Bl. Antonio Rosmini
Priest, Founder of the Institute of Charity
“There is no true wisdom but in God”
The first entry in his “Personal Diary”— limited to few, important spiritual events— reads thus:
“1797, March 24/25 – God gave me the grace to be born on the Vigil of the Feast of the Annunciation, thus showing His will to give her to me as Mother and Helper as I have always experienced her to be notwithstanding my ingratitude. Moreover, the Good God, qui prior me dilexit, favored me by granting to be reborn in the saving waters of Holy Baptism on the feast day of the Annunciation of the Angel to the Virgin Mary”.
The grace of Baptism and the protection of Mary were highlighted by Antonio as the most important factors of his birthday, expressing the centrality of the supernatural in his life.
His childhood and adolescence were dominated in a natural and spontaneous manner by God, the most important Member, in a sense, of the Rosmini household. Rosmini grew up with the greatness of God before his mind, prompting him to love Him, serve Him, and praise Him. As a child, he impressed everyone for his deep piety and love of God. Mrs. Fogolari, who lived opposite the church of St. Mary of Loreto, testified with great admiration how she would see “every morning the child Rosmini kneel down in prayer on the step outside the church on his way to school”. It was as a child that he learned from his mother to make the sign of the cross and to recite the Credo as soon as he was up from the bed, a custom which he maintained for the rest of his life. The chapel was at the centre of the life of the Rosmini household, with morning and evening prayers, the Rosary, and other devotions.
A special time of grace was reported by Antonio in the entry on his Diary in 1813:
“This year was for me a year of grace: God opened my eyes over many things, and I knew that there is no true wisdom but in God”.
The Rosminian poet Clemente Rebora believed that we can identify three essential moments of the work of the Holy Spirit on the soul of the young Rosmini, and that the special experience of 1813 is the first of them:
“The first exceptional moment of grace – when he was 15 years old – was the moment of his spiritual enlightening: “… I knew A Brief Life of Blessed Antonio Rosmini that there is no true wisdom but in God”. From this initial experience of “real” being came to him his boundless humility, his clinging lovingly to truth, his limitless love for charity in harmony with being, his abandoning himself completely to the Providence of his Father in Heaven”.
“The second moment, a consequence of the first, is that of his intellectual enlightenment, his discovery and persuasion that ideal being is the first principle of all knowledge, the first truth, the source and principle of certainty. His philosophy has its roots in this initial experience [Rebora is referring to Rosmini’s discovery of the “idea of being” and of its wider implications, in 1815, when he was 18 years old].
“The third moment, is the emergence of his asceticism through the experience of “moral being”, when at the age of 24 and soon after his ordination to the priesthood, God led him to “open his eyes over himself” and to discover the “principle of passivity” which became the foundation of his spiritual life and which implies in effect a constant interior activity of purification and an openness to the voice of God to do His will as soon as it pleases Him to manifest it to him”
Thus, for Rebora, the discovery by Rosmini and his profound meditations and understanding of the three modes of being— ideal, real, moral – rested on special perceptions, through grace, of the Father as the Creator, of the Son as the true Light, and of the Holy Spirit as the source of all morality. The same perceptions, however, although not perhaps as intense, can be the object of experience for any “baptized” person raised to a new supernatural and Trinitarian life by the character, that is, the imprint of the Word of God on our souls.
There is no doubt that the experience of grace of 1813 – “there is no other wisdom but in God” – was the immediate cause of Antonio’s vocation to the priesthood. He revealed his intention to his parents in 1814 and, as he had feared, it was received with dismay and firm opposition. They had planned to place the future of their aristocratic position and wealth on his most capable shoulders and had dreamt for him an extremely successful career in the world; the idea of the son of their dreams becoming a simple, insignificant priest hurt gravely both their pride and their expectations.
Antonio remained firm and clear; for him there was no better way of living one’s life but to dedicate it entirely to serving God and neighbor. This is what he wrote to a friend in 1814, “I have decided to become a priest and to use all that I have to get for myself a treasure in heaven. The little knowledge I hope to have with God’s help I plan to use it in teaching others and do good to them”; and to his teacher Pietro Orsi, in 1815, “We, who die so soon after being born, can do little and therefore must choose the best. How I would like to be of help to my brothers and sisters! Dear Don Pietro, pray the good God for me, because without Him we can do nothing”.
Antonio’s parents tried to dissuade him from the priesthood by asking a priest to talk to him, with the result that the priest, having listened to Antonio, became a strong supporter of his decision with his parents, who finally and grudgingly gave in and granted their permission.
Pier Modesto, still dreaming great things for his son, tried to persuade him to do his theological studies in Rome, where he had good connections who would help him to pursue a successful Church career. But Antonio chose the University of Padua and on 22nd November 1816 he moved there with three other close friends to an apartment near the Basilica of St. Anthony.
The three years he spent in Padua strengthened even further his passion for intellectual and theological matters, engaging in serious, extensive research, visiting and debating with lecturers, buying, as far as his finances allowed him, precious books for immediate use or for his library of Rovereto. We have a number of letters written to his father giving information about his progress:
“I have had no time yet to visit the most precious places of art in Padua; I have visited, however, more than once the libraries of the Seminary and of the Bishop:
what an immense collection of books! I must confess that I must keep a tight control over myself not to spent all I have in books, since it seems to me that gold is nothing in comparison with such treasures of wisdom”; and again, “For food, we prepare it ourselves – the main dish being always the queen of all food, “Lady Polenta””.
In a letter of 1819, he describes to his father a typical day: “I getup at about 6am, and after prayer I study until 8am. After breakfast I attend lessons until midday. I attend Mass in the Basilica, and then back home I study until 2pm, when I have something to eat. After lunch, I occupy myself in conversations or in some other useful activity until 4.30. I then continue my study until 7.30pm, from which time until 9pm I enjoy myself in conversations with lecturers or with my excellent friends. At 9pm the five of us are all at home, where we gather in a room for common spiritual reading, meditation, and Rosary. After which we have our dinner, and after a few more moments of conversation we retire to our rooms, where, after prayer, I finally go to bed and sleep soundly till morning”.
The conversations with his “excellent friends” centered especially on new projects aimed at defending the Catholic doctrine, or the purity of the Italian language, or the setting up of printing facilities for the translation of the Bible in many languages, and of other classical works. The most valued and urgent project, however, was the setting up of the “Society of Friends”, that envisaged a group of “friends” – priests and others – living together in a “common house” and working tirelessly in defense of Catholic teaching by means of powerful, solid, and persuasive books and articles collected into what was meant to be the Catholic answer to the French Encyclopaedia of Diderot and D’Alembert, well known for its anti-religion, anti-God, anti-Church attacks. The young Rosmini was eaten up by sorrow in seeing the immense damage done to humanity and to the Catholic Church by the muddled writings of the French Encyclopaedia that had become so popular and appealing by giving easy, superficial, and mistaken solutions to the fundamental problems of mankind. He felt desperately the need to show the falsity of such views by means of strict reasoning and of sound philosophical and theological principles. The Society of Friends was seen by him as the means for undertaking such restoration of the sciences in defense of the “catholic religion”.
The implementation of the project demanded a huge amount of time, energy, research, and Antonio and two of his closest friends embraced the new adventure with great enthusiasm.
Their efforts continued for a few years, then, soon after the ordination to the priesthood, the whole project came to a sudden end. We shall see the reasons later.
Pier Modesto died in 1820, leaving to Antonio most of his possessions and titles. To manage the considerable patrimony, Antonio employed his mother’s nephew, Count Francesco Salvatori. Antonio was most generous with his money, especially with the poor, but also in supporting all worth-while initiatives of the authorities in Rovereto, and, progressively, using it to finance various works of charity of the Institute. He helped St. John Bosco on a number of occasions and financed the setting up of a printing house to help the “street children” Don Bosco was gathering in those days in Turin.
Antonio was ordained priest on 21st April 1821 at Chioggia near Venice since his own diocese of Trento was still waiting for the appointment of a new Bishop. It was a most important occasion for him, and of all the titles, the only one he will use for the rest of his life after his signature will be “priest”.
He wrote in his diary: “From this hour onwards I must be a new man, live in heaven with my heart and mind, converse always with Christ, despise and flee from earthly things. I must return from the altar a saint, an apostle, a man full of God, I must progress in all virtues and be the first in love of hard work, humiliation and suffering”.
The way he celebrated Mass left a great impression on people. St. John Bosco told a young priest, “I do not recall seeing any priest say Mass with such devotion as Fr. Rosmini. One could experience his most lively faith, source of his charity, goodness, modesty and exterior gravity”. And Fr. Villoresi, “I have seen how the Saints celebrate the divine Sacrifice. I was persuaded that Fr. Rosmini was no less a Saint than the greatest philosopher”. His custom was to say Mass by himself or with one or two of his guests, since it was a rather lengthy period, full of the outpouring of his soul. He prepared faithfully, celebration took about one hour, followed by thanksgiving. It was also customary for him, whenever he could, to read the Bible in an orderly fashion, kneeling, for about one hour after Mass. He thus confided to his secretary Fr. Paoli in 1851 to have read the entire Bible seven times by this method.