SAINT GABRIEL POSSENTI, PASSIONIST
A Young Man in Love

SAINT GABRIEL POSSENTI, PASSIONIST
A Young Man in Love

Falling in love is a fundamental event of life. It means not only “getting” the boy or the girl of one’s dreams, but above all finding a reason for living life passionately, a reason that fills life with meaning. Francis Possenti of Assisi, who became Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows as a Passionist, always felt that he was loved, since it was impossible for others not to love him, especially given his ability to elicit positive feelings from them. He discovered that he was capable of winning others over and of loving them with great intensity: his parents, brothers and sisters, classmates, friends. He seized life and spent it with impetuous commitment. He fell in love with a girl, as was normal for an eighteen-year-old boy. But then he realized that there was also another way to fulfill himself in an overflowing of love: by spending all of his energies for God and others. Needless to say, he fell in love with this ideal and gave himself so completely that at twenty-four his life had been used up. He had loved to death. Or to life, which is the same thing.

This is how he remains forever remembered by history: a young man in love, dying while his love was still full of passion, song and poetry. The adventure of his life is so enthralling that it is worth retelling. It has value for everybody, because the more that one is in love, the greater one’s experience of life is. It is worthwhile to retell his story especially for young people, so that they will be able to find the love that they are looking for without letting themselves be misled.

About the Author: Gabriele Cingolani was born in Recanati (in the province of Macerata, Italy) in 1940. A Passionist missionary, he received his doctorate in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. A journalist, writer and lecturer, he has worked at Vatican Radio and in the Vatican Secretariat of State. Currently involved in the pastoral activities of his religious congregation in Canada, he has also served as Provincial Superior and founder of Passionist houses in Indonesia, Canada and India. He is the author of two other Alba House titles: Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows: Life and Prayers and He Love Them to the End: Meditations on the Gospels of the Passion.