A Month with Mary

A Profound Reform of Heart in the School of Mary
BY DON DOLINDO RUOTOLO
TRANSLATED BY – MSGR. ARTHUR BURTON CALKINS
ACADEMY OF THE IMMACULATE: NEW BEDFORD, MA

First Day: My Heart, a Flower which Mary must Cultivate
Second Day: My Heart and the Heart of Mary
Third Day: My Temperament
Fourth Day: Imagination
Fifth Day: Hiddenness
Sixth Day: Trust
Seventh Day: God
Eighth Day: Jesus
Ninth Day: My Soul
Tenth Day: The Grace of God
Eleventh Day: Mary’s Grace
Twelfth Day: The Channels of Grace
Thirteenth Day: Holy Baptism
Fourteenth Day: The Spirit of the World
Fifteenth Day: The Spirit of Jesus Christ
Sixteenth Day: Renouncing the Demon
Seventeenth Day: The Passions and the Flesh
Eighteenth Day: My Miseries
Nineteenth Day: Soldier of Jesus Christ
Twentieth Day: Spiritual Combat
Twenty-first Day: Human Respect
Twenty-second Day: The Misery of Human Judgment
Twenty-third Day: The Aspirations of the Heart
Twenty-fourth Day: A Canticle of Love
Twenty-fifth Day: The Eucharist
Twenty-sixth Day: The Transformation of the Soul
Twenty-seventh Day: The Medicine of the Soul
Twenty-eighth Day: The Goodness of God in Forgiveness
Twenty-ninth Day: Death
Thirtieth Day: The Presence of God
Thirty-first Day: The Offering of One’s Heart to Mary

For Just One Soul

The priest Dolindo Ruotolo was born in Naples on 6 October 1882 and died there on 19 November 1970 in the odor of sanctity.

His life was a drama of love for God and of suffering lived entirely in the shadow of the cross.

He was a miracle of apostolic works which consumed his strength in charity up to his last day on earth.

The spirit of penance and profound humility rendered his soul transparent to the point of concentrating all of the light of the Lord, which was shed on souls like the sun through a clear crystal …

He wrote a commentary on the entire Old and New Testament, 33 volumes constituting a massive and solid structure, requested by priests and laity from every part of the world. He wrote pages and pages of ascetic and mystical theology.

They called him a genius; he felt himself to be a “nothing” in the hands of God. Others didn’t understand him; he responded by loving them, as only the saints know how to love.

His complete love for God and Our Lady, his fidelity to the Church, which he lived as martyrdom, were distilled in an immense love for souls for whom his prayers and sacrifices knew no limits. Even in the last years of his life (paralysis brought him to physical disintegration in ten years), even to his last days he never denied his spiritual help to souls.

How many times he was already in bed, exhausted by illnesses and overcome by weariness … but if someone knocked at his door in the late evening to seek his help, he never allowed him to be sent away, but received him in any case! How many times he had just seated himself at his poor family table to eat his meager and penitential fare and they knocked at the door to speak with him. Immediately he rose from the table; there was a soul who was asking for help and one couldn’t let him wait.

The poor meal was skipped …

* * *

This little book, A Month with Mary, also originated from an act of charity of Father Dolindo.

Laura de Rosis, a person from Rossano Calabro, asked him for spiritual thoughts for every day of the month of May. The good Father Dolindo wrote thirty-one meditations for her, one for every day of the month. It was thus: everything for every soul, and his charity didn’t make it seem exaggerated for him to write a “A Month with Mary” for just one soul!

Besides, already in 1902, when he was still a theology student, he had written for his sister Maria no less than five Dialogues of the Soul with Jesus in a pocket sized notebook totaling 81 pages (printed in Epistolario 3:416-459); and from 9 to 12 October 1911 he had preached a course of spiritual exercises at the bed of the ailing Giulia Romeo of Rossano Calabro (printed in Epistolario 2:515-536).

Father Dolindo wrote A Month with Mary on pocket-sized pages joined into small fascicles of 8 to 12 pages. He sent them to Laura de Rosis every two to three days and later transcribed them with some modifications in volume III of his Autobiography: The Story of My Life in the Plan of the Great Mercy of God, pp. 1140 ff (cf. Epistolario 1:212n, 218n).

This work is from 1912: one of those years which passed in the life of Father Dolindo with the cadence of a “Way of the Cross” … But he, serene as ever, loved Christ the more, loved Our Lady the more and reflected this love in these few pages to which he wished to give the significant title: A Profound Reform of Heart in the School of Mary.

These meditations are written in the style of the Imitation of Christ.

Meditations for just one soul!

May these pages now reach every soul who reads them as an entirely personal word, a comfort from Heaven and a portent of holiness.