The Life of Blessed Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows

Francis Possenti was eighteen, the son of the chief magistrate of Spoleto. He perfumed his hair, dressed in the fashion of the day, loved the theater, read novels, and lost his temper fast. At commencement, in white kid gloves and patent leather shoes, he took the gold medal before the best society of the city. The next morning he left for the Passionist novitiate. His father, a lawyer of sixty-six, had laughed when he first heard of it.

He took the name Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows and lived five more years inside the ordinary routine of a Passionist house, the midnight office, the bell, the broken bread. He died of consumption in the Abruzzi in February 1862, twenty-three years old, with a worn print of the Crucified and the Sorrowful Virgin under his folded hands. Thirty years later his bones were taken up and the cures began. In 1908 Pius X declared him Blessed.

Fr. Ward, a Passionist, wrote this life from the sworn depositions for the cause, most from Fr. Norbert, who directed Gabriel from his first day in the novitiate to the morning he died, so the book is specific. Fr. Norbert refuses him the penance chain and tells him the chain he needs is on his will. Gabriel’s forty resolutions are quoted, and the author suggests trying to keep one of them perfectly for a single day. Cardinal Gibbons supplies the introduction.

It is a book for a young man who wonders whether a temperament like his can be made holy, and for anyone tired of saints who were never anything else.