Ambrogio Luddi Prior of the Convent of S. Marco (Florence) in 1875.

 

 

A Glimpse into the Soul of Mons. A. Del Corona.

 

Pope Pius X and Mons. Pius both shared the same name, and yet that name was not out of tune for either of them. One day the Pope asked about the Bishop with special concern, (regarding someone who should be observed carefully in order that his talent might not be wasted), “And what is Del Corona doing? Always hold him in high consideration! He is a saint!” The words of Pius X were not an exaggeration; the Pope truly believed that the dean of the Tuscan bishops, with his white hair, white vestments, and most of all his pure white soul, was a saint.

As soon as Pius X had become a Pope, the Holy Father had met him twice within two or three months, and had known him enough: as long as a perfect soul needs to deeply enter a twin spirit. He grew to know him as deeply as one perfect soul may enter into spiritual intimacy with a religious soul-mate. Regarding their relationship in this light, one might delve deeper than a simple combination of the name and the relationship; I think there was a likeness of thought between them. They possessed a thirst for the same living-water, the same vocation in their hearts; an embrace of two crosses with the same intense clasp that was maintained until their last days.
I believe that the Pope with Mons. Pius beside him, could only benefit from this rapport. But heed my words, because I speak of inner life: Del Corona would always be the Bishop of S.Miniato and Pius X, the great Pontiff of the universal Church. But what matters in life and in death is that which is internal. The inner life of Mons. Pius was that of a saint; and no one on the earth was more than saintly than he was. 

 

 

Pope S. Pius X

 

 

Pius X was not alone in perceiving the greatness of the soul that was housed in that poor body worn out by fatigue and age. Many many years before, the people of San Miniato had understood his spiritual greatness even as they ran after him during his pastoral visits shouting, “long life” at the top of their voices. The exaltation of his life sacrificed to God acclaimed by the mouths of farmers and workers took on the value of consecration. If men, after having waited in vain till midnight for their turn at the confessional, instead of going home, would lie down outside by the light of the moon and say: “as soon as he comes tomorrow morning, we can catch him first for our confessions!”, it meant that they had found in him someone more than just the priest who hears confession everyday.
Housewives also proclaimed, “Blessed be the Mother who gave him birth!” And the memory of that evangelic event illuminated the figure of the Bishop with the light of Jesus.
In fact, he wanted to be like Jesus. Writing to a good soul in the first years of his pastoral life, he had spoken of a wish for martyrdom, of weeping, and physical pain. More than physical pain, he sought moral pain so that he could suffer, like a knife with which he could be sacrificed on the altar of God, rendering him more worthy of Christ: “Jesus, let not be unworthy of you; and if sometimes I must be desolate until death, make me invincible beyond death”. And in those same years he had written: “I strive to be sanctified.”
Yet he had not begun at that time. In 1870, he wrote: “For fifteen years, sorrow has touched me and the love of the Cross and Blood I adore has calmed it. But I am sure that the power of pain will undo me before I come to God”. Fifteen years before, we find only the first year of his new life, his entrance into S. Marco, his vestment and novitiate. By then he had begun to purify himself and to drink from the chalice of cleansing suffering.
Meanwhile, during those first years, God detached him from earthly pursuits; his father passed away; he had lost his mother in childhood. He earnestly embraced the life he had chosen, living it completely, and striving for perfection daily, little by little. He was a sainted friar.

He knew how to take and to give good examples to the oldest, too. He exhausted himself more for souls than any father would for his children. He had prepared himself for his life’s work not only with many years of study in books but also in the depth of his heart. He had truly become a thirsty soul for others’ well being.
But he was not arrogant; humility was always one of his dearest virtues. At the announcement of his elevation to Bishop, he later wrote, “Obey always!... This was my ideal”.

 

 

Fra Angelico: Transfiguration fresco in the cell n° 6 of the Convent of S. Marco (FI); The young Father Albert Del Corona lived in this cell before his ordination.

 

 

After his ordination into the priesthood, the fifteen years or so that he spent in the convent mark the quietest part of his life. One should always look into his words for a deeper meaning, such as the time he said to a foreigner who had come to visit the Transfiguration of Fra Angelico in his cell: “Would you like to stay here? Do you want to be in Paradise?” At least the first years he spent in Paradise; but then came the sermons, the schooling, and the spiritual direction. Then he joyfully poured out his soul, so full of God, onto the indigent brothers. This was one of the most beautiful and perhaps the most pleasant parts of his life. A smile was rarely far away from his lips and he treated everyone with sweetness, spreading delight around him.

Yet one day he said what he had certainly been thinking until then, “The power of sorrow will undo me before I come before God”. There are very few who manage to not let others see their suffering. Mons. Pius had developed this as a second nature in himself, having begun with the acceptance of all the austerities of a religious life. He then had become enthusiastic about sorrow; making an ideal of it, the ideal of his life. To become sanctified by the path of sorrow is one of the themes which recur most often in the letters written from S. Miniato to the the Asylum (Monastery of his sisters). Even in the culminating point of the work of his pastoral visits, every week he wrote an educational and instructional letter to the Convent where he had gathered his beloved daughters that he directed, and loved as a father. He poured a bit his own father’s heart into his daughters’ with fervour and delight. Along with the joys and the zeal, some of his troubles also slipped out; that bit of his soul that burned and was being purified could be glimpsed. If these letters were better known, Mons. Pius would become for everyone what he always was to those who had the privilege of knowing him closely: a holy soul, sanctified by sorrow. Sorrow was the soul of his life and without sorrow Mons. Pius would not have been who he was.

Hear how he relates this thought to us; “In what does life consist? In sorrowful memories of the past and timid hopes of the future, we no more look at the cradle than we have the grave in front of us. In this whole collection of visions, full of anxiety and terrible struggle, the Cross shines like a lighthouse, and from the Cross, love calls us and invites us to cry. The earth cannot flourish without water, nor the soul without tears. The soul is regenerated in the baptism of tears; it understands all, and hopes all from Him who died to extol the soul”. And as he spoke, so he lived. He flooded his life with tears like a shepherd of souls: tears owing to the problems that happened to him also due to a difficult situation in which he found himself as Bishop, (another bishop, discredited by the Church, but supported by the government, had kept the bishop’s palace for twenty-four years as well as the income that should had come to Mons. Pius for his living expenses), tears due to misunderstandings and the insults of some rogue priests; tears shed on the ruin of souls; tears about the misfortune of the sinners; tears on the sorrows of Christ and the ingratitude of men; tears for the misfortunes of his own country; tears for himself and for the sacrifice of the brothers expelled from monasteries owing to the anger of persecutors; tears of compassion, tears of anguish over the graves of the relatives and friends; humble tears for his own purification, and warm affectionate paternal tears for the purification of others.

 

 

S. Miniato, the Church of Saint Jacob and Lucy, annexed to the Dominican convent; here Mons. Pius lived, while the titular Bishop, A. Barabesi, discredited by the Church, remained til death in the Episcopal residency.

 

 

“We must weep to encourage weeping”, he said, meaning that at first, sorrow has to raise us above the earth and sanctify us, if we want to shake the filth off the backs of the sinners and sanctify them. He had not sacrificed himself and was not working to sanctify himself for his own self; the souls needing to be saved stood at the top on his thoughts. The thirty years he spent as Bishop in S. Miniato are thirty years of a life of a missionary: every autumn he made his pastoral visit to the small towns, he preached, listened to confession, listened to confidences, put souls in peace. Even when he reproached someone, he did it with a wholly special manner: a poor priest had to be recalled to the order. Mons. Pius reprimanded him so gently, and with such great goodness, that since that day he never relapsed and began to call his Bishop: “the Angel of Comfort”.
The heavy weight of his hand of authority over others always cost him greatly. After his 1874 election as the Prior of S. Marco he invited his brothers to a loving meeting where he expressed his sorrow at having been put in a place of command, he who had always wanted only to obey.
He had never dreamed about anything other than his cell and his books. When he was elected Bishop he everything to avoid this; and yet when he saw all his efforts were useless, he recognised the will of God, resigned himself to God’s will and embraced the great Cross that the Lord sent him. He carried his martyrdom in his heart and wore a smile on his lips, till his final day. For thirty years sighed for his return to his cell and for thirty years suffered far from his nest, “in exile”.
“Life”, he wrote, “is a daily Calvary”. And he lived his entire day of passion, in the concealment and in the mystery of the heart. Only when the drinker gets to the last sip in the chalice will the gates of heaven be opened to him. He waited for that moment in all his rich activity, in humility, in weeping. His love for souls brought out the best in him in a thousand ways; and yet his zeal never kept him from granting the greatest needs. His charity knew no limits: such as when he took off his silver buckles and gave them to a poor man or when he took off his shoes and went back home barefooted so that a poor man would not feel the cold.
His humility brought him to the people: once while waiting for the train at the S. Miniato station he even sang a lullaby to a baby that he found alone in a cradle in a farmer’s house. The mother returned in a few minutes humming with her apron full of fresh eggs and vegetables. When she saw the Bishop curved above the baby with his loving nature like a father, she was so greatly touched that the eggs fell out of her apron and broke on the floor. The Bishop consoled her, gave her money to replace the eggs and told her good-bye with a smile after having looked at the baby once again.

These are only facts that also explain his inborn gentleness of soul, his humility, the little concern he held for himself, and the small account he had of himself in front of God and men. He also practised what he wrote to the daughters of the Asylum (Monastery of his sisters): “Real humility lies in knowing ourselves to be cowards, in treating ourselves with scorn, in taking the last place in our hearts, in wanting that others know our need, taking the last place ourselves, in keeping silence nor complaining every time someone scorns us, forgets us, or insults us”. The importance he gave this virtue he revealed another time in writing: “An experience of humility is worth more than a thousand revelations and a thousand ecstasies”. In the same letter he also revealed why he practised humility, “Love is born from humility, and love hides a multitude of sins”.
These sins were his own: his small weaknesses, his giving in occasionally to melancholy, the faults he felt he had, that made him feel that he was not up to the importance to of his office. Most of all he wanted to expiate the sins of others; he was thirsty for the expiation of the sins of others like a victim of justice and the love of God.

 

Two penitence’s instruments used by Mgr Pio: the cilice (or, more properly, a iron chain) carried as a belt on the flesh alive, the whip used to lash oneself

 

He always longed for suffering to expiate sins: the hairshirt he wore is still preserved in the Asylum (Monastery of his sisters); sometimes he himself told us about his flagellations. Yet it was the martyrdom of the heart that brought him closest to the crucified Jesus, the weeping from compassion for souls. “Sometimes, he wrote, it is necessary to shiver, to cry, and to wait, weeping for heaven. Blessed is he who is honoured in bearing the Cross of Jesus Christ”. “Flesh is weak and in suffering it dissolves, but the soul is tempered repeatedly and renews itself in the fire of sorrow and of love”. His life was animated with such thoughts. And they did not remain only thoughts: his thirst was a true thirst, and he suffered indeed. When he wrote, “Holiness is an agony and a sweating of blood”, he was not only painting an idea, but his own life, his holiness. Like other times he had spoken about the consecrating power of sorrow he said, “It suffices that sorrow touches a soul, and from that comes great flashes, pure feelings, spiritual and ineffable wealth, which prosperity, if lasting, would have covered. This is what sorrow reveals”.
He shouted at himself, not in vain and certainly not owing to rhetorical posing, “My soul, do not be angry with sorrow, do not feel contempt for it. It is the kiss of Divine blood that the Bridegroom gives you to make you fall in love”. He wanted pure sorrow, the torture of the soul: “Tears are so divine! I feel like I desecrate their holiness by pouring them out, when I had them, due to the misfortune of the moment”.
And he always poured them out in their purest form.
Once at Bagni of Casciana a very bad man came to confess. The Bishop received him at once like a son, not withstanding the fears of the friar who accompanied him. After a few minutes they both came out with red eyes. The curate asked him how had he heard a confession from a man of that kind so quickly, he replied: “He was weeping, I and I wept; the christening was already done”. How many other times did he baptize with his tears? Toward the end of his life the Lord required him to suffer the pains of the body too: cancer tormented him the last five years of his life and carried him to the grave. He replied with assurance at that time: “I am firm in the belief that the cross is my standard and sorrow is my crown”.

 

 

View of the Convent of S. Domenico of Fiesole at the beginning of 1900

 

 

He left the diocese, and retired to the Convent in Fiesole that he had loved greatly, for it had belonged to Saint Antoninus, and because there were young people. He loved the young; he felt like them in his young heart. Now that he was approaching the grave, he felt that the last flame of his light should be for them, to light and show them the way.
He returned to his life of a long time ago. He lived again in the venerable prelate, the friar of Saint Marco, who lived in his new paradise, and worked and prayed in silence. Now there were no more schools, but from his place in choir he gave a lesson of sacrifice, of fervour, and the love of God. Almost blind and tortured by the illness that was consuming him, he was always the first in the House of God. He acted like a father to all with his freshness of mind and tenderness of heart. And meanwhile he waited confidently for his last day.
Once walking in a little wood of laurels, he stopped in front of an orange-tree and noticed that orange trees have thorns. He later mentioned this also in a letter to the Asylum (Monastery of his sisters): “See the mystery; the green leaves in winter, the sweetness of the color and the flavor of the fruit as well as the bitter, piercing thorns. They are the gifts that God gives us in exile, the sweet and the bitter. These teach us about love and prepare us for the gifts of heaven”.
He was ready for the gifts of heaven. As the illness worsened; he had himself carried to the Asylum (Monastery of his sisters) in order to die in his home. “Tell Tonino, he had written when the Asilo was being walled up, to make me a tomb under the Church”. Under the Church was a crypt, and his tomb was later opened for him after his death.
In those last days he told himself just as he had told his daughters: “Look at heaven and say: I want my soul must be more serene than you”. He waited for death, in the few days when he was feeling very badly, like a sister who comes to bring us joy and life. He was the one who consoled the people who came to visit him with upset with tumult the thought of losing him. “The spring of the soul does not begin in March and April. The spring of the soul is everlasting, just as the breath from the kiss of God, and the brightness of His face”.
Such was his soul; God possessed it, the Holy Spirit flooded it with the flame of love: “We believe in love, we celebrate love. We take what God sends to us with joy and we die from love”.
So, risen above the Earth on the arms of the mother who ascended to Heaven, he soared up at noon of the year one thousand nine hundred twelve, after seventy five years of love.  

 

 

Convent of S.Domenico of Fiesole, 1929: at the middle the two Domenican Bishop, Ambrogio Luddi, author of this spiritual profile, and Lodovico Ferretti, main biographer of Mons.Pius.

 

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