SOURCE MATERIAL FOR ST. PAUL OF THE CROSS

4. SERMONS AND MEDITATIONS OF ST. PAUL OF THE CROSS

Seventy-three sermons and fourteen mediations on Christ’s passion given by St. Paul of the Cross have been preserved.  Of these, all but the last nine sermons were transcribed by the founder himself.  They are bound in two volumes and preserved in the archives of the Passionist Order.  Age plus frequent usage have left them in a bad state.

Apart from the original transcriptions, there is also a very good and legible copy of the entire set of sermons and meditations in the Passionist archives in Rome.  Between the years of 1925 and 1929, thirty-two sermons and five meditations on Christ’s passion were published in the “Bollettino della Congregazione”.

Although the content of Paul’s letters reveal his originality, his sermons and meditations are, for the most part, material of a different kind.  He himself judiciously admitted in his letters that his sermons were copied from other sources. Since many witnesses have testified that the founder was an extraordinarily gifted orator and preacher, we conclude that these sermons were not memorized or read but functioned as background and reference material for his own original deliveries.

It is nearly impossible to determine all the authors or texts used by the saint.  In one of his letters, he states he borrowed greatly from Svegliarino Cristiano.  This is an Italian translation of a work entitled Sermonarium, a kind of anthology of sermons published by the bishop of Cadiz (Spain), Msgr. Jose de Barcia y Zambrana.  A comparison of the sermons of St. Paul of the Cross with the above-mentioned text reveals that some of the sermons were transcribed in their entirety.  In others, whole fragments were omitted, and not infrequently the succession of treated points was modified.

The subject matter of the homilies dealt with the “four last things”, that is, death, judgment, hell, and heaven.  These themes were the foundation stones of lay missions in the eighteenth century, the primary purpose being to effect a conversion, i.e., to motivate a person to receive the sacrament of penance. Therefore, sermons impressed upon listeners the seriousness of their situation in a most dramatic way.  Viewed from today’s theology, it is terrible and bewildering to see the degree to which fear dominated the content of these sermons.

There is no original composition by St. Paul of the Cross among his fourteen meditations on the passion.  What attracts our attention, in these as well as in the sermons, however, are the numerous, mostly Latin, quotations. These include quotations from Scripture and from a wide variety of other works, such as those by Justin, Augustine, Bonaventure, Bernard of Clairvaaux, Anslem of Canterbury, and others.  Aside from what might be considered the works of the Church Fathers, Vincent Ferreri is often cited, and many other citations are taken from the spiritually edifying literature of Paul’s time.  A considerable portion of the meditations are devoted to the revelations of St. Bridget, which, next to sacred Scripture, were quoted most frequently.

Organizationally, these meditations on the passion consisted of separate fragments of the evangelists’ accounts of the passion.  Each fragment is surrounded by rich scenery and often a lot of fantasy.  First and foremost, the purpose of the meditation was to arouse the listener’s compassion and then – at the point where personal sin is seen as the cause of Jesus’ suffering – to effect a strong loathing for the listener’s own sins.

What we have already said about the function of the written sermons is also applicable to the written meditations: They were intended to stimulate ideas and to serve as points of reference.  In favor of this opinion is the fact that all the preserved meditations are relatively short compositions and, if read in a preaching style, would scarcely last more than fifteen minutes.  We know from the testimony of witnesses, however, that the saint’s oral meditations on the passion lasted much longer. Furthermore, it is highly improbable that the founder, while speaking on Christ’s passion, the main theme of his own life, did not use his own ideas too.

In summary, it can be concluded that the sermons and meditations, although written in the founder’s own hand, differ in content from his letters.  Only very limited and narrow conjectures, therefore, about the theological thought of the saint can be based on them.