It was the perfect setting in which to read a biography of St. Gabriel Possenti. I was sitting in what could only be described as a tree-house. The platform stood eleven feet off the ground, outside of cell-phone range, and surrounded by a forest of poplar, maple and pine. A twelve-gauge shotgun rested to my left, and on the bucket to my right lay some spare ammunition and a rosary.
Virtues of Chivalry
I was hunting for bear and rabbit. It felt good to be away from technology and modern means of communication. Back at the hunt camp that evening, I would cook supper with an iron skillet over a wood stove.
My friend Eric sat over in the next tree stand. I knew Eric from the Knights of Columbus and our local pro-life movement. Eric has probably read every book written in the English language on Catholic knighthood. He is a big believer in restoring the virtues of chivalry to young Catholic men. Having watched the emasculation of the Catholic Church in North America over the past few decades, Eric and I often find ourselves discussing the meaning of Catholic manhood.
St. Gabriel Possenti, whose feast day is today, February 27, was a good example of Catholic manhood. He was born in Assisi on March 1, 1838. He was the eleventh of thirteen children born to Sante and Agnes Possenti. He hardly knew his mother, who had been unable to nurse him and sent him to live with a wet-nurse for his first year. Agnes died before the saint reached his fourth birthday, and Sante fell into a deep depression.
Fortunately, the young saint would rise above life's circumstances. He was something of a wild youth. According to John Michael Snyder in Gun Saint, the "young Possenti began to acquire a reputation both for dancing ability with young women and for rambunctious behavior outdoors."
Standing Beside the Virgin
Things began to change when Possenti met Major O'Reilly. The Major was an exiled Irishman who had fled to Italy and found a place training soldiers in the papal army. Pope Pius IX would subsequently put the Major in charge of the papal garrison at Spoleto, and it was here that he befriended the Possenti family.
O'Reilly became like a second father to Possenti. The grizzled veteran taught the young lad how to wield a knife, as well as how to shoot a pistol, rifle and shotgun. The Major allowed the boy to practice on the military firing range until he became quite a marksman. These skills would serve him on at least two occasions in the future.
If the Major became like a surrogate father, the young saint turned to Mary as a surrogate mother. Having lost his own mother prior to his fourth birthday, Possenti developed a deep devotion to the Blessed Mother.
"Gabriel loved Mary as his Sorrowing Mother, the woman who saw her own Son die on the Cross," Roger Mercurio wrote in a short biography of the saint. "Gabriel stood next to her on the Cross, to be a ‘son' to her in Jesus' place. He stood by her to show the many others how they too must become her sons and daughters." He took the religious name Brother Gabriel of Mary Our Lady of Sorrows, when he joined the Passionists.
Time to Stand and Fight
Two incidents in St. Gabriel Possenti's life are particularly notable for their evidence of manly virtue. The first took place when the saint was still young. He had been traveling through the woods to visit his uncle when a man approached him along the path.
The man proposed that the two travel together for companionship. St. Gabriel Possenti agreed. As they passed an abandoned shack, the stranger accosted the saint, suggesting actions for which God obliterated Sodom and Gomorrah.
"You fiend," St. Gabriel cried as he brandished his hunting knife. "If you touch me I'll stick you through."
The assailant fled without further prompting.
There are times when a Catholic must turn the other cheek. Yet St. Gabriel shows us there are other times when a Catholic must stand and fight. How many of our young people could be saved from sexual predators by being armed with the example of Saint Gabriel?
Which brings up the second incident in which St. Gabriel Possenti demonstrated the virtues of Catholic manhood. Again it involved a potential rape, but this time the victims were a couple of young virgins. The perpetrators were two soldiers-turned-brigands who were part of a larger gang pillaging the village.
Rather than hide in the monastery like the rest of the clergy, St. Gabriel Possenti approached the rapists and grabbed their revolvers. With a pistol in each hand, he ordered the brutes to unhand the crying maidens.
The bandits laughed. The rest of their gang came over and mocked St. Gabriel's cassock bearing our Lord's Sacred Heart. They pointed out that a single seminarian was no match for over a dozen battle-hardened soldiers.
Just then a small lizard dashed between the saint and the brigands. With a pinch of the trigger, the seminarian shot the lizard dead. "The next one will be through your heart," he told the gang's leader.
The soldiers let go of the young ladies, returned the stolen loot and extinguished the fires they had lit, then fled the village. They knew better than to test the manly virtue of this man of God. For St. Gabriel Possenti did not abuse his strength, but rather he used it to defend the weak against unjust threats of violence.
St. Gabriel Possenti, pray for us!
