Remembering Venerable Mother Mary Crucified - First Passionist Nun
November 16 is the anniversary of the death of Ven. Mother Mary Crucified, first Passionist nun and co-foundress of the Passionist monastery in Tarquinia, Italy. As we prepare to enter into our annual retreat before the community’s renewal of vows on November 21, it is a good time to pause and reflect on the life and virtue of this holy nun who paved the way for us!
Statue of Ven. Mother M. Crucified at the Monastery of the Sacred Passion in Erlanger, KY.
On August 18, 1713, the very year Paul Daneo had experienced his "conversion", a daughter was born to the Costantini family of Corneto. She was baptized Faustina. When she was fourteen, she too felt the call to a life of prayer and penance. But she had to help her father raise the family after the early death of her mother. Later when she wanted to enter an austere convent, her father told her that the only convent she could enter was the Benedictine convent of St. Lucy in Corneto. This she did, even though she felt the Lord really wanted her in a stricter convent.
Sister Candida made profession of her vows on November 22, 1734 (the 14th anniversary of Paul's reception of the Passionist habit). As she handed the signed document of her vows to the Mother Prioress she whispered to Jesus: "In virtue of your most holy Passion, accept me as a victim of your holy love." She prayed to Jesus to share in his Passion. "I often repeated to him, 'You are a spouse of blood; I want to be your true follower.'" When tempted with fierce temptations she heard the invitation to "enter into the Sacred Heart" with the moving words of the Song of Songs: "Come, my love, hide in the cleft of the rock."
In 1739, St. Paul of the Cross was asked to preach a retreat at the Benedictine convent, and so Providence arranged the meeting of the Passionist founder with Sr. Candida. She remembered the even thus: "A few years after my profession I got to know the Venerable Paul of the Cross on the occasion when he came to give the spiritual exercises to the religious of the convent of St. Lucy... After Paul gave the retreat, especially the first one, one could see the great reform of life in the convent. All the religious began to treat one another with greater charity, to perform more frequent acts of humility, to stay away from the parlor-window and to observe greater silence." She added: "The first time the Servant of God came to give the spiritual exercises at the convent of St. Lucy he was wearing a very poor rough tunic, with a mantle, but barefoot and without a hat or berretino. Just to see him moved one to compassion and devotion."
From the time of this retreat onward Mother Mary Crucified, as she was now called, began a frequent and long correspondence with Father Paul. Paul continued to direct her as one very special. Years later Paul recalled their first meeting. In his Christmas letter of 1764 he wrote of it: "I hope to see you clothed in the same habit of the Most Holy Passion of Jesus Christ which I wear. God entrusted your soul to me many years ago."
Later he wrote again: "If God will give me life and strength to see the foundation through, it is most certain that you shall be the first to be clothed in the habit of the most holy Passion. I hope to give it to you with my own hands for the glory of Jesus Christ and Holy Mary. However, keep this as a secret in your heart..."(June 3, 1766).
Ven. Mother M. Crucified
But Paul saw the convent of the Nuns as belonging to the Institute of the Passion. He wanted the Passionist Nuns to be the "Second Order" of his institute, as the Poor Clares are with the Franciscans and the Carmelite Nuns among the Carmelites. This meant that the first convent could not be built until the male branch was firmly established as a religious order with solemn vows, clerical jurisdiction and exemption, subject only to the Holy See. Until solemn vows were granted Paul did not want to take steps to found the Passionist convent for his many spiritual daughters.
But God had other plans. When Mother Mary Crucified was sick in the infirmary in 1741 Jesus appeared to her and said: "Rise up now. I will restore your health, but on the condition that in due time you found a monastery of nuns who will have as their purpose the honoring of my sorrowful Passion. You yourself will have to enter it, and you must cooperate in its foundation."
After the election of Pope Clement XIV, a ray of hope began to shine on the endeavor for a female branch of Passionists. The Holy Father invited Paul to visit him, and listened with fatherly concern to the many trials Paul had endured all these years in attempting to found a convent for the Passionist Nuns. In a short time Clement XIV issued a papal bull giving Paul's congregation all the rights and privileges of a religious order, even jurisdiction and papal exemption. He arranged that the Monastery of Sts. John and Paul be given to the Passionists. Finally he approved the rule Paul had written for the Passionist Nuns and decreed the opening of the convent at Corneto. Mother Mary Crucified was allowed to transfer from the convent of St. Lucy to this new convent, together with the other women whom Paul had been directing.
The great day finally came, May 3, 1771. The ten women, together with Mother Mary Crucified, were given the Passionist habit and entered the new convent of the Presentation. The bishop and the entire town of Corneto celebrated. Father John Mary Cioni, Paul's confessor, preached the homily.
Some miles away in Rome Paul lay on his sick bed in the hospice of the Crucified. He never got to Corneto to see Mother Mary Crucified and the first Passionists. He himself did not give her the habit. Four years later he would be dead. From his sick bed he assisted her with letters and with his prayers and sufferings.
“May you be the model for the Daughters of the Passion. They should mourn perpetually for the love of the Crucified Lord, not only by the habit they wear, but even more so in their hearts, their minds and their actions. In this way they shall heal his holy wounds by the continual practice of the virtues, since this is the purpose for the foundation of their Institute”
While Paul was certainly founder of the Passionist religious family, Mother Mary Crucified had her own role to fulfill as the first novice mistress and superior of the nuns. It was left to her to explain the spirit of the rule to the first daughters of the Passion. And it was her role to serve as model and example of the Passionist way of life for her small originating community and for all Passionist Nuns in the centuries to follow. She was interpreter and model of the Passionist charism as shared and lived by these cloistered religious women.
Mother Mary Crucified died November 16, 1787. In 1982 Pope John Paul II approved the document declaring that she had practiced heroic virtue and should be called "Venerable." Passionists everywhere await the day of her beatification.