In the Shadow of His Wings

Sponsa Christi July 9th, 2012

Did you hear those church bells ringing at noon on the Fourth of July – the Birthday of the Independence of our Nation? Our monastery bells rang loud and clear. This was just one of the points suggested to follow during the Fortnight for Freedom.

We are so grateful for those days…almost a week now since the Fortnight ended! We were able to take advantage of time for further reflection, education, prayer and penance for the intention of Religious Freedom for our nation.We delighted in talks from Archbishop Naumann at the Topeka, Kansas Rally and the homily given by Archbishop Chaput at the closing Mass for the Fortnight for Freedom. THANK GOD for EWTN and the continuous coverage of these events and other news of our nation and abroad.

Our Sr. Cecilia Maria treated us each evening of the Fortnight with a reading from a summary of the sobering history of our “baby” congregation during the harrowing days of the Napoleonic suppression during the early 19th century.

I will share with you a bit of that which pertains directly to our nuns. Read Sister Cecilia Maria’s full summary or go to the source for the entire story see History of the Passionists Volume II/2 by Fr. Fabiano Giorgini, C.P., translated into English in 2004.

Learning from Our Passionist Forebears
Religious Freedom and the Napoleonic Suppression

notes from History of the Passionists Volume II/2 ”
by Fr. Fabiano Giorgini, CP

 NAPOLEON’S MOTIVES

“As an absolute arbiter, Napoleon did not accept anyone escaping his control and, perhaps, feared … that religious would foment the maxims of Rome in the people, that is, fidelity to the Church’s doctrine and to the directives of the Pope.”

Napoleon was also interested in taking over “the goods of religious in order to pay for the great economic debt caused by the war, lodging soldiers, the increase of bureaucrats and for completing public works.”

The Passionist Situation

The Passionist Congregation had been in existence for ninety years…. When the suppression began in Tuscany in 1808, there were seventeen Passionist communities. At the end of 1810, all the communities were disbanded and the retreats became state property. When the monasteries were put up for sale or for rent, some houses were rented to friends who sublet them to the Passionists as ordinary citizens…. This solution, where possible, allowed at least one Passionist as custodian. Thus he was able to see that the house did not fall into greater ruin, but he was not able to prevent the emptying of its contents.

The Passionist Nuns had been in existence for only 39 years and only had the one monastery at Corneto (later the town was renamed Tarquinia). When they had to leave the monastery in June 1810, there were twenty-seven nuns: nineteen choir nuns, seven lay nuns, and one novice.

The Nuns’ Way of the Cross

On June 6, 1810, the nuns’ confessor Fr. Angelo Galassi read the imperial decree of suppression to all twenty-seven religious, gathered in the sacristy. On hearing that they would have to leave by June 15, the Sister chronicler records:

The good religious, after calming down, accepted the fact and prayed to God, truly from their hearts, that he would not permit them to return to the world, since they had abandoned it for love of him. But this time, for his own just ends, he did not answer their prayer.

On Friday, June 15, the day the Passionist nuns dedicate to spending time with Jesus in his Passion, they had to drink from his own bitter chalice as they were unjustly forced from their monastery.

• Eight nuns were natives of Corneto and could remain in the city, along with four foreigners who were also allowed to remain in Corneto because of ill health. These nuns sustained their religious life by meeting in groups of four in the houses of families who had taken them in.
• The other fifteen foreigners dispersed to their native cities.
• On January 14, 1811, the monastery was auctioned off for 35 francs.
• The monastery was assigned to the Maestre Pie, to be used as a school, an orphanage, and a clinic for sick women.

Although allowed to reunite by the papal rescript of June 30, 1814, the nuns faced significant practical and canonical obstacles to resuming their religious observance. The monastery had to be cleaned and disinfected, and a new place to be found for the Maestre Pie. Sustaining funds for the monastery and the nuns’ life had been discontinued by the French government, so new funding had to be found before the monastery could be canonically re-erected. Furthermore, a number of the nuns who wished to return were no longer able to live the observance because of infirmity.

Nevertheless, on December 23, 1814, fifteen nuns and the novice who had all returned resumed wearing their Passionist habit and renewed their religious profession in the hands of the Vicar General of the Diocese, Bishop Garrigos. Soon, five more nuns rejoined the group. Four religious had died during the suppression, one had disappeared, and one had requested exclaustration to care for her aged mother.

“The Suppression had been very hard on them, but the nuns had survived well.” The chronicler writes that, when they returned, “all took up the regular observance with readiness of spirit, as if it had never been interrupted.” In 1815, two novices were vested with the habit, and in 1816, eight novices were vested – a beautiful sign of the Resurrection for the community after their profound sharing in Our Lord’s Passion. The Divine Bridegroom is ever faithful to His faithful brides!

Advice from a letter of Sr. Magdalene Calzelli, CP:

Pray constantly to the Lord to free the entire State from our enemies. New evils have come upon us, but God can liberate us, if he wishes…. Trust in Mary Most Holy.

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• Catholic Vocations for Women , Cloistered Life , Passionist History , Passionist Life , Religious Freedom
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Sponsa Christi February 28th, 2012

Special thanks are due to my Passionist friend in New Jersey, Fr. Victor Hoagland, C.P. who gave his permission (last year!) to feature the following article. An inspiring article about a canonized Italian Passionist and an American Passionist whose canonization process is underway…I am excited to introduce you to a great Passionist Fr. Theodore Foley.

By the way, Fr. Victor has a book out entitled, A Lenten Journey with Jesus Christ and St. Paul of the Cross…a good Lenten read!

Painting over a tintype picture of St. Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows

Yesterday was the feastday of St. Gabriel Possenti, the young Italian Passionist who died in 1862 and was canonized in 1920. I’m interested in his connection with Fr. Theodore Foley (1913-1974), an American Passionist whose cause for canonization was recently introduced in Rome. After reading about St. Gabriel, Theodore decided to become a Passionist as a young boy of 14; other young men joined the community in the early 1920s and 30s also influenced by the young Italian saint.

What appeal did St. Gabriel have for him and others like him?

Born into a prominent family at Assisi in Italy in 1838, Gabriel Possenti was a lively, intelligent young man given all the advantages his father, an official in the papal government, could give him. Then, in a surprising move, he left the bright, social world he loved so much to enter the Passionists at 18. He died in 1862 and was canonized in 1920. He was 24 years old.

Gabriel was first honored by people in mountainous region of the Abruzzi in east central Italy and from there devotion to him spread through Italy and other parts of the world. His rise to sainthood as World War I ended, coincided with a decade in America known as “The Roaring Twenties.”

In the 1920s a new consumer society, spawned by the country’s giant new industries and mass media, was hastily accumulating material goods of all kind. Young people especially, intoxicated by dreams of pleasure and success, rebelled against traditional institutions and morality. The 1920s was a “green light to an orgiastic future,” the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote. “America was going on the greatest, gaudiest spree in history.”

Catholic religious leaders then, anxious about the young, saw Gabriel Possenti as an answer to the rebellious heroes of the age. He had flirted with a lifestyle like the “Roaring Twenties.” As a youth, glamorous parties and entertainments and dreams of success absorbed him. Then, hearing God’s call, he turned away and embraced a life without glamor or style.

In his preface to Saint Gabriel, Passionist, a popular biography by Fr. Camillus, CP published in 1926, the powerful archbishop of Boston William Cardinal O’Connell, denounced the “flood of putrid literature which, for the past ten years of more, has deluged the bookshelves and libraries of our great cities, fueling disappointment and emptiness in a false romanticism.” Young Catholics should reject this falseness and live in the real world, like St. Gabriel:

“To live a normal life dedicated to God’s glory, that is the lesson we need most in these days of spectacular posing and movie heroes. And that normal life, lived only for God, quite simply, quite undramatically, but very seriously, each little task done with a happy supernaturalism, – that such a life means sainthood, surely St. Gabriel teaches us; and it is a lesson well worth learning by all of us.”

Young Theodore Foley took Gabriel’s path. He followed the saint into the undramatic life of the Passionists.

Gabriel Possenti’s decision to enter the Passionists has always been something of a mystery, even to his biographers. Did he choose religious life because he got tired of the fast track of his day? And why didn’t he enter a religious community better known to him, like the Jesuits, who could use his considerable talents as a teacher or a scholar? Why the Passionists?

Gabriel–and Theodore Foley after him– was attracted to the Passionists because of the mystery of the Passion of Christ. It was at the heart of God’s call.

The Passionists were founded in Italy a little more than a century before Gabriel’s death by St. Paul of the Cross, who was convinced that the world was “falling into a forgetfulness of the Passion of Jesus” and needed to be reminded of that mystery again. Paul chose the Tuscan Maremma, then the poorest part of Italy, as the place to preach this mystery, and there he established his first religious houses for those who followed him. He chose the Tuscan Maremma, not as a way of turning his back on the world of his day, but because the mystery of the Passion of Jesus was found and perhaps more easily forgotten there.

When Gabriel became a member, the Passionists, along with other religious communities, were recovering from their suppression by Napoleon at the beginning of the century. In one sense, they had come back from the dead . The congregation was now alive with new missionary enthusiasm. Not only were its preachers in demand in Italy, but it had begun new ventures in England (1842) and America (1852).

Dominic Barbari, the founder of the congregation in England, received John Henry Newman into the church in 1865; the English nobleman, Ignatius Spencer, who became a Passionist in 1847, began a campaign through Europe in the cause of ecumenism. New communities of Passionist women were being formed. Paul of the Cross, the founder, was beatified in 1853. Ten years earlier, the cause of St. Vincent Strambi, a Passionist bishop, was introduced.

Respected for their zeal and austerity, the Passionists were a growing Catholic community, and their growth in the western world continued up to the years when Theodore Foley became their superior general and saw its sharp decline.

But success was not what drew Gabriel–and Theodore Foley after him–to the Passionists. Their charism–the mystery of the Passion of Christ– was at the heart of God’s call.

As boy growing up, Gabriel Possenti understood this mystery, even as he danced away the evening with his school friends. Twice he fell seriously ill and, aware that he might die, promised in prayer to serve God as a religious and take life more seriously. Both times he got better and forgot his promises. Then, in the spring of 1856, the city of Spoleto where he lived at the time was hit by an epidemic of cholera, which took many lives in the city. Few families escaped the scourge. Gabriel’s oldest sister died in the plague.

Overwhelmed by the tragedy, the people of Spoleto gathered for a solemn procession through the city streets carrying the ancient image of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, who stood by the Cross. They prayed that she intercede for them and stop the plague, and they also prayed that she stand by them as they bore the heavy suffering.

It was a transforming experience for Gabriel. Mysteriously, the young man felt drawn into the presence of the Sorrowing Woman whose image was carried in procession. Passing the familiar mansions where he partied many nights and the theater and opera that entertained him so often, he realized they had no wisdom to offer now. He took his place at Mary’s side. At her urging, he resolved to enter the Passionists.

We don’t know precisely how the life of the Italian St. Gabriel drew the young American Theodore Foley to the Passionists. What similarity was there between them? What grace led him on?

Brought up in a good family and a strong religious environment , Theodore Foley still felt “dangers and temptations” around him. No, he didn’t experience the social life that tempted Gabriel Possenti a century before. But he did experience the new mass media then sweeping the country. By 1922 movies, and to a lesser extent the radio, became powerful influences in people’s lives, and Hollywood’s heroes preached a new gospel of fun and success. Through the new media, the “Roaring Twenties” came to Springfield as it did to other prosperous parts of America when Theodore Foley was growing up. Did it bring the “the dangers and temptations” he feared?

Theodore Foley must have sensed the selfishness, the carelessness about others, the failure to appreciate suffering and weakness and sin in this new gospel. It promised life without the mystery of the Cross, but that was not real life at all. Only 14, he entered the Passionists.

Fr. Victor Hoagland, CP is the Director of Passionist Press and a member of the Passionist Community in Union City, NJ.

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• Blessed Mother , Catholic Vocations for Women , Passionist Saints , Saint Paul of the Cross
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Sponsa Christi September 11th, 2011

“Where were you on September 11, 2001?”  That is a common question today as we lovingly and prayerfully remember the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

Another question we can ask is, “Where are you today? on September 11, 2011?” Where are you in your relationship with the Lord? In your awareness of His radical love for you? And that you are never alone in your trials, your personal “ground zeros”.

…the steel cross found in the ruins of the World Trade Center leads to the cross of Jesus, which stands at the center of all pain, all suffering, indeed all history. He did not come to take away suffering. He came to sanctify suffering by His presence. He was at Ground Zero at the World Trade Center. He will be with you in your own personal Ground Zero, whether it is the death of a child, a cancer diagnosis or the loss of a job.

~ From the back cover of the book The Cross at Ground Zero
by Fr. Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R.

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• Redemptive Suffering
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Sponsa Christi July 3rd, 2008

So what are you doing to celebrate the birth of our nation?

     We normally have a gaudeamus day. But since the 4th this year falls on a Friday we will be having our regular Friday of Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament in the morning (a wonderful day to pray for our nation and the upcoming elections – God help us!) and a work afternoon with our Gaudeamus postponed to Saturday. We have a wonderful Liturgy of the Hours designed for this important day. We normally even put off some fireworks in the evening but since our dear missionaries are going to arrive ANY MOMENT (!) and our Sisters plus some volunteers will be busy working preparing their meals or cleaning up the next 13 days AND our postulant Sharon will be arriving Saturday evening to enter the monastery (!) we are going to bypass them this year. But fireworks are a lovely way to celebrate the birth of our beloved nation.

     About 10 years ago we purchased a set of videos from David Barton’s Wallbuilders. (Please check out the website!) We have watched them over and over again. On these videos he tells the TRUE story of what was meant by “the wall of separation between Church and State” – forbidding government from establishing a national religion – and how this has been redefined to mean freedom from religious expression in public since the ’50′s and how it especially played out in the 1963 court case of removing prayer from school.

     On these videos he gives so much interesting info about how important the Christian faith was to the Fathers of our Nation. So many people say they were just Deists but that’s really not true. Many of them really knew Jesus in a personal way and were true Christians. Mr. Barton states how in George Washington’s Farewell Address he tells us what brought our Nation to success and what must be done to maintain it. He stated that religion and morality are inseparable and indispensable to patriotism! True patriotism flows from the Gift of piety.

     In 1787 during the Constitutional Congress Benjamen Franklin stated that a nation needs God and prayer. And that Individual accountability takes place in eternity but that national accountability will take place in the present. Nations answer to God in the present through either disasters or blessings. Mr. Barton has provided us with a wealth of truth about our Nation and its founding principles. He states that “God’s people must be involved (in politics, education, etc.) to have God’s principles in our nation.” We have to get the truth out! This would make a great segue to our nations upcoming elections and our need to get out and share with people about the need to vote, etc. but I’ll have to save that for another blog post!

Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a Nation!

Then conquer we must when our cause it is just.

In this be our motto, ‘In God is our trust!

~ Frances Scott Key

     God bless each of you and may God bless America!

     Click here for an historical 7 min. video about our national anthem – The Star Spangled Banner

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• Passionist Life
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