Manual of Devotions in Honour of The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Father Sebastian
DEVOTION OF ST. PAUL OF THE CROSS TOWARDS THE DOLOURS OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY
Extract from the Life of Saint Paul of the Cross, Founder of the Congregation of the Most Holy Cross and Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Dolours of Mary, in particular, were most vividly and profoundly imprinted in his heart. He always wore round his neck the devout little habit of our Lady of Sorrows, and in Missions fervently promoted the devotion to her Dolours. Though he was not in the habit of making processions, he sometimes, to increase devotion in the people towards the sorrows of our dear Lady, took them in procession to some church where our Lady of Sorrows is venerated. This he did at Ischia, the first time he gave a Mission there. With all the people, he went to visit the Church of the Servants of Mary, and, on arriving at the church door, made a very fervent discourse, wept bitterly, and severely disciplined himself. Compunction and tears were general amongst the people, and from that time sprang up a new fervour of filial devotion, and of tender loving compassion for our Lady of Sorrows, which remains even to this day.
To all, generally, he recommended meditation on the Dolours with great fervour. With the same zeal with which he promoted the remembrance of our Lord’s Passion, he promoted the devotion to the Dolours; for, as he said himself,if we go to the Cross, there is the Mamma; where the Mamma is, there is the Son. It was certainly enough to soften the hardest hearts to hear him speak of the bitter Dolours of Mary. He meditated and considered them with filial piety, great compassion and devotion. He sometimes imagined tender dialogues between the loving Mother and the suffering Son; but with such deep feeling that the hearers were dissolved in tears of compassion and grief.
He compared the sufferings of the Son and the griefs of the Mother, to two seas, and said that we pass from the first to the second. “The grief of Mary (these are his words) is like the Mediterranean Sea; for it is written: ‘Magna est velut mare contritio tua:’ from this sea we pass to the other boundless sea of the Passion of Jesus, in whose person David says, ‘Veni in altitudinem maris’; and here the soul enriches herself, and fishes up most precious pearls of the virtues of Jesus and Mary.”
With the passion of Jesus he had always in his mouth the Dolours of Mary, and said, that his hopes lay in the Passion of the Son, and in the sorrows of the Mother. Though he spoke of them constantly, he always seemed to say something new, because he always spoke of them with new affection, so deeply was he penetrated with them in his heart. Most frequently when he spoke thus, he wept bitterly, and changed colour, becoming first red, then pale; he then burst forth into these words, which came from the profoundest depths of his heart: “Ah, poor Mother! Ah, dear Mother!” On Good Friday, as we have said, oppressed by grief, and spiritually drowned in the bitterness of that great day, he could not even take food. Often he was heard to say, that Mary’s greatest sorrow was when she saw her beloved Son dead in her arms, and saying this, he cried out, more by tears than words, with the affection of a truly loving heart, “Oh, grief above grief!” He himself related, in reference to this, that on one occasion, our Blessed Lady was seen in that most sorrowful act of receiving into her arms the lacerated Body of so dear a Son, and through her great sorrow and affliction, her face was like that of one dead.
We do not know precisely who had this vision, but we find it deposed in the processes, that the servant of God, speaking one day with a priest, a dear friend of his, on the Passion of Jesus and the Dolours of Mary, drew from his sleeve, with a countenance all on fire, as was customary with him when he felt devotion, a little picture, representing Our Lady of Sorrows, drawn by Cavaliere Conca, who, being at the same time a skilful and excellent painter and a good Christian, painted it with great skill and devotion, at the request of the servant of God, who begged him to express her grief as strongly as he could, saying to him : “Here, I give it to you because it is not sorrowful enough. I have seen her in greater sorrow;” and with these words gave him the holy picture, which is now preserved in the Monastery of Mount Carmel, at Vetralla.
In the last years of his life, also, this most merciful Mother condescended to show herself to her faithful servant pierced with grief, as she was at the time of the most bitter passion of her dear Son; for in the retreat of Saints John and Paul, when after Mass he was making his thanksgiving in the room next the little chapel where he celebrated, she appeared to him with a sword through her heart, and tears in her eyes; and speaking of her Dolours, gave him so deep a sense of them, and used words of such tenderness, that they would even have rent a heart of stone. She gave him to understand that her sufferings were beyond measure, terrible, and overpowering, from the ardent love she bore to her Son, and the incomparable amplitude of her soul, capable of a sea of sorrows; the Queen of Sorrows complained of the false devotion of those who say they are devout to the Blessed Virgin, and then outrage by sin her Beloved Son; and with great force and tenderness exhorted her dear servant to promote, as he always did, devotion to the Sacred Passion of her Son, and to her Dolours.
This Mother of Mercy, desiring to help a poor priest whose soul was in a wretched condition, manifested to Father Paul his necessities, and this priest having come into his presence afterwards, the servant of God, who saw his interior, said to him with a tone of certainty, “You appear to me as ugly as a devil.”
At these words, the priest entering into himself, and acknowledging his dreadful state, prostrated himself in confusion and grief at the venerable Father’s feet, promising to amend his life, and thus showed the truth of the apparition of Our Lady of Sorrows, who wished to draw him from the path of perdition. It is not, therefore, surprising that the servant of God, after such visions and so deep a perception of the Dolours of the Blessed Virgin, spoke of them with so much affection, tenderness, and compassion. As he knew what a treasure true devotion to our Blessed Lady is, he ardently desired that his children should enjoy the abundance of it. He inculcated, and with great fervour recommended, that they should be devout to our dear Lady. “Let them take,” he says in the rules, “for their chief protectress, the ever Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, and bear towards her a due devotion; let them often call to mind the most bitter sorrows endured by her during the Passion and Death of her dear Son, and let them, by voice and example, promote in others devotion towards this great Lady.”
