How Don Dolindo Rescued a Soul in America
Servant of God Don Dolindo Ruotolo—the gentle, brilliant, long-suffering priest through whom Jesus gave us the words of the Surrender Novena—had spiritual gifts and experiences that many people would categorize as extraordinary phenomena. He had visits from Jesus, Mary, and the angels; he could read souls and prophesy; and, as in the following story, he bilocated.
Yet to Don Dolindo, these events weren’t extraordinary at all, and he didn’t consider himself a uniquely elevated soul (in fact, it was the opposite: he considered himself lowly and foolish, a “poor instrument in God’s hands.”) Rather, he believed the supernatural marks of his life flowed directly from his priesthood.
“Jesus did not reveal Himself to me in an extraordinary way, but simply by intensifying the ordinary channel of my priestly personality,” he explains in the autobiography he wrote under obedience to his confessors in 1923. “He would help me, strengthen me, and operate in me through my priesthood.
“That is to say, the activity of Jesus was not an act of extraordinary mysticism but rather Jesus acting through the priesthood.”
Don Dolindo even discouraged the pursuit of the extraordinary and fantastical, and encouraged the pursuit of holiness through the ordinary and wholly accessible means of the Church and Her sacraments.
“When I hear stories of extravagant occurrences—this I admit with some bewilderment—it causes me to react with a certain skepticism and incredulity,” Don Dolindo writes in his autobiography. “Very often I have left books unfinished in which visions, ecstasies, and outlandish tales were related. This aversion of mine was not, however, the result of a materialistic perspective but rather because I wished to be certain of the truth. Instead of the extraordinary I have always preferred the normal and ordinary way.”
And so, from Don Dolindo’s perspective, all the spiritual gifts that he received were extensions of his sacramental priesthood. While others might consider these events extraordinary, he saw them as ordinary channels of God’s grace working through his priesthood to save souls.
