Page 119 - FLIPBOOK - Life of Saint Gerard Majella - Vassall-Phillips

CHAPTER 18
THE END DRAWS NEAR

T
he news of Saint Gerard's illness was received with the
greatest consternation at Caposele. The Father Rector wrote
to him without delay, telling him to remain at Oliveto as long
as his kind friends there desired to keep him, and his own health
required. He also sent him a companion in the person of a Lay-
brother called Francis Fiore.
When this Brother arrived at the Priest's house, he was himself so
ill with a violent fever that he could not even mount the stairs to visit
our Saint. He had to be put to bed at once on the ground floor.
Gerard was then told by the physician, Don Joseph Salvatore, of the
illness of the newly arrived Brother Francis.
“Will you have the kindness to tell him from me,” said the Servant
of God, “that through obedience he must drive away the fever, get
up, and come to pay me a visit. Our duties are marked out for us, and
I cannot spend my time in nursing a sick man.”
The doctor looked amused, and hesitated about delivering such a
message. However, as Saint Gerard insisted, he went downstairs to
his second patient. The instant Brother Francis heard what Gerard
had said, he rose and went to pay him a visit as he had been told.
When the Saint saw him, he said with a gentle smile:
“What a state of things! We have been sent out to make a quest,
and you allow yourself to catch a fever! Be obedient, and see that it
does not come back again!”
Then, turning to the medical man, he said: “Would you have the
kindness just to feel his pulse.”
To his utter astonishment, the doctor found that the fever, which

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