Hey everybody,
Today’s the feast of St. Paul of the Cross, and you’re reading The Tuesday Pillar Post.
He was born Paolo Francesco Danei, in the 1690s to parents who lost 10 of their 16 children in infancy, and who moved from town to town to make a living with a series of stores. Death was their constant companion, and the uncertainty of failing businesses, and the faith, which was the fixture of their lives.
At 19, he experienced in prayer a clarity about his life that would drive everything which came after. After the crosses of his childhood, the Lord made clear to him that the Cross — the Passion of Christ — is where he’d find the meaning of his own life, because it’s where he’d find Jesus Christ.
From there, it was finding the path. At 20, he fought in a Venetian Republic war against the Turks. He worked in the family business. He helped an older couple, who offered to leave him their estate. His priest uncle tried to arrange for him a marriage.
But none of those things was it. The Lord was calling him to something else. And at 26, he had a vision in prayer — a religious
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