This article provides an insightful look at Don Dolindo Ruotolo's beautiful Novena to the Immaculate Conception. It gives a background on Don Dolindo's life of suffering and mystical experiences which shaped his spirituality and writings. The novena offers rich reflections on Mary's immaculate holiness, modeling virtue and humility. It highlights her role as refuge for sinners and channel of God's mercy. The article explains how the novena elucidates Church teaching on the Immaculate Conception and applies it to Christian life. It suggests the novena brought hope amidst the crises facing the Church and world when written in 1940. This spiritual gem deserves to be more widely known among English-speaking Catholics.
The feast of the Immaculate Conception celebrates the solemn belief that Mary, Mother of God, was free from original sin from the moment of her conception. This feast day on December 8th provides a time for Catholics to reflect on Mary's unique holiness and her role in the story of salvation.
One of the most profound reflections on the meaning of the Immaculate Conception was written by Don Dolindo Ruotolo (1882-1970), a priest from Naples, Italy. Though largely unknown outside of Italy during his lifetime, Don Dolindo left a rich spiritual legacy through his voluminous writings on Scripture, theology, and mysticism. He composed beautiful novenas in honor of Christ and Mary that drew from his deep mystical experiences and knowledge of Scripture and tradition.
Don Dolindo's Novena to the Immaculate Conception, written in honor of the feast day, provides a spiritual gem that deserves to be more widely known among English-speaking Catholics. Structured around daily themes and filled with poetic yet accessible language, the novena offers rich food for thought and prayer in the days leading up to the feast. It beautifully elucidates the Church's teachings about Mary's immaculate nature and applies them to the lives of all believers who struggle with sin but yearn for holiness.
Childhood Marked by Suffering
To better understand the spiritual insights contained in the Novena to the Immaculate Conception, it is helpful to know something of Don Dolindo's life story. Born in 1882 into a noble but impoverished family in Naples, his very name foreshadowed a life marked by suffering. In explaining his unusual first name, Don Dolindo wrote, “I was called Dolindo, which means pain.”
Physical pain entered his life early on. As an infant he underwent two surgeries, and the family’s poverty meant inadequate food, clothing and shoes. His father’s strict authoritarianism created a tense home environment. At the fragile age of 14, after his parents’ separation, Dolindo entered the minor seminary, leaving behind his difficult home life.
In 1905 he was ordained a priest, but his experiences of ecclesial misunderstanding and rejection began soon after. False accusations led to suspensions from ministry and exile from his religious community. At one point he endured several years without permission to celebrate Mass or minister sacraments. These sufferings shaped his spirituality profoundly, as he learned to radically abandon himself to God’s will in the midst of trials.
Early Mystical Experiences
While suspended from priestly ministry in his early 30s, Don Dolindo began experiencing profound mystical communications from God, which he transcribed. These experiences brought additional incomprehension from church authorities. Not until his late 50s was he fully rehabilitated by the Vatican and allowed to preach, hear confessions, and publish spiritual writings.
Nonetheless, Don Dolindo maintained an attitude of humble obedience, abandoning himself to Divine Providence. He is known for the Surrender or Abandonment Novena.
Prolific Spiritual Writings
In the 1930s and 1940s, Don Dolindo composed his 33-volume Commentary on Sacred Scripture. He also produced extensive writings on mysticism, numerous letters of spiritual direction, and beautiful novenas that became popular throughout Italy. Central themes of his spirituality included abandonment to God’s will, trust in Divine Mercy, Eucharistic devotion, and Marian consecration. His mystical experiences inspired an ardent love for Scripture and the Catholic faith.
Don Dolindo promoted the role of the laity by forming the “Apostolato Stampa” (“Press Apostolate”), composed of highly educated women and men who helped publish his works. They met in “Schools of Religion” for Scripture study and catechesis. Though these initiatives brought more trouble from church authorities, they bore fruit in the spiritual renewal of many laypeople.
In his extensive Marian writings, Don Dolindo highlighted Mary’s virtues of humility, purity, and obedience that allowed her to become the mother of the Savior. He promoted devotion to her. In his last years he produced a profound spiritual treatise on “Mary Immaculate Mother of God and Our Mother.”
Reflecting the Beauty of Holiness
This background gives a glimpse into the deep spirituality behind Don Dolindo’s Novena to the Immaculate Conception. Written with poetic eloquence and Scripture-saturated language, the novena provides rich food for reflection on Mary’s unique holiness. It draws out the implications of her Immaculate Conception for the lives of all believers.
The novena opens by calling Mary “the all beautiful” who brings “joy of salvation” like a radiant dawn. Her Immaculate Conception means she is “the greatest splendor of beauty, the most complete voice of praise that can come from a creature.” Mary’s beauty resides in her fullness of grace, her triumph over sin, and her fruitful obedience in giving birth to the Savior.
Don Dolindo writes that because Mary “had to crush the head of Satan, the quintessence of turpitude, she had to be all beautiful.” Her immaculate holiness comes not merely through a gift, but through spiritual victory and cooperation with redemption. “She shines with that mysterious beauty with which God created the first man, indeed, she shines even more because her beauty is not merely a gift but a victory.”
Model of Holiness for All
This novena is not just focused on praising Mary though. Don Dolindo also offers her as a model for believers struggling to live holy lives amidst temptation. “What has ruined us is pride, and what ruins us is pride. Yet what are we? Nothing.” The remedy is humble submission to God, repentance for sin, and openness to His transforming grace. “Let us therefore flee the world, the occasions of sin and the miseries of accursed pride, from which, as from a polluted source, impurity gushes forth.”
Mary’s immaculate holiness contrasts sharply with our sinfulness, but also offers hope. “We consider the purity of Mary, consecrated to God from her Conception... We are pure if we want God to come down to us and accomplish great things in us. What degrades us shamefully and prevents God's action in us is impurity.” Gazing at her beauty can inspire us to desire innocence and cultivate virtue. “Let us examine our life, humble ourselves for our past and present ugliness, detest our sins and begin to lead a truly pure life in thoughts, words and deeds.”
Mary’s humility likewise serves as a model, for “against this scene, we contrast the immaculate conception of Mary, the Woman promised in Eden, who was destined to crush the head of the infernal serpent for the Redeemer. What caused the fall of man? Pride.” The remedy is recognizing our nothingness before God. “Let us humbly submit ourselves to God sincerely, acknowledging ourselves as sinners, acknowledging our extreme wretchedness, and the merciful gaze of God will be upon us, restoring innocence through repentance and pouring out grace upon us to make us capable of every virtue.”
Refuge for Sinners
A striking theme woven through the novena is Mary’s role as refuge and advocate for sinners who desire conversion. Don Dolindo presents her as the merciful queen Esther interceding before King Ahasuerus, and the “light of mercy in our darkness and sins, who leads us to Jesus when we are unable to go to Him.”
He writes poetically of her maternal advocacy, “Clothed in purity, she cannot tolerate the filthy garment of sinners and comes to them as a Mother to clothe them with grace. But how can she clothe them? She, rich in divine Power, disperses proud thoughts from their hearts, she compels them, humbles them salutarily, and pushes them into the arms of God.”
Don Dolindo highlights Mary’s title “Refuge of Sinners,” explaining “Men consider the wise, the strong, and the generous as the pride of their lineage... Mary Most Holy is the seat of wisdom... She is supremely beneficent, because she is the channel of God’s mercy that flows from generation to generation on those who fear Him. She is our joy, our true heart.”
Hope for the Church
This novena was written by Don Dolindo in 1940, during a time of anxiety for the world and the Church. He likely saw echoes of his own sufferings in the global crises of the era. World War II loomed, and Catholic culture was under siege. Don Dolindo’s emphasis on Mary’s intercession suggests he found hope in Marian devotion.
“The evils of the world have not decreased over the course of the years; apostasy has grown and reached the terrifying climax of the most shameless immorality and godlessness,” he observed. Yet he believed the Immaculate Conception could bring light amidst encroaching darkness. “The Immaculate will save our sinful and proud generation, and will lead us back to God and to the Church. O Mary, O Mary! It must be the cry of our true devotion to Our Lady.”
Though Don Dolindo faced misunderstanding throughout his life, his mystical experiences and deep spirituality shone through his Marian novenas and other writings. His Novena to the Immaculate Conception remains a gift to the Church today. Through meditating on Mary’s beauty and holiness, Catholics can grow in their appreciation of her role in salvation history and open themselves more fully to the transforming power of grace.
This article was originally featured in Missio Immaculatae November/December 2023. It is published here with permission. Missio Immaculatae is a bimonthly Marian catechetical-missionary magazine of the Academy of the Immaculate. (https://missiomagazine.com)
I have fully translated Don Dolindo’s Novena to the Immaculate Conception into English. The English translation will be hopefully published by the Academy of the Immaculate by June 2024.