Fasting like the Founder An outcast. A runaway, arrested and imprisoned. Isolated, deathly ill, without medical treatment or access to the Sacraments. This was how St. Stanislaus began the year 1670, with a failed attempt to leave the Piarists and found a new congregation. On Dec. 11 of that year, however, he was permitted to retract his former religious vows. He made new vows to God in his oblatio, and thus began the Congregation of Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception. Three-and-a-half centuries later, as this Congregation inaugurated its Jubilee on the cusp of the year 2020, few could have predicted we’d all experience a similar isolation from medical and sacramental aids around the world. The virus now known as SARS-COV-2 was only observed in a few scattered places at that time. Nevertheless, our Father Founder, just canonized in 2016, would soon show how necessary was his intercession as the “Patron Saint of Those in Mortal Danger.” Saint Stanislaus can help us even in ordinary times, however: His life models the “Paschal Path,” living in a What does St. Stanislaus Papczyński, the Founder of the Marians, have to tell us today about fasting? By Br. Stephen, MIC On the Paschal Path 12 Marian Helper • Spring 2022 • marian.org
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