Page 18 - FLIPBOOK - Life of Saint Gerard Majella - Vassall-Phillips

O. R. VASSALL-PHILLIPS

not of barren titles and rich emoluments, but of oneness of life. We
see not merely the organism and the functions of the Apostolic
Church intact, but even the marvellous spiritual endowments, so
freely granted in the beginning, in the possession of her Saints in
every age. In the last century, not a few of the gifts bestowed by God
in the first days of the Faith are beheld again in such a life-story as
that of Saint Gerard Majella. We have seen them reproduced in no
limited measure in our own times in holy Priests like the Blessed
Cure d'Ars, and Don Bosco of Turin.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, we are living at a time
when physical forces in nature, hitherto but little suspected by the
many, seem to be gradually coming to light. It is certain also that the
powers of evil are busily engaged in many a spiritualistic seance in a
very parody of the Communion of Saints. Simon Magus followed
close in the wake of Simon Peter, and when Faith goes out by the
door, superstition always comes in by the window.
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In these days, then, of thought-reading, clairvoyance, telepathy,
hypnotism, and of what is vaguely called “occult science,” there is
little doubt but that men in general will be less disposed idly to scoff
at such phenomena as are to be found in the lives of the Saints, than
would have been the case even a few years ago. But there still

9 St. Augustine long ago wrote as follows: “Talia faciunt Magi, qualia
nonnunquam Sancti faciunt.” The holy Doctor, having shown that the evil
spirits lend their co-operation only to those over whom they have already
established their dominion, and that God permits this co-operation as a
punishment for the unhallowed submission of man to the Powers of Darkness,
thus continues: “Talia quidem visibiliter eadem esse apparent, sed et diverso
fine et diverso jure fiunt. Illi (sc. Magi) signa faciunt quaerentes gloriam suam,
isti (sc. Sancti) quajrentes gloriam Dei; illi per quasdam Potestatibus concessa in
ordine suo quasi privata commercia vel veneficia, isti autem publica
administratione, jussu Ejus Cui cuncta creatura subjecta est” (cf. St. Augustine,
“Liber de Diversis Quaestionibus octoginta tribus,” Quaest. lxxix.). The miracles
of the Saints; worked at the bidding, or at least by the inspiration, of Almighty
God, and through His Sovereign Power, belong in some sort to the Divine
scheme for the salvation and sanctification of souls, which should always be
regarded as one harmonious whole, not rent asunder, its component parts
detached one from another.

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