19 one of the clearest signs of God’s protection. The accuracy of his description – almost half a century after the event itself – brings to mind the biblical testimony of people touched by the power of God’s love, which they recollected in the minutest detail, i.e., the calling of John the Apostle (cf. Jn 1:27-34) or Saul’s meeting the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus (Acts 26). In time, the youthful and imprudent zeal of the novice would be exposed to considerable tests and true darkness. Despite this, he [Stanislaus] would never abandon the path of his vocation. God, who revealed His omnipotence to him, foresaw a different kind of martyrdom for the future Founder of the Order of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. Father Stanislaus kept painful memories of his last years in the Piarist Order: “Many know that I was in the Congregation of the Pious Schools – more dear to me than my life – in that sweetest Society of the Poor of the Mother of God. It is quite difficult to explain how much I valued my vocation, roused by God Himself. Even more, I remained in this holiest company, bound not only by the bonds of love, but also by the solemn obligation of the oath to persevere in it forever. I desired the first to be indissoluble, while the second was dissolved by the one to whom has been given the authority of binding and loosing, the Vicar of the Most Holy Jesus Christ, the legitimate successor of St. Peter, Pope Clement X. Yet, ah! How it came to this! What a way of the cross! Furthermore, unimaginable confusions, scruples, doubts, anguish, and fears tormented and tortured me. For who could have such a lax conscience that, without these, he could pass from the state of religious vows (even if they were simple) to a merely secular [state of life]?”8 Stanislaus lived out in union with the suffering Savior all the sufferings caused to him by his brethren and his interior struggle to remain faithful to God’s will. Two collections of Passion sermons were created during this period, while in the first sentence of the Oblatio, prepared in prayer, an invocation would appear which was the foundation of his faith and the motive for serving God: “In the name of our 8 St. Papczyński, Foundation of the House of Recollections, in: Selected Writings, Warszawa -Stockbridge, 2021, pp. 901-902.
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