Lives of the Saints, by Alban Butler, Benziger Bros. ed. [1894], at sacred-texts.com

ST. GABRIEL OF THE SORROWFUL MOTHER.

GABRIEL POSSENTI, born March 1, 1838, the eleventh of thirteen children, was reared in a home that was none the less pious because cultured. Inordinately vain and passionately devoted to the pleasures of the world, it is little wonder that his teachers and companions were incredulous when he announced that he would enter the Passionist Order immediately upon his graduation.

His life in religion was one of love throughout—joyous love, made all the sweeter by the penances prescribed by his rule, which he fulfilled to the letter. There was nothing extraordinary about him except his fidelity to prayer, his love of mortification and his joyfulness of spirit. At the age of twenty-three, just as he was finishing his studies, he was stricken with consumption, of which he died at Isola on February 27, 1862. His feast is February 27.