The feast of the Presentation of Mary in the Temple is a central feast for we Passionists. The feast commemorates the (unrecorded) taking of Mary as a child to the Temple by her parents Joachim and Anne in order to place her under the protection of God.
For Passionists, it commemorates the day Bishop Gattinara clothed, our founder in the black habit as Paul began a journey that would lead him to found our Congregation. That, of course, happened many years after in 1720, which is why next year we begin our 300th Anniversary celebration. Paul named our first ‘Retreat’ – the traditional name for our homes- Presentation Retreat, and also the first retreat of the Passionist Nuns.
The feast of the Presentation is also the day in 1887 the Passionists arrived in Marrickville – to stay. Fr. Stanislaus Cross writes in his history how Cardinal Moran, who knew the Passionists from Ireland, asked the General when on a visit of Rome to send religious for the brand-new parish of St Brigid’s. “Five Passionists, from Ireland on the Feast of the Presentation of the Virgin Mary, 21st November, 1887 to take charge. The new arrivals were Very Rev. Father Alphonsus O’Neill, the leader, Frs. Marcellus Wright, Patrick Fagan, Colman Noonan, and the inestimable Brother Lawrence Carr.” When a few years later we opened our first ‘retreat’ in Goulburn, it was called Presentation Retreat.
From a businessman to a Passionist
Father Marcellus was a businessman when he joined the Passionists at the age of twenty-two. When he arrived in Australia, he was five years a priest. After ordination, he spent twelve months in the Paris House at Avenue Hoche where the English/Irish Passionists had served the English-speaking people of Paris since 1863. After that, he had gone to live at St. Mungo’s in Glasgow. His ministry was taken up with the giving of parish missions and his preaching was described as “all fire and earnestness.”
In the course of his years in Australia, Fr. Marcellus was superior at New Town in Tasmania and at St. Brigid’s, Marrickville and he was the first Novice Master when the Novitiate was established at Mary’s Mount in Goulburn, New South Wales.
