ST. PAUL OF THE CROSS – Priest, Mystic, Founder of the Passionists

Born: January 3, 1694

Died: February 18, 1775

Canonized: June 29, 1867 by Pope

Pius IX

Feast Day: October 19

Saint Paul of the Cross was an Italian mystic and founder of the Congregation of the Passion. He was born, Paolo Francesco Danei, in the town of Ovada in northern Italy. He is considered to be among the greatest Catholic mystics of the eighteenth century.

Paul, the son of a wealthy merchant family, experienced a conversion to a life of prayer at the age of 19, after a very normal and pious life. His early reading of the Treatise on the Love of God of St. Francis de Sales and the direction he received from priests of the Capuchin Order taught him the primacy of love and at the same time the need to go beyond our own images of God. It became Paul’s lifelong conviction that God is most easily found by us in the Passion of Jesus Christ. He saw the Passion of Christ as being the most overwhelming sign of God’s love and at the same time the door to union with Him. His life was devoted to bringing this message to all and founding a community whose members would do the same.

When he was 26 years old, Paul of the Cross had a series of prayer experiences which made it clear to him that God was inviting him to form a community who would live an evangelical life and promote the love of God revealed in the Passion of Jesus. In a vision, he saw himself clothed in the habit he and his companions would wear: a long black tunic on the front of which was a heart surmounted by a white cross and in the heart was written “the Passion of Jesus Christ”. On seeing it he heard these words, “This is to show how pure the heart must be that bears the holy name of Jesus graven upon it”. The first name Paul received for his community was “the Poor of Jesus”; later they came to be known as the Congregation of the Passion of Jesus Christ or the Passionists.

With the encouragement of the Bishop, who clothed him in the black habit of a hermit, Paul wrote the rule of his community (of which he was the only member) in 1720. The community was to live a penitential life, in solitude and poverty, teaching people in the easiest way possible how to meditate on the Passion of Jesus.

His first companion was his own brother, John Baptist, who was ordained to the priesthood with Paul by Pope Benedict XIII on June 7th, 1727 in St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome. After ordination they devoted themselves to preaching missions in parishes, particularly in remote country places where there were not a sufficient number of priests. Their preaching apostolate and the retreats they gave in seminaries and religious houses brought their mission to the attention of others and gradually the community began to grow.

The austerity of life practiced by the first Passionists did not encourage large numbers to enter, but Paul preferred a slow, at times painful growth, to something more spectacular. His main aim in the community was, was he said himself, was to form “a man totally God-centered, totally apostolic, a man of prayer, detached from the world, from things, from himself so that he may in all truth be called a disciple of Jesus Christ.”

The first retreat, the name the Passionists traditionally gave to their monasteries, was opened in 1737 on Monte Argentario. The community now had nine members. Paul called his monasteries “retreats” to emphasize the life of solitude and contemplation which he believed was necessary for someone who wished to preach the message of the Cross. In addition to the communal celebration of the divine office, the members of his community were to devote at least three hours to contemplative prayer each day.

During his lifetime, Paul of the Cross was best known as a popular preacher and a spiritual director. Paul realized that many of his contemporaries had forgotten God’s love for them. In the 18th century, life was not easy. The rich were rich and the poor were poor. For the sick there was little comfort. For laborers there were few hours of rest. For ordinary folk there was a constant fear of war, famine and disease.

“The world lives unmindful of the sufferings of Jesus which are the miracle of miracles of the love of God. We must arouse the world from its slumber.” And so Paul did through thousands of letters he wrote and sermons he preached. Traveling where he was invited to preach, even to marshlands infested with malaria. Paul taught people how to pray and meditate upon the suffering and death of Jesus. Walking from town to town, church to church, for over 40 years, Paul preached the loving memory of the passion and death of Jesus Christ. The sick poor and the poor abandoned. He would also preach to the clergy and remind them of their obligation s to serve the poor.

St. Paul always celebrated Holy Mass with great fervor. To the end of his life, he had the gift of tears and his humility made him continually repeat mentally to himself as he approached the altar: “The hour comes when the Son of Man shall be delivered into the hands of a sinner.” Often at the Consecration his face would glow with heavenly beauty.

His devotion to the Passion of Jesus would not be complete without devotion to the Dolors of the Blessed Virgin. He began everything with her blessing. Nearly all his greatest favors were received on her feasts. He was blessed with many surprising visions of her glory. He never pronounced her name without bowing or removing his cap. The mystery of her life which had the greatest attraction to him was her sufferings at the foot of the Cross. He used to say, “Who ever goes to our crucified Lord will find His Mother with Him; where the Son is, there is the Mother.”

St. Paul was kind and gentle in invoking the power of Our Lord to aid those in need and for those who persecuted him. But all, who were in habitual sin or working against his apostolate, did not respond to his warnings. There are several examples of this in his life. There was an old woman who bore hatred against her neighbor. She refused to forgive her neighbor even after much effort by the saint to have a change of heart. He finally threatened her by merely saying God would punish her. In a few days she became suddenly ill. No priest could be found to attend to her and in a few minutes she was one of the most hideous and deformed corpse that the neighbor ever laid eyes on.

A few examples of great miracles that St. Paul worked throughout his priestly life need to be mentioned. He had the gift of perceiving a stench from souls infested with the sin of impurity and would often say, “Brother, you have committed such a sin. Go to confession right away.” Certain persons who were not in his sermons heard him even though they were miles away. He restored life to a child who had died falling out of a window. St. Paul often had visions of souls in Purgatory. A priest friend of his had some small failings which St. Paul tried to correct without success. The priest appeared to him the night he died and told him that he was condemned to Purgatory for the faults that St. Paul had tried to correct. “Oh, how I suffer.” said the priest. “It seems a thousand years since I passed from this temporal place.” He had only been dead fifteen minutes.

The power that Our Dear Lord gave St. Paul to convert hardened sinners was tremendous. In a mission he was giving, the captain of a band of smugglers, fully armed came with his gang to hear the preacher. It was enough. He threw away his arms and he and all of his followers became so penitent that they were the edification of the town.

In a year of great scarcity of corn, a charitable lady, who every year supported many poor, told St. Paul that she must omit her charity this year because the barn was almost empty. Out saint told her, “Give the usual amount and more and God will multiply your corn.” She obeyed him strictly. She was never short of corn.

Once he passed by a farmer who was cursing and swearing at a yoke of oxen not obeying his wishes. The saint reproved the man and said that cursing could not improve either man or beast. The man was not in the humor of being preached to at the time, so he took up his gun and pointed at the saint. St. Paul raised his Crucifix and said, “Since you will not obey the voice of God, nor respect His image, let us see if these poor beasts will not.” The oxen fell on their knees immediately, with such an effect that the farmer dropped his gun and reformed his evil habits.

The Hand of God was always with him and demonstrated to his own age and to all succeeding ones how acceptable in His sight was a soul which loved Him so much and suffered so much for the glory of his Holy Name.

St. Paul died on the 18th of October, 1775 at the age of 81 years. His life teaches us how to live and his death animates us to a holy death. The body, after death, was found to be as flexible as when he was alive; a fragrant odor came from it and the Sacred Name of Jesus was engraved over his heart.

A WORD FROM SAINT PAUL OF THE CROSS

It is an excellent and holy practice to call to mind and meditate on our Lord’s Passion, since it is by this path that we shall arrive at union with God. In this, the holiest of all schools, true wisdom is learned, for it was there that all the saints became wise. Taken from a letter written by St. Paul

PRAYER TO SAINT PAUL OF THE CROSS

O Glorious St. Paul of the Cross. You believed that the evils of the world were a result of the forgetting of the sufferings of Jesus. And so you sought to enkindle in people the memory of the Passion and Death of Christ Crucified. Intercede for us now. Gain for us the grace to appreciate more the Sufferings of Jesus Crucified for us. Help us to be open to the forgiveness and healing that flow from the Cross. Pray for us that we may learn how to come into the presence of Christ Crucified and keep alive His memory in our hearts. O Saint Paul of the Cross, present us, our families and friends to Jesus, now risen at the Father’s right hand. Seek aid for us in our weakness and illness, our sinfulness and waywardness. Bear these out pleas to Jesus Crucified. Amen.

RESOURCES

http://www.communityofhopeinc.org/Prayer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_of_the_Cross

http://www.passionist.org/paul.html

PASSIONIST canonized and beautified Heroes

Complied and arranged by Fr. Clement Pavlick, CP