Today Father Gary has a post at The Passionist Charism on Saint Paul of the Cross’s brother, Antonio Danei, whose anniversary of ordination is tomorrow. Antonio was the first witness to be called at the Ordinary Process for the Beatification and Canonisation of Paul of the Cross held in Alessandria in July 1777, less than two years after Paul’s death. Antonio was only ten years old when his brother Paul embarked on his new way of life after receiving the black habit of a penitent-hermit from Bishop Gattinara of Alessandria. At the time of the Canonisation Processes, Antonio was sixty-seven years old. He describes himself as a secular priest and poor ecclesiastic. In his testimony he describes how one day, while he was living with Paul on Monte Argentario, he went into Paul’s room when Paul wasn’t there and, out of curiosity, he opened a drawer in which he found a book covered in parchment and bound with thread. When he opened it, he discovered that it was a manuscript written in Paul’s own hand. He began to read it. In the book Paul described how, coming one day from the Capuchin church (in Castellazo), after having received communion, as he was returning home along a street called de’ Corazza, he saw himself in spirit clothed in a black robe with a white cross on the breast, under which was the name of Jesus, and he heard these words: This is a sign of how pure that heart must be which must carry the most holy name of Jesus graven upon it. Antonio concludes the story by saying: In reading this, I was completely filled with feelings of tenderness, and I could not hold back the tears; however, I read no further for fear of being surprised there by Father Paul (Processi, II, 10). Antonio’s recollection about forty years after he read the text bears an amazing similarity to Paul’s own account of the experience in the Preface to the Rule.
