Rev. Donald Senior, CP, STD

As part of our week of events celebrating the official Inauguration of the new site of the Lay Centre at Foyer Unitas, a number of our board members and residents gathered for a celebration of the Eucharist in the rooms of St. Paul of the Cross, founder of the Passionists, presided by Father Donald Senior, CP.

Fr. Senior celebrates 50 years as a Passionist this year, is a renowned New Testament scholar and president of Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, the largest graduate school of ministry formation in the United States. He also serves on the Pontifical Biblical Commission and concelebrated mass with the Holy Father on Thursday morning (the unscripted homily for which made headlines).

As a member of the Lay Centre Board for several years, Fr. Senior was a key figure in bringing the Passionists and the Lay Centre together, making this new home a possibility,something for which the entire student community is deeply grateful!

Conveniently, the proper of saints includes settings for St. Paul of the Cross’ feast day (Oct 19) which we used, along with the daily readings for Friday. The reading from Acts 5 recounted the ‘prophecy’ or judgement of Gamaliel to the Sanhedrin concerning the Apostles:

“For if this endeavor or this activity is of human origin, it will destroy itself. But if it comes from God, you will not be able to destroy them; you may even find yourselves fighting against God.”

(Timely, as the last few weeks have shown the human elements of the Church all too clearly.)

St. Paul of the Cross, with the crucifix he would take to parish missions

Paul Francesco Danei was born into a wealthy merchant family in 1694 near Genoa, Italy. With over 2000 extant letters from his lifetime, we know a lot about his struggles and spirituality, and his intentions for what would eventually become the Congregation of the Passion of Jesus Christ. When he came to Rome originally, it was not to found a religious order but something more like one of today’s lay movements – he did not seek ordination, and did not want a monastic or mendicant order. He and his brother sought jobs in one of the hospitals in Trastevere, still in operation today, as what we would know of as orderlies.

The 18^th century Roman curia was not yet ready for something this ‘outside the box’ however, and his request for permission for a society of non-ordained, non-religious ministers was rejected, and he was moved into a more familiar model, eventually being ordained at St. Peter’s in 1727 by Pope Benedict XIII. His vision remained for a mission to those who were in closest solidarity to Christ’s passion – the poor, marginalized, the migrant workers – and he continued to resist classical definitions of religious life. Instead of a monastery, the houses are “Retreats”, implying a place of solitary refuge to replenish the soul and then go back into apostolic ministry, rather than to remain cloistered and focused only on the community. Their ministry was preaching, giving retreats and parish missions, but not commonly in education or staffing parishes directly.

St. Paul also did not seek leadership in his own order, but was elected superior for life. Possibly unrelated, he recounts nearly 50 years of spiritual aridity, a time without emotional, visceral faith to reflect his intellectual assent. That blessing only came near the end of his life, which he spent in the rooms in which we celebrated the Eucharist today, wandering the garden of the Retreat we now call home.  

Retreat of Sts. John and Paul

This Retreat had belonged to another religious order, a Congregation of Jesus, which had been around for centuries but diminished by the time of Paul. Probably because of his reputation for compassion, St. Paul became confessor to many people, including a couple of popes. It serves as both glory and shame to the order today – as I have said before, it is a beautiful place, a genuine retreat, an Oasis in the City of Rome. It is also more than was ever needed, and has never been filled by the Passionists, and too easy a temptation to adapt models of monastic life never intended by the original charism of the Founder and the Congregation.

The Passionists are in the midst of a paradigmatic shift, the ongoing reception of the Second Vatican Council’s mandate to orders to rediscover their distinct and varied charisms. They are becoming less national and more globalized – though relatively small in numbers (about 2100) they are in almost 60 countries. Inviting the Lay Centre into the Retreat that houses the Generalate, we see a move to underline the founder’s original ideal of lay community and ministry, and the building up of spiritual ‘alliances’ with partners in the ministry of the Passion.