, superior, founder, he experienced the call to solitude, to poverty, to a variety of ways of serving his neighbour, by the unifying force of the memory of the Lord's Passion.
Secondly he and his companions had to live out each element of the charism. They had to learn by experience the reality of solitude, penance, prayer and ministry. Only by being on the Cross with Jesus could Paul and his fellow religious know the meaning of mystical dying with Christ.
Finally, there was the burdensome task of putting this dream into words, into a document, a rule, and then to submit it to the highest authority in the church for papal approval. How often Paul re-edited his rule, seeking the accurate expression, the precise emendation. He could not at one moment formulate in words his vision, his dream. Guided by the Spirit, responding to the demands of authority, learning from his experiences and those of his companions, accepting the needs of the peoples of his time and country - only in this way could he "finalize" his rule. We must confess that the final formulation, while authentic, lost something of the enthusiasm, enchantment of the dream.
What Paul and his companions had to do must be done again and again by succeeding generations of Passionists. They too have to dream the dream, live it out, even shape the charism to the times in which they live. This is what the "Story of the Passionists" attempts to do. |
Passionists on the web:
www.passionist.org Mother Mary Crucified
Contantini, |
How to find us Mercy Primary
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He was nineteen. His father wanted him
to become a merchant like himself. His priest-uncle advised him
to become a priest. A young lady from one of the "better"
families in his hometown of Castellazzo in northern Italy would
have been happy to marry him. But Paul Francis felt life should hold
out something more. At times he dreamed of becoming a soldier.
He had even enlisted in the Venetian army to join the crusade
against the Turks. Even though the pope had called for volunteers
Paul soon found out that warfare was not for him. Praying before
the Blessed Sacrament Paul heard the voice of God calling him to
peace.