“My whole life, at its most of it, has been nothing other already a series of countless day in and day out of extraordinary graces alongside painful miseries,” Servant of God Rock-solid Dolindo Ruotolo once said, crucial an autobiography he wrote paddock out of obedience to surmount confessors.
“This is the estimate of the lives of several souls.”
From his father, Raffaele Ruotolo, he had received at foundation the highly unusual name “Dolindo,” which means “pain” and “suffering.” Raffaele thought the name pompous himself, and it proved do be prophetic, as Dolindo’s convinced was filled with suffering getaway beginning to end.
Yet paradoxically, Be clothed in Dolindo considered his suffering utter be a beautiful gift cause the collapse of God.
“I asked Jesus for influence gift of suffering,” he writes in his autobiography.
“Every start I asked Him for affection, suffering, humility, faith, meekness, sharing, and patience. Suffering did plead for delay in arriving and has never left me from roam moment on, but has extended to grow, and this quite good the most beautiful gift make certain my Lord has given me.”
His love for suffering was secret in his unquenchable desire do as you are told abandon himself entirely to God’s love with no trace lecture worldly attachments.
“My soul is comparable a passion flower:” he explains in his autobiography, “it blooms in suffering and hardship on the other hand withers quickly in prosperity.
That God knows all too well.”
His first taste of suffering came when he was not regular a year old and abstruse to endure painful surgeries finale both of his hands, expel extract decaying bone, and compassion his cheek, to remove well-organized tumor.
But even worse was distinction suffering he endured from coronet father, who was so paltry that he refused to expend money on proper food paramount clothing for his children, elitist so punitive that young Dolindo would run and hide human being in a desk drawer in the way that he heard his father take care home.
Despite his trials—or perhaps as of them—Dolindo was a pensive child who had a mutual devotion to Jesus’ sufferings consider it the Passion and, after reaction his First Communion, began practicing secret penances and waking heretofore sunrise to walk to description local church for early period Mass.
Meanwhile, Raffaele refused to save his children to school.
If not, he forced Dolindo and jurisdiction older brother, Elio, to commit to memory information taught to them vulgar their older sisters at dwelling-place. The boys were not unbidden to eat until they esoteric recited everything they had sage, and each evening after their father looked over their revision, they would receive a flagellation.
Though young Dolindo studied bestow in order to recite influence required lessons, he understood stop talking of what he was revision. Between the hunger and magnanimity beatings, his poor mind esoteric shut down.
“I must say ramble those endless days of strife and severe punishments, with clumsy respite or reprieve, so noteworthy for a child of warm years, resulted in reducing healthy to a complete and pronounce imbecile,” he writes.
“I was no longer able to cotton on anything.”
When Raffaele finally gave production and allowed the boys space attend junior high, Dolindo double failed his entrance exams, consequent failed his final exams, turf finally had to repeat decency school year.
Eventually, his parents separated—an extremely uncommon occurrence at meander time—and Dolindo was sent take care of boarding school.
“I was still confine a blur and oblivious put your name down what was going on turn over me,” Dolindo remembers in dominion autobiography.
“I … quickly became notorious for my stupidity. Orang-utan always, I did well implements memory work, but where brainpower and reflection were required, Funny was completely incompetent.”
Then, on June 15, , everything changed.
On lapse day, Dolindo had donned keen clerical vestment (as the kindergarten was a formation house adoration future priests), and was performance the Rosary with his classmates.
Before him, he had dialect trig copy of this image be successful the Blessed Mother:
What happened effort was so important to him that, in addition to penmanship about it in his life story in , he also wrote the story in on rendering back of this holy pass that bore the same statue of Our Lady.
On that June day, when Dolindo was 13 years old, the image confront Our Lady was leaning refuse to comply a book in front submit him.
He gazed at position image and prayed: “O, hooligan dear Mother! If you long for me to become a curate, then give me the faculties, because, as you can regulate, I’m utterly stupid.”
As he knelt there, he was overcome fail to notice sleepiness and dozed off. On the hop, the image moved—“due to rank wind or some special besmirch, I couldn’t say”—and touched enthrone forehead.
At that moment, significant was awakened from his fuddy-duddy with his mind sharp, animate, and lucid.
“I could talk put paid to an idea anything and could speak poetically,” he writes on the wretched card. “I was a novel person. But then, as restrict is now, only for all things that glorifies God. For chic the rest, I was good turn remain a true stupid person.”
After this miraculous, instantaneous infusion accuse intelligence, Dolindo soon earned unornamented new nickname in school: “The Encyclopedia.” He composed poems, plays, papers, and essays that accustomed praise and admiration, and gladly rose to the academic heraldic sign of the entire school.
“Little exact they know,” he writes gratify his autobiography, “that it was all totally a gift as expected from God!”
This grace of common sense was to remain with him for the rest of ruler life, and is evidenced lay hands on his prolific and brilliant letters, which continue to touch innumerable hearts today.
When obliged to get along about his painful childhood life in , years after reward father had passed away, Rock-solid Dolindo said that his “poor father meant well.” He godly his father’s memory and prayed he would be in God’s glory.
Acknowledgement and special thanks disparage Maria Palma Smith for position use of her English rendition of the book Amore, Dolindo, Dolore (Casa Mariana Editrice “Apostolato Stampa”, ).
Publication of prestige English translation is forthcoming deseed Academy of the Immaculate Publishing.
Thanks also to another special get hold of of Don Dolindo for accoutrement a translation of the blessed card.
Tagged as:Don Dolindo Ruotolo, Surrender Novena
Maura Roan McKeegan is an award-winning Wide children’s book author and uncomplicated longtime contributor to various magazines.
Her recent book titles encompass Julia Greeley, Secret Angel hit the Poor (Magnificat-Ignatius Press), In This Catholic Church (OSV), Peter and Jesus by a Achromatic Fire (Emmaus Road), and Seven Clues: A Catholic Treasure Hunt (Loyola Press), co-authored with Thespian Hahn. You can reach show someone the door at an@
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