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Founder of the Passionist Congregation Researched by Sister Dominic Savio [Dr E. Hamer] CP Mt St Joseph Convent, Bolton BL3 4HF St Paul of the Cross was born in Ovada in Northern Italy on 3 January 1694. He was the greatest Italian mystic of the eighteenth century. About the year 1720, when he was about twenty-six, as he was walking by the sea one day, he looked up at a hill and saw a small church there dedicated to Our Lady. He immediately felt in his heart a yearning to retire to that place of solitude. That yearning for the mountain never left him. Paul was deeply versed in Sacred Scripture, so that for him the mountain was the meeting place between heaven and earth. It was the place where God revealed Himself. It was the place to which man had to ascend in the process of purification in order to meet God. Paul wanted to live on the mountain in order to meet God in prayer. That solitude was fundamental to his spirituality. The world is different from the top of the mountain. The person who lives in the presence of God on the mountain has a different perspective from those who stay in the hurly-burly below. A mountain is an invitation to live as Jesus did. The ascent up the mountain is the movement from Gethsemane to Calvary. It is a participation in the Passion of Our Lord. About the same time that Paul felt attracted to the solitude of the mountain, he also felt drawn to gather companions who would share his penitential life. Some time afterwards Our Lady appeared to him, wearing a long, black habit. She told him she was in mourning for the Passion of her Son, Jesus. She asked Paul to dress in the same way and to found a Congregation that would continually mourn for the Passion and Death of Jesus. Paul founded his first Passionist monastery on Monte Argentario. He went up the mountain to find solitude and to pray. From the top of the mountain, however, he saw the poor of Orbetello, especially the spiritually poor, and so came down the mountain to preach about the love and mercy of God. Paul became a great missionary, travelling from parish to parish, teaching people that by uniting their sufferings with the Sufferings of Our Lord in His Passion and Death, they, too, could come with Him to a glorious resurrection. The Crucifix was central to his spirituality and apostolate, because he saw the Heart of Christ, pierced with a lance, as the gateway to union with God in prayer. The heart of Paul’s spirituality was the Holy Eucharist, since the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist came forth from the Side of Christ pierced with a lance on Calvary. For Paul the Christian who was baptised into Christ must also sacrifice his or her life in union with Christ in the Sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist. At the same time that he was founding his Congregation of the Passion in 1720, Paul felt a great urge to pray very specially for England and other parts of the British Isles. He spent the rest of his life praying for the Restoration of Christian Unity in England. Shortly before he died in 1775 he had a vision of his Passionists in England. That vision was fulfilled in 1840-41 when Blessed Dominic Barberi (1792-1849) arrived in England and founded the first Passionist monastery at Aston Hall, near Stone, Staffordshire. # 0004 |
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St.Anne and Blessed Dominic Monastery Lane, Sutton St.Helens WA9 3SP Telephone: 01744 811935 |