Saint Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows
In the town of Spoleto, Italy, the young Francesco Possenti was known as the dancer. He was a lad for the parties, for which he spent several hours preparing because he loved to have the latest clothes and fashion, and the best haircut. When he wasn’t at a party, he was out at the theatre or hunting or reading a novel. It is no wonder his father couldn’t believe him when he said he wanted to join the Passionists.
St Gabriel of Our Lady of
Sorrows (or of the Sorrowful Mother) was born Francesco (Francis)
Possenti on March 1, 1838, in Assisi, Italy, the eleventh of thirteen children
of Sante Possenti, a civil servant, and Agnes Frisciotti. Sante was transferred
shortly afterwards, so the family had to settle in Spoleto. Here they were
devastated by multiple misfortunes: the death of two daughters and that of
Agnes, Francesco’s mother.
Sante Possenti nevertheless
managed to lead his family through the tragedy, raising them in Christian
virtue. He spent an hour in prayer every morning before going to Mass with his
children. In the night he would examine them to know what they had been about
the whole day, and then they would say common prayers. His most important
admonition was that his children avoid bad company.
With such a deeply pious man
for a father, Francesco grew to be a pious, charitable and amiable youth. He
attended his initial education at a school run by the Brothers of St John
Baptist de la Salle, and then he went to the Jesuit college.
Nonetheless, his young life was
threatened by the lure of the world and its vanities. He was a boy of the
society. He was also a young man who was prone to bouts of anger. It was only
the grace of God that usually moved him to repentance after he lost his temper,
or to rebuke his friends when they spoke of sinful things. It was still grace
that moved him to make a lofty promise of joining some religious order if he
was healed of the serious illness that struck him in 1851.
God heard his prayer. But the
young man forgot the promise he had made.
Again, in 1853, he suffered
from a throat abscess. He sought the heavenly help of St Andrew Bobola (who had
only recently been beatified), promising again to consecrate himself entirely
to God in a religious order if he was cured.
He was healed. Again.
This time, he made a move: he
asked to join the Jesuits, but he never proceeded further and kept putting off
his resolution. Around this time, another misfortune struck the family: Mary
Louisa, Francesco’s sister, died of cholera just after Francesco had been
seriously wounded in a hunting accident. By this time, he had already lost two
other siblings—two brothers; one in 1848 and the other who committed suicide in
1853.
It was the Blessed Mother
herself who intervened to win him for her Son. On the octave of the Assumption,
the clergy and civil authorities of Spoleto organised a solemn procession of an
ancient icon of Our Lady. Francesco attended the function. When the icon passed
by Francesco, it seemed to him like the Blessed Mother was intently gazing at
him. He heard a voice that distinctly said to him, ‘You know that you are
not made for the world. Why, then, do you still remain in it? Enter soon into
some Religious Order.’
The young man was left in
tears, his hesitation withered. He immediately sought the counsel of his
confessor who approved of his vocation and Francesco determined to join the
Congregation of the Passion of Jesus Christ (Passionists).
His father would not give his
permission. What ensued was a flood of relatives enlisted to persuade the lad
to abandon his momentary delusion. But Francesco had made up his mind.
Not even the many parties to which his father took him every evening after his
revelation could make him budge.
Accompanied by his brother,
Aloysius, who was a Dominican friar, Francesco made his way to Morovalle in
September, 1856. On the third Sunday of September, feast of our Lady of
Sorrows, he took the religious habit with the name Brother Gabriel of Our Lady
of Sorrows.
Setting out, at last, to work for his perfection, the world and all its attractions lost all meaning to him. His
great devotion to the Passion of Our Lord and the Sorrowful Mother brought him
many consolations and graces, and strengthened him in his resolve. He could see
how truly empty the pleasures of the world were.
Br Gabriel moved to the
monastery of Isola del Gran Sasso in the province of Teramo. Here his
intelligence, holiness, cheerfulness and friendliness could not remain hidden.
Retreatants in the monastery would not leave without conversing with the young
religious, and young men asked to join the Order on account of the fact that
they would enjoy his saintly company.
His joyful face managed to hide
his own spiritual struggles. God had permitted him to be violently harassed by
temptations against faith, combined with dryness in prayer. He remained
unshaken in his confidence and good cheer, even when he began to notice the
first symptoms of the tuberculosis that would claim his life.
As his health dwindled, he
remained a firm observer of the Passionist Rule and he maintained all the usual
religious practices, thus being an example to his fellow religious, who, in his
last days, loved to linger about his deathbed.
During the early morning of February 27, 1862, Br Gabriel of the Sorrowful Mother (now twenty-three years old) held an image of Our Lady of Sorrows close to his heart, smiling peacefully as he waited for his end. At the fateful moment, he sat up, his face radiant as he stretched out his hands as if to be embraced by a figure that was unseen by his community members present around him. They heard him speak of and to the Blessed Virgin.
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It is impossible to desert so lovable a lord as Jesus Christ and so loving a lady as Mary.
Often times the Christian life is said
to be ‘man’s search for God’. But perhaps the more correct way of
putting it is ‘God’s search for man’.
We see it in the Bible: it was
God who created man to live in the peace of Paradise (Gn 1:26-21, 2:7-25); it
was God who called Adam first when he had sinned, and then laid the ground work
to put right what man had ruined (Gn 3:8-19); it was God who called Noah to
save him from the flood (Gn 6:9-22); it was God who called Abraham, to
establish a people peculiarly his own (Gn 12:1-9); it was God who called Moses
to set his people free from slavery in Egypt (Ex 3:1-4:17); it was God who
chose David to be king of his people Israel (1 Sm 16:1-13); it was God who sent
the Prophet Nathan to David, to accuse him of his grave sin that he might
repent (2 Sm 12:1-14); it was God who threw St Paul off a horse and set him on the
right path (Acts 9:1-9); and above all, it was God who, out of love, sent his
Son to come and seek and save the lost (see Jn 3:16), to give his life as a
ransom for many (Mt 20:28; Mk 10:45).
It was God who loved us first
(1 Jn 4:19).
It has always been God.
God always takes the first
step.
We fall, we stray, we sin; and
then it is God who comes looking for us, yearning for us. He is the Good
Shepherd who goes out in search of his wandering sheep (see Lk 15:3-5).
Jesus is the one who said that
he came to seek us, so that he may save us who are lost (see Lk
19:10). He is the physician who looks for the sick (see Mt 9:12).
Sanctity begins when we accept this grace. But it shouldn’t end there: because it is a grace, we must cooperate with it so as to bring forth fruit.
St Gabriel of the Sorrowful
Mother was a young man who was greatly gifted by God. His own gifts, at first directed
away from God, threatened to lead to his damnation because of the attention
they gained him from the world. But the love of God won the day, when, through
his Blessed Mother, the Lord told the young man that he was not made for the
world.
None of us is made for the
world. God made us for himself.
That is why we shall never ever
find our peace in this world.[1]
Like St Gabriel, our life will only make sense when we completely, radically
sacrifice it to the service of the Lord, whatever form that service might take.
All our efforts to secure our
short lives in this world are at best flippant. The world has nothing to offer.
Only God, the Great Lover of our souls, rewards us for all eternity, for the
little things we might suffer for him in this brief life.
There’s no better deal than
that!
St Gabriel of Our Lady of
Sorrows was beatified in 1908 by Pope St Pius X and canonised on May 13, 1920
by Pope Benedict XV. It was the same pope who named him patron saint of
Catholic youth, students and those studying for the priesthood.
His feast day is February 27.
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[1] St Augustine puts it this way in his Confessions: ‘For you, O
Lord have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in
you.’