Before His Ordination, Saint Pio Brunone Lanteri Laid Rock Solid Foundations

In 1782, during the five months preceding his priestly ordination, Venerable Pio Brunone Lanteri composed a Spiritual Directory. It was found among the papers left after his death. Monsignor Frutaz included it in the Positio, introducing the Servant of God’s cause of beatification in Rome.¹ This remarkable document shows the essential aspects of Father Lanteri’s life program.

Besides practical resolutions, the document contains a brief exposition of the basic principles by which the author intended to lead his life. While only an outline, it is instructive to read and contemplate these principles. Pio Brunone continually imbibed, loved and served these truths. This attitude and diligence explain his fruitful apostolate. He always remained faithful to his youthful ideals.

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A paragraph in the Directory reveals how the young priest understood that Catholic truths are the unshakable rock on which every spiritual edifice is built.

“I am convinced of the same truths that persuaded the saints. They are and will always be the same. Neither time nor thoughtlessness can take away their strength. Therefore, just as they moved me once, with God’s help, they will move me always.”

His ardent desire was to know, love, and serve God. This set of goals formed the objective of all his studies, meditations, and works.

“I am solemnly consecrated to God and fully dedicated to his service. Ad majorem Dei gloriam. Therefore, I must eat and sleep only as much as necessary to live. I live only for the glory of God and must use all faculties of soul and body, to think, speak, work, give my life, and do all it takes, no matter what happens. I must take no step nor move any straw apart from God.”

Lanteri knew this complete dedication to God’s service was impossible without a special devotion to Our Lady, the Mediatrix of all graces. She is the one who forms the members of Our Lord Jesus Christ’s Mystical Body. Pio Brunone consecrated himself to Mary as a slave and placed himself at her complete disposal. Although unfamiliar with the Treatise on True Devotion, these lines he wrote in the Directory are consistent with the doctrine of Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort.²

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“I want to have a tender love for the Virgin Mary and a child-like confidence in her such that it seems impossible for me to be defeated and perish in this battle. I will have recourse to her as a chick immediately takes shelter under its mother’s wings on hearing the cry of the ravenous kite. After making an act of love for God, I will say: ‘Monstra te esse Matrem (Show yourself to be a Mother), etc. I will do so with the confidence a child appeals to his mother, asking for everything he needs with great assurance as if she were obliged to give it, having recourse to her in all his labors, and as it were, obliging her to desire her child’s greater good. If earthly mothers (although bad at times) do not deny anything, what can one say of the great Mother of God?

“I will take advantage of all my Lady’s merits, graces, and privileges, aware of having the same right to them as her children. When celebrating [Mass], I will beg her to lend me her robes, jewelry, and all house ornaments for the occasion and will offer all her merits to her blessed Son to cover up the indecency of this sordid inn. As she told Saint Gertrude, I am confident she will do so with great pleasure.

“I will unite my acts of faith, hope, and charity with my mother’s merits, and my poor capital, invested in such a great and rich trade, will grow exceedingly.”

Pio Brunone made Father Nicholas Joseph of Diessbach his spiritual director soon after the latter had saved him from Jansenist errors. When Amicizia Cristiana was formed, he committed himself to obey its founder. In the Directory, the Servant of God goes further. Seeking to give himself entirely to the service of his Lord and to make an additional self-donation before his priestly ordination, he wrote:

“Having already consecrated my body to Him with a vow of perpetual chastity, I now renew that vow and dedicate to His service the faculties He gave me, desiring and asking the grace to consecrate myself even more to Him with the vow of poverty. Until I do so, I ask Him to make me know the vanity of all things, to grant me the spirit of poverty, and to give me the contempt He had for all worldly things. While waiting, I will not dispose of anything without Father Diessbach’s prior participation and approval.

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“Moreover, having commended me to the Lord and given it serious thought, I resolve before God and the entire heavenly court to take advantage of the freedom in which the Lord placed me to give myself to Him unreservedly in order to be one of those who tradiderunt animas suas propter nomen Domini Nostri Jesu Christi (they surrendered their souls for the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ).”

There follows a Latin vow of which we translate the essential part:

“To confirm and put into practice this resolution [I say]: In the presence of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the entire heavenly court, I promise Your Divine Majesty [perpetual chastity and] obedience to my [spiritual] father, Father Nicholas Diessbach, leaving to the latter the faculty to interpret and even annul this vow of mine at his discretion.”

After joining Aa, the Servant of God proposed to follow its school of spirituality, which did not contradict but completed Amicizia’s. His method for carrying out this resolution is seen in the following practical resolutions contained in the Directory.

“I propose, during a month’s trial, to practice every day six acts of generosity and to write them down, always striving to think, speak, and act as a saint in the spirit of a true minister of God, a true friend and confrere [Aa member] requires.

“I propose to meditate every fortnight on the spirit of a true priest, friend, and confrere. I will say the Veni Creator and many times the Emitte Spiritum (Send forth Thy Spirit), etc., and examine how my actions have conformed to it since the last time I scrutinized myself.”

Both Aa and Amicizia Cristiana considered the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius as fundamental for the spiritual progress of their members. In addition to practicing them, the Venerable Lanteri sought to study the best way to teach them so they could produce their fruits in abundance. Fr. Pietro Gastaldi, one of his early biographers, described Father Lanteri’s methodology.

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“In an old notebook in which he wrote down the books and works with which he enriched his library, I see that in the first ten years of his priesthood, he provided himself with 36 different authors who, in fact, study, explain, or comment on the little book of [St. Ignatius’] Exercises.”³

The doctrine of Saint Alphonsus de Liguori opposed the detestable morality of Jansenism. Indeed, it constituted a most effective antidote against the spread of that sect. Thanks to Father Diessbach, Pio Brunone Lanteri carefully studied the teachings of the great Doctor, one of the pillars of his formation. Amicizia fought for them and spread them in Switzerland, France, and Bavaria. The Redemptorists unanimously recognized that Venerable Lanteri introduced these teachings into Italy, being their leading advocate.

Father Lanteri’s formation was based upon the solid pillars of devotion to Our Lady, Saint Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises, and the teachings of Saint Alphonsus de Liguori. Their influence exerted themselves at every moment of his life. Through their practice, Venerable Pio Brunone Lanteri dedicated his entire life to the service of God.

Photo Credit: © Didier Descouens – CC BY-SA 4.0