In the Side of Christ: The Spirituality of St. Paul of the Cross

By Shawn Reeves

 
           Since the era of the Romanticism of the 19^th century, sentimentality has crept into Christian devotion.  By virtue of the “Christianity of Experience,” promoted by such men as Schleiermacher, Hegel, and Strauss, a stress of feelings and experience was woven into Christian devotion.  Emotional fascination with angels, a focus on God’s mercy to the point of excluding his justice, styles of worship fixated more on spiritual sensations than acknowledgement of divine truths – these are the modern ramifications of such a movement.  And yet the notion of experience is not to be dismissed altogether but rather practiced in temperance.  Few “experienced” Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ without truly experiencing some aspect of Christ in the viewing, for it placed the viewer in the raw thick of the very experiences of Christ.  Nevertheless, despite its cinematic mastery and visual glory, it was, in fact, nothing new to Christian devotion.  It was an aggiornomento to an ancient tradition, a tradition of meditating on the life, sufferings, and death of the Lord Jesus.  Since the first few centuries of the life of the Church, monks have placed themselves within the Passion in prayer and penance, and in doing so they taught both body and soul to “experience” the Lord in his redemptive sufferings.  However, while sadly overlooked in many Catholic circles, few practiced this more than St. Paul of the Cross.  For him, the Passion was not an experience of the Christian.  Rather, it was the experience of the Christian.  Indeed, for Paul, the undeniable and ever-present message from Christ to his disciples would be “whoever embraces me embraces thorns.”[1]

             Paul was born to Luke and Ann Marie Danei on January 3, 1694.  He was the second of sixteen children, and legend has it that even the moment of birth spoke of his destined greatness as “a mysterious light brighter than daybreak filled the room” where he was born.[2] Indeed, the date his baptism fell on would seem to have ratified a foreshadowing of his devotion to our Lord, having been baptized three days later on the feast of the Epiphany.  Certainly, if he was destined to become a Saint since birth, God surely placed him in some of the most capable hands to foster and nurture the devotion he would come to be known for around the world.  Since early childhood, his mother kept the image of the cross close to him by day and night.  She herself meditated regularly on the Passion of our Lord and on the writings of the desert mystics.  In an appropriate manner, just as he would gain nourishment from his mother’s milk in infancy, so too would he gain the milk of the cross and the desert from his mother.  They were central to her own spirituality and she fervently worked to pass on this same devotion to Paul and his siblings.  She often would read to them the stories of the desert monks as bedtime stories.  Domestic disputes between siblings would end with their mother’s instruction on Christ’s suffering.  At the sound of any complaints between them, she would merely display the crucifix before them, and they were silenced.  Her continuous lesson to them while holding the crucifix was this: “see how much Jesus suffered.  See the crown of thorns on his head.”[3] It was a lesson that struck Paul in the deepest regions of his heart.  The love of Christ in the sufferings of the cross would mark all Paul did, not only in manhood but also in his youth.  Gabriele Cingolani writes that as a boy “The Passion of Jesus, in particular, filled him with amazement.  When he must comb his entangled hair, the Passion of Jesus motivated him to bear the pain.”[4] And when he was not specifically meditating on the Passion itself, he incorporated the stories of the desert monks into his play, giving special purpose to the attic he shared with his brother, imagining that “it was the desert saints’ cave.”[5]

            This devotion did not waver as he moved into adolescence, but it also would not fully flourish without trial.  Around the age of twenty, his devotion began swaying into a scrupulosity about his sins and a temptation against faith.  However, when the Turks declared war on the Republic of Venice in 1714, he quickly joined the Crusade established to repel them.  To Paul, not only would this be an occasion to throw himself into the merciful arms of God in hopes of renewing his faith, but it was also a decision driven by a youthful fascination with martyrdom, a possibility he was fully and wholeheartedly aware of.  Nevertheless, he would return home two years later, to aid his father in the family business.  He slowly become compelled that the life of a crusader was not what God was calling him to, and he was determined to discover which direction God was tugging his heart.  In his travels for his father, he suddenly found himself deeply attracted to solitude.  The country church he found along the way among the trees of Mount Gazo captivated him.  He would return as often as he could to renew that solitude and the peace he found in it.  A love of simplicity and poverty also slowly crept into his heart, and he realized the direction God was nudging him toward.  It was clear he was to live the life of all those spiritual heroes in the stories of his childhood.  He was to live a life of the monastery.  While his family desired for him to marry and carry on the family name, being the oldest surviving son, Paul understood the call to another vocation.  This notion would later be definitively affirmed in his mind and heart in 1718.  In the beginning of this year, Paul was given an interior vision of Our Lady dressed in black and commanding him to gather companions.  He and his companions were to also dress in this way and center their lives completely on the Passion of Jesus.  A more pronounced vision would reaffirm the validity of this vision in 1720 when he would see himself dressed in the same black robe with a white cross on his breast and below it the name of Jesus written in white.  A voice then said to him, “white as this cross must be the heart of the one who wears it on his heart.”[6] Though it would be some time before the Church would recognize it, on that day Paul received the habit of the Passionists in supernatural fashion. 

            After this vision, and under the guidance of Bishop Arborio Gattinara, Paul took on the life of a hermit.  Bishop Gattinara, who was also his spiritual director, clothed him in the tunic of a hermit and sent him off to the church of St. Charles.  There he remained for forty days, praying, reflecting, and beginning what would be his spiritual diary.  He ate little and slept even less, and what rest he did allow himself he gained sleeping on the floor.  Here also is where he began composing the rule that he and his companions would later live by.  After the forty days, Bishop Gattinara sent him to Fr. Columban, a Capuchin, so that his writings might be examined.  On his return, though still a layman, he was given permission to preach and was made custodian of St. Stephen’s hermitage.  Paul’s preaching soon proved impressively effective, so much that the conversion of hearts swelled the confessions so that “in the end there weren’t enough priests to give absolution.”[7] Paul’s bell and crucifix, which were ever-present during his street-side preaching, soon became well known and well loved.  Before long, the community he was compelled to gather was born.  Several young men, including his beloved brother John Baptist, followed him to St. Stephen’s eager to live the life they saw in Paul.

            Having assembled the beginnings of his community, Paul confidently traveled to Rome in order to have his rule and order approved by the pope.  Nevertheless, he never gained his audience.  The guards, taking him for a beggar, would not grant him access to the Quirinal Palace where the pope resided. Paul, ever submissive to God’s will, patiently returned to his hermitage unsuccessful.  It would be under the auspices of Bishop Emilio Cavalieri, uncle of St. Alphonsus Ligouri, in which Paul would later meet the Holy Father.   In 1724 Bishop Cavalieri invited the group of men to minister in Troia.  Here he read Paul’s rule and devoted himself to aiding Paul in its approval.  He advised Paul to add more men to his community, adjust the rule to be more fitting to Rome, and seek ordination to the priesthood.  Finally, he sent Paul to Rome under recommendation to present his rule to the pope.  Though Benedict XIII approved the rule May 21, 1725, there was nothing in writing, and Paul left Rome with no official documentation of his papal award.  This reality would exacerbate the trials he would undergo when returning home.  He would soon find that his hermitage had been taken by one of his companions who wished to rival him as a founder.  Months later, the fate of his community would take a turn for the worst when the owner of the hermitage expelled them.  Having suffered a division of his community by the faction led by his friend Anthony Schiaffino and the loss of his hermitage, Paul’s success with the pope was veiled by apparent failure.  He and his remaining companions went to the hospital of St. Gallicano until God’s will made itself clearer to them.  Paul, for his part, carried on undiscouraged exclaiming, “we go to embrace our dear Jesus in his poor.”[8] He and his companions tirelessly ministered, giving spiritual help to both the sick and the personnel of the hospital.  Their efforts were so successful that the hospital quickly became known as a haven in which the spirit is healed more than the body.[9] Nevertheless, the hospital staff insisted that they would be even more helpful if they were priests, and on June 7, 1727 Pope Benedict XIII conferred the sacrament of ordination upon them.  From here they left the hospital and returned to Mount Argentario, where their hermitage was.  However, since it had been taken over by Schiaffino, they traveled farther up the mountain and discovered another hermitage.  It was this place that would be their new home.

            This new place, known as St. Anthony’s hermitage, was smaller than their previous home and in worse condition.  The walls barely blocked the wind, and rain freely sprayed inside.  Also, it provided very little protection from the elements of winter, allowing their drinking water to turn to ice.  They slept on the floor on boards covered with straw which were set upon bricks.  Furthermore, the freemasons of the region regularly plotted to destroy the monastery, attacking it by night.  Though some new companions arrived by 1733, many later left, unable to remain in the austere lifestyle that Paul had set out for them.  In 1735, Paul also found himself Chaplain to the armies of both Austria and Spain, during a war that encompassed the region he occupied.  His community was gaining popularity and honor both by the nearby inhabitants and by those who would soon occupy high ranks in Rome. 

            Paul befriended Cardinal Carlo Rizzonica (future Pope Clement XIII) who aided him even further in the revision of his rule, a rule that finally found written approval by Pope Benedict XIV on May 15, 1741.  Upon his approval of the order the pope was quoted as saying, “this congregation should have been the first, but instead it was the last.”[10] The name he awarded to Paul for his order was “The Discalced Clerics of the Passion,” today more commonly known as the Passionists.  The Pope would again approve the rule in 1746.  On June 11, 1741 Paul and his five remaining companions took their religious vows.  It was also at this time when Paul adopted the surname “of the Cross” in his correspondence and dealings. Though small in numbers, by the next year all fifteen rooms of their monastery had been filled.  One year after that, they had accumulated forty members.  By 1748, they had seventy.  And by 1752 Paul writes, “We are 110. We have eight houses. They are all full and we cannot accept all those who want to join us.”[11]

           Such success is not surprising in light of Paul’s soul.  His spirit of humility, poverty, and utter devotion to the will of God was intoxicating.  Though many tried to live the life of his community and failed, none left on account of him.  Indeed, his model was the very inspiration that brought them to him.  Passionist historian Fr. Pius a Spiritu Sancto points to his humility as one of his defining characteristics, reporting that, “our Saint acknowledged to his director once that he never had to confess a sin of pride.”[12] To the ears of those who are prideful, such a statement sounds not only steeped in pride but presumption, as well.  Nevertheless, this is a man who was never known to have even argued with his beloved brother, John Baptist, except on the occasion when Paul found him speaking highly of him to another, to which Paul refused to speak to him for several days.  Though this seems odd behavior to most, it is the pure heart of a servant of God who wanted none of God’s glory for himself.  Should anyone give him acclaim, they were softly chastised.  “An injury or insult made him rejoice, and the least attempt at praise made him sad of heart.”[13] Fr. Pius writes of one other account in which Paul overheard a chatty priest by the name of Fr. Fulgentius explaining how he had in his possession a number of papers relating to Paul’s earlier years, which were to be used as sources for future formations.  He immediately approached the priest and demanded that he hand them over to Paul.  Upon receiving them, he threw them directly in the fire proclaiming, “you would have records, forsooth, of this old sinner.”[14] At every turn, the full truth of his sinfulness never evaded his soul.  In fact, its ugliness and presence were the very things that kept him perpetually in humility.  Never did he see himself as anything more than a wretch in constant need of grace, though never to the point of danger of despair.  Grace and sinfulness were the ever-present twin realities of his life, so much so that he at times referred to himself as “worse than the devil.”[15] Indeed, he welcomed every opportunity to show his body what his soul already knew.  He always gave to himself the worst habit, the worst sandals, the worst biretta, and at every retreat, the worst cell.  To Paul, he deserved no more, and he accepted these conditions with peace and without complaint.  Humility was the fresh soil in which God planted the seeds of Paul’s Spirituality.  Every foundational belief about man’s response to God flows forth from his complete recognition of his own utter dependence on God and unworthiness of the gifts bestowed upon him.  Whether in meditation on the Passion of our Lord, suffering in trial, pursuit of spiritual childhood, or in exercise of penance, humility is his point of origin.

            Nearly all we know of the spirituality of Paul of the Cross comes from what is left of his spiritual diaries and correspondence to spiritual directees.  Since he traveled so much during the years of his community’s development, his sole form of direction was by letter.  Nevertheless, to Paul spiritual direction was essential to normal spiritual growth, and he was ever devoted to his directees.  For their part, they too were ever devoted to him.  Indeed, at one point he wrote to Agnes Grazi, explaining that he did not feel capable of directing her, but when she received his letter refusing her spiritual direction, “she refused his refusal.”[16] It seems that he had destroyed every letter he received from directees, apparently assuming those under his direction would do the same for his letters to them.  However, many were never destroyed, and these remain the bulwark of our knowledge of his spirituality.  165 letters survive among those written to Agness Grazi and 171 to Thomas Fossi.  These two seem to have been granted the most prolific letters by the Saint.  Nevertheless, many others exist as well, including those to Francis Appiani, Laura Giannotti, John Francis Sancez, Mariana Alvarez, Rose of Gaeta, as well as several other laymen and a few Bishops. Furthermore, though he wrote many more, only 32 letters in all to Mother Mary Crucified, the foundress of the Passionist nuns, still exist today, a collection of profound reflection and guidance.

            To Paul of the Cross, there existed certain fundamental principles of the Christian life, and his entire spirituality was structured on them.  These existed as presuppositions to any advice he gave his directees on prayer and spirituality.  As the foundation to any direction on meditation, virtues, or mortification (all of which were key to Paul’s spirituality), there rested first these fundamentals of the proper attitude toward God.  However, it is a proper attitude toward God in and through a proper attitude toward self, an attitude immersed in simple humility.  The ultimate beginning point of Paul’s spirituality is this notion, the notion of man’s utter nothingness apart from God. “Take care that you remain in your nothingness,” he tells Thomas Fossi, “with confidence in God and distrust in yourself.”[17] “Remain in the knowledge of your nothingness, your sins, your miseries,” Paul continues.[18] Elsewhere he gives the same advice to Mother Mary Crucified, to “remain in your nothingness.”[19] This was essential to Paul, without which there could be no thoroughly fruitful life of prayer and spirituality.  For the Christian to truly grow in faith and virtue, he must recognize his total and complete dependence on God.  Indeed, he must also couple this with a strict distrust of the self, a distrust of any ability or effort which does not ground itself in grace as its source.  However, it is not a point to be confused with such Protestant notions as total depravity.  Instead, it was the sincere acknowledgement that before one can abandon himself entirely to the sovereign will of God, he must gain a true and complete understanding of himself.  Only then can one freely and totally give the self over to God in love and trust.  As epitomized in his command to Agnes Grazi, “distrust yourself and entrust yourself entirely to God,” the entrusting to God must be precluded by the distrusting of self.[20]  In fact, its full efficacy depends upon it.  After advising Agnes Grazi to “plunge into your own nothingness to experience your own unworthiness,” Paul adds, “from this knowledge must spring then a greater confidence in God.”[21] Only after the full embrace of one’s “nothingness” is the soul prepared to discover more fully God’s glory and be awarded greater confidence in him.  And this is so precisely insofar as it is only in this embracing of “nothingness” that one also embraces his own creatureliness.   Only standing in full experience as creature can one stand in full experience of God as Creator and Sovereign.  Martin Bialas summarizes:For St. Paul of the Cross, to accept one’s own ‘nothingness’…and to submit one’s self unconditionally to God’s love and goodness, to ‘mistrust’ one’s self while having unlimited trust in God, meant to affirm one’s proper creatureliness.[22]

             Yet, this entrusting must be one of complete confidence.  Confidence in the will of God weaves itself into every aspect of Paul’s spirituality and direction in prayer.  “The food of my Jesus was to do the will of the Eternal Father,” he writes, “my food also will be to do his most holy Will.”[23] All the Christian is to be toward both God and man is to be forged within an active knowledge of his divine will, and it must be done with unshakable confidence.  It is what Martin Bialas calls “imperturbable confidence in God.”[24] Whether in good fortune or trial, there should be within the Christian a deep conviction of God’s superior power and knowledge of the situation.  It should be a habitual disposition toward God that pervades the soul in solace or struggle.   Even in the greatest calamity, there it should remain unscathed.  For Paul of the Cross, every suffering is an opportunity to ratify this belief and confidence in God.  Every suffering is a chance to cling closer to him and discover more fully the wisdom of his will.  And this is so because, to Paul, it is precisely amid suffering that the soul is most challenged to be dependant upon and aware of the supreme goodness of God.  Amid Paul’s letters and diary there is a constant reaffirmation on the perpetual and providential activity of God, who keeps in constant and intimate interaction with even the most minute details of the life of every Christian.  God’s will oversees all activities of the human race with unfailing love and compassion to the point that He is an “immense sea of love,” deserving of complete submission.[25] Bialas adds: This divine will was to be thought of not as a blind, arbitrary will but as a salvific one that, in the long run, is always directed toward the person’s well being and holiness.  This knowledge of God’s loving care provides inner strength and patience during both interior and exterior suffering. [26]  In short, the will of God is thoroughly motivated by a vibrant and dynamic love for His creatures, and in this the Christian should find complete confidence and peace amid every event of life.

            Paul presses the point even further when he works to compare God’s loving omnipotence and omniscience with the limited power and knowledge of those who suffer.  He finds it utter folly to rely exclusively on one’s own grasp of any situation, compromising his understanding of God’s superior power and knowledge.  Again, to do so is to revert to a previous spiritual stage in which one misunderstands their creatureliness and consequently misunderstands God’s divine sovereignty.   Paul sums the problems of this tension when he writes in his diary, “I also know that God holds the soul in his arms, but the soul is not aware of it.  Hence it seems to be utterly abandoned and in great misery.”[27] He is convicted that at no point of time is man devoid of the presence and protection of God.  However, his circumstances often veil this to his soul, and so he suffers the sensation of abandonment, despite that fact that his soul deceives him.  This ailment, he insisted, is remedied only by complete confidence in God’s powerful and loving will.  

            It is clear that many of these fundamental notions and terms used in the spirituality of St. Paul of the Cross have been heavily influenced by St. Theresa of Avila and St. Francis de Sales.  Indeed, their own spiritualities seem to have been sealed upon his heart in a kind of holy communion of souls.  Bialas points to four terms frequently used in the writings of Paul of the Cross that were also prevalent in the writings of de Sales: Sovereign Good, well beloved, infinite love, and infinite mercy.[28] Often, Paul will interchange “Soverign Good” with “Supreme Good,” such as is often the case in his letters to Mother Mary Crucified whereby nearly a sixth of the letters written to her contain this title.  He refers to the “Sovereign Good” in his letters to Agnes Grazi and Thomas Fossi, as well.  Bialas also points to several images and metaphors taken directly from de Sales’ Treatise on the Love of God, including the concept of “self-abnegation,” which was a primary focus in Paul’s asceticism, as well as images such as the bee flying from flower to flower (in reference to contemplation) and the analogy of a statue in a niche (relating to self-abnegation), both of which Paul reproduces in his writings.[29] Bennet Kelley concurs in this analysis adding that “in saying God never sends too many crosses or too heavy a cross, Paul was also echoing St. Francis de Sales, whom he read and loved.”[30] Furthermore, Paul of the Cross makes steady use of de Sales’ notion of resting in God in “pure filial confidence with our Lord,” a reality that he explained with the term “love-sleep.”[31] Though the exact term is not repeated in Paul’s writings, its spirit is reflected in Paul’s direction toward “loving rest,” “silent love,” and “holy silence,” terms which reappear in his letters to directees. In each occasion the elements of love, silence, and rest (or repose) ring of the Salesian “love-sleep” with poetic reminiscence. To Agnes Grazi he writes to “continue in loving rest, uniting oneself more and more with the Divine Will.”[32] To Francis Appiani he explains, “if your prayer passes entirely into peace, in this rest, in this sacred silence of love, no matter, let things be.”[33] Elsewhere he adds, “keep yourself at peace with a loving attention to God in a sacred silence of love.”[34] Finally, he further directs Agnes Grazi in saying, “continue this loving silence, this repose of your spirit in God.”[35]

            Bialas also points to elements of Paul’s writings that reflect Teresian spirituality.  Indeed, Bialas declares that “it was she who became, second only to St. Francis de Sales, another of Paul’s favorite authors.”[36] In his own spiritual diary, St. Paul of the Cross quotes directly passages of Teresa of Avila’s Autobiography.  Furthermore, Bialas points to several passages in Paul’s writings that, while not a word for word quotation of Teresa’s writings, keep very close to passages of Theresa’s writings in topic, explanation, and terms.  In fact, “both saints speak of sufferings as ‘joys’ and ‘tokens of God’s love.’”[37] Another clear Teresian influence on Paul’s spirituality, one that Bialas fails to include in his assessment, is the repetitious use of the title, “Majesty” in reference to Christ.  In her Interior Castle, Theresa of Avila addresses Christ and refers to him almost exclusively with this term.  St. Paul of the Cross, for his part, makes frequent use of the title “Divine Majesty,” to the extent that it is the primary title he uses in his letters to Mother Mary Crucified, outnumbering his reference to God as the “Supreme Good” or any other titles he was so fond of.  Fifteen of thirty-two letters to her use this term, “Divine Majesty,” some of which make use of it more than once.   Many of his letters to other directees, such as Francis Appiani and Agnes Grazi, make use of it from time to time, as well.[38]

            By virtue of Paul’s deep conviction of man’s place before the “Supreme Good” and “Divine Majesty,” the spirituality of St. Paul of the Cross is at its core a spirituality of penance.  He would deny himself of comforts, often traveling barefoot and sleeping in the cold.  At one point, he even spent an entire night in a talk of cold water during winter for the conversion of a bandit.[39] Though the more extreme choices of penance were sparse, Paul was widely known as a man of penance.  Flowing from his deep humility, he was well aware of the necessity to remind the body of its place in the universe and of its status as creature and servant of God.  Nevertheless, though Paul was extremely strict when it came to his own penance, he was a man of great mercy in regard to the penance of those he directed.  Fasting was a common suggestion of Paul’s, and when complete fasting was not appropriate, in the very least firm temperance was mandated.  To Thomas Fossi he charges, “on days you are not fasting, do not eat more than pasta except for real necessity.  On Fridays take only a collation at night.  In the morning take only dinner, and that, too, should be a fast meal.”[40]  Fasting was the standard, and not just for those of the religious life. Though several of his directees were consecrated virgins, for Thomas Fossi, who was a married man, there was little distinction between the rubrics he received and those given to Paul’s unmarried directees.  At other times, he preferred those he directed to “practice a discreet mortification” amid days ordered by mental prayer.[41]  And still, elsewhere, he advises the wearing of a small chain, from time to time, around the leg or as a cincture.  Likewise, Paul at times would advise meditation on one’s own sins as a form of penance declaring, “it is good to think of your sins during prayer.  It can arouse you to humility and contrition.”[42] In fact, to John Francis Sancez he gives a very unique form of examination of conscience, which Paul charges him to exercise every night: Place yourself on your bed, as upon the cross, in the position of the agonizing Jesus and call yourself by name and say: “Ah, John, who knows whether this will be the last night for you?  What lot await you? Heaven or hell? O great and endless eternity!  O keys of fearful eternity, where will you lock me? Into heaven or hell?  Think, oh, my poor soul!  O vain pleasures! O vain riches! O vanity of the world, you are not made for me![43]

            At other times, Paul had to restrain those he directed from taking too many and too lofty bodily afflictions upon themselves.  His letters many times portray him leading his directees away from penances too great for them and into simpler ones more appropriate for their state.  In all things, Paul of the Cross strove for temperance and moderation, and it is clear that this was even true of the attitude he had toward the penances chosen by and given to his directees.

            Nevertheless, very often Paul was content to advise allowing the natural penances of life to be those most focused on.  To one he advises, “accept your pains and other unpleasant things that happen. Be content with them and do not look for other penances.”[44] For Paul, to be at peace with the unfortunate occurrences of life is a penance in itself, at times requiring no further self-inflicted penance beyond it.  Sickness is its own penance.  Scorn and ridicule equally are so, as well as financial setback.  And, to Paul, “these are infinitely better than those we take on ourselves.”[45] For those we take upon ourselves we willfully choose by examination of our limitations, yet those sprung upon us are done so without a tainted scrutiny.  While those penances we take upon ourselves have the potential to be soiled by our own inclinations and laced with “a secret pride”, those delivered to us demand a higher selflessness and abandonment to God.[46] Furthermore, they demand a response of gratitude toward God, recognizing the grace to be received through them.  Indeed, to Paul there are no coincidences – all events are ultimately controlled by the hand of God to the extent that it is God himself who offers these penances to us. Bennet Kelley comments, “the important thing for [Paul] was not what the particular penance or cross was, or how big or little it was, but what was the attitude we had towards it.”[47] They key to the natural penance of trial was not the mere enduring of it.  On the contrary, it was a full embracing of it as a loving necessity, delivered by God himself.  Though bizarre to most ears, they were to Paul truly gifts, gifts that not only brought about a necessary purgation of vices but also gifts that expressed, in a mystical way, the love of God. “Our Divine Savior,” he writes, “visits those servants who are dear to him and purifies them with trials to develop their fidelity.”[48] Elsewhere, Paul adds, “the aversions you are experiencing, the trials, the mockery, the derision, the scoffing should be received with great gratitude towards God.  These serve as wood for the loving pyre to consume the victim of love.”[49]  They are “a great treasure which His Divine Majesty gives” and “a noble broom which remove from [the] spirit all the dust and mud of the imperfections which are hidden.”[50] They become, in essence, a means of sacrificial purification, whereby the Christian victim wholeheartedly opens the self to them, to all the pain and anguish they contain, in effort of expression of love toward God and neighbor.  They are the testing fire of purification that forces the soul to stop gazing merely at self but to turn its gaze toward heaven despite itself.  And, they are a necessity that the Christian cannot evade if truly pursuing Christ.

            However, while humility before the Supreme Good and the practice of penance may be the foundations of his spirituality, they are directed toward and fixed on the Passion of Our Lord as the heart and life of the spirituality of St. Paul of the Cross.  All things exist around the Passion as the throne of the spiritual life.  Indeed, to Paul of the Cross, the Passion of Jesus Christ should be the central object of all Christian prayer.  Every thought and activity of the Christian should be grounded in meditation on it and find their meaning in it.  It was, to Paul, the central reality of human existence, and everything, without fail, found its purpose and direction by way of it.

            To begin with, in Paul’s spirituality it was the Passion that draws the Christian back to humility in everything.  While it was ultimately the “Supreme Good” of divinity that set man’s humility in proper order, the Passion was the permanent icon of this reality, and thus the most visible incentive of humility.    It was the impetus to “remain always deeper in…annihilation, in total self contempt.”[51] In an activity that might smack of masochism, Paul regularly reminds those he directs to “live humbly and with self-contempt,” ever working to “annihilate yourself more and more.”[52] Yet it is not a command of perverse self hatred, which would betray Paul’s many convictions of God’s unfailing love of his people.  Rather, it is a recognition of the detestable influence of sin on God’s creation.  It is both a contempt toward sin’s effects within us and also of those upon our Lord, namely the pain of his crucifixion.  Paul firmly fixed his spirit on the reality the Lord’s suffering for sin not his own.  It was the immensity of this meditation that spurred the practice of self-annihilation, for within it was a participation in the “annihilation” of the Lord on the cross.  Yet it was a practice that went beyond mere penance, though penance served a part.  When Paul advises Agnes Grazi to delve into annihilation and self-contempt, “desiring only that in the estimation of creatures you be esteemed as a stinking sewer of excrement, in whose vicinity everyone holds their nose to avoid the stench,” it is Paul calling her into greater participation in the Passion, beyond mere self-inflicted penances.[53]  He challenges her to consider herself in this manner because it was first the manner in which Christ was considered during the Passion.  To Paul the Christian is to annihilate himself not in a destructive or disturbed manner, but rather one in which all experiences are lived through the Passion and are hidden in it.  It is a sharing in the sufferings of Christ and a union with him through them.  It is a living reflection of John the Baptist’s desire to decrease so Christ may increase. It is a charge to “be willingly on the cross with Jesus Christ.”[54]

             Furthermore, it is a directive to be “dead to all that is not God,”[55] Along with the self-annihilation of pinning one’s self to the cross with Christ there comes also the demand for one to be detached from all self interest that does not have God’s interest as its root.  It is a willful purging of the self “from ourselves and out own instinctive self-seeking.”[56] In other words, it is the effort to more perfectly align ourselves with the selflessness of Christ’s Passion, not only to think more of others than self but to have as the spring of this detachment an imitation of Christ’s service to our Supreme Other, God the Father. In order to be purged of all ambition for self profit, especially those most hidden to the self, one must “die a mystical death to everything which is not God [and] behave like a dead person…trampled upon by all.”[57]

            However, the Passion existed in the spirituality of Paul of the Cross not only as a challenge of willful purgation but also as a positive asset and source of spiritual strength.  He found power and strength by way of meditation on the Passion, so much so that he tells Lucy Burlini to “go often in spirit to fish in the most holy sea of sufferings of Jesus Christ” in order to “fish up the jewels of the holy virtues of our sweet Jesus.”[58] Prayer fixed on Christ’s sufferings serve not only to bind one closer to Christ but also to bind one closer to the practice of his virtues.  By prayerful meditation on Christ’s sufferings, one delves deeper into the mystery of imitating him not only on the cross but in all things.  Furthermore, within the sufferings of the passion, one finds solace in one’s own sufferings.  The Passion becomes then more than a bloody, ugly, violent image of mutilation.  Instead, it is a source of healing and peace as one is bound closer to Christ through mutual suffering.  “When you are the more afflicted,” Paul writes, “then rejoice all the more, for then you stand close to the cross of the Crucified Savior.”[59]  Indeed, to Paul “the balm that heals every pain is the Most Holy Passion of Jesus Christ.”[60] When the Christian sees his own afflictions through meditation on the afflictions of the Crucified Lord, he gains consolation, for in them rests his intimacy with Christ.  That is to say, by way of the Passion the Christian and Christ suffer together, and the wounds of Christ themselves become a source of hope.  “O Dear Wounds! Most Holy Wounds, Divine Wounds! You are the object of my hopes,” writes Paul.[61] All suffering, all anguish, all disappointment found its meaning and solution in the sufferings of the Lord.  Prayer on every aspect of Christ’s Passion, from the scourging, to his beaten flesh, to the burning of his tears, aligned the suffering of the Christian with his Master.  When the sufferings of Christ are so internalized in prayer, that the soul of the Christian becomes “one” with the soul of the Crucified Lord, there is found the peace of Christ, not only in solace of what earthy affliction troubles the Christian now but also in the comfort in the evasion of eternal affliction through those Holy Wounds.  In all things, St. Paul of the Cross places unwavering trust in the power of the wounds of Christ, frequently entrusting his directees to the Side of Jesus by letter and prayer.

            Beyond the comfort and sentimentalities of seeing one’s own afflictions with and through the afflictions of Jesus, Paul devoted himself to the Passion primarily because he saw in it the greatest sign of love.  Since his childhood lessons from his mother, the foremost image of God’s love was for Paul the Crucified Lord.  Nothing else inspired his notion of complete love as did the Passion of Jesus.  It was, for him, the foundational motivation not only of reciprocated love to God but also of love of neighbor.  Christ’s Passion was the ultimate model of true charity toward fellow man and complete, selfless love and devotion to the Father in heaven.  His perpetual internal prayer to Christ would be “wound my heart with your holy love.”[62] Often, he refers to Christ not as the Crucified Lord but as Crucified Love.  Meditation on the Passion was more than mere prayer but rather a “loving dialogue.”[63] In his letters to Agnes Grazi, he several times advised her to “make a corsage of the pains of Jesus and keep them on the bosom of your soul.”[64]  “Live passionately for the love of Jesus,” he tells her, “let your delights be the wounds of Jesus…make a corsage of them to carry always on the bosom of your soul to perfume it with love and sorrow.”[65]  The greatest sign of God’s love for us is the Passion, and the greatest sign of our love for God is our imitation of it.  The surest sign, to Paul, that the Christian has given himself over to Christ is his sharing in the Passion, not out of obligation or mere obedience, but out of sincere charity.  The pains of Christ are to be ever in the prayers and soul of the Christian, and from this reflection they are to move from Christ to his disciple so that the pains of the Passion become a fragrant bouquet that the disciple and Christ share together, ever offering it to one another. 

            It is clear that the charge to “continually call to mind the sufferings of our Crucified Love” was the central mantra of the Saint; however, in all this, Paul held deep convictions on the role of the Holy Spirit in prayer and meditation on the Passion. Many of Paul’s letters convict the recipient to follow the impulses of the Spirit in prayer.[66]  To Paul, the Spirit guided all prayer so much so that “prayer should not be made in our way but as the Holy Spirit wills.”[67] Nevertheless, Paul firmly believed that the central reality that the Holy Spirit continually worked to draw the Christian toward in prayer is the Passion itself.  The Christian was to ever “follow the breath of the Holy Spirit, but always through the means of the Passion.”[68] The relationship between St. Paul of the Cross and the Holy Spirit was one of total abandonment, total docility, total trust.  He was always content to let his own spirit “fly where the gentle and loving breeze of this most divine Spirit guides it,” yet it was a contentment that carried with it the resolve that the Holy Spirit would always lead him back to the Cross of Christ.[69] For, to Paul, this was the very essence of the Holy Spirit’s work – to lead the soul to perfection. And perfection was found in no other place than in a total envelopment of Christ’s Passion.

            By the official establishment of the Passionist order in 1741 and its sudden and rapid increase in numbers in the next few years, it was clear that the vision Paul had received so long ago had fully materialized. Nevertheless, amid this success in numbers, Paul began to suffer the beginnings of health issues that would plague him unto death.  In 1745 he suffered a heart condition so severe that it permanently left him dependant on a cane.  Though he had already survived malaria in his youth, a more serious condition ravaged the aging man, as well as bouts with vertigo and sciatica.  By his seventies, “signs of terminal deterioration appeared: dropsy, gout, loss of appetite, insomnia, fainting, slight loss of sight and hearing.”[70] Despite perseverance in mind and spirit, it was clear that his body was nearing its end. Though previously approved by Benedict XIV, his rule was approved again by Pope Clement XIV in 1769, as well as its constitutions and its status as a congregation of clerics regular, making the congregation “established perpetually in the Holy Church of God.”[71] His rule would be approved one final time by Pope Pius VI in 1775, on the eve of his death.  Paul died at the age of eighty-one on October 18, 1775.  It is said he died in ecstasy.  Pius IX would later name him blessed in 1853, and Paul of the Cross was canonized a Saint in 1867 by the same pope.

            Few embraced the Cross of Christ as closely as this Saint.  Indeed, he breathed in the Passion to such extant that he could truly have said “it is no longer I that lives, but Christ lives in me.”[72] Founder and mystic, he would have blushed in frustration at such compliments, and that would have only proved all the more his devotion to daily dying to self with Christ in His Passion.  It would express that his central “experience” was the cross of Christ.  Indeed, it would remind one that nowhere in his life did he find true rest than in the Side of Christ, for there was his true hermitage of Divine Love.

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