Page 21 - FLIPBOOK - Life of Saint Gerard Majella - Vassall-Phillips

LIFE OF SAINT GERARD MAJELLA

discharge of everyday duties. Their virtues were heroic, but it was not
necessary to their vocation that they should receive many
extraordinary prerogatives. Others on the contrary have preached the
Infinite Power of God, even on the housetops, by the marvellous
miracles that He has enabled them to perform, or rather that He has
Himself deigned to perform at their prayer and through their
instrumentality. To this latter class belongs our Saint Gerard.
His life was one long wonder. In him God seems to have
delighted to stultify the shallow eighteenth century in which his lot
was cast. The long series of his miracles furnish by themselves a
sufficient answer to the sneer of infidels, not merely of his own time,
but also of the present day.
It is idle to proclaim theoretically, that something cannot take
place, to those who have seen it actually occur before their very eyes.
Thus no man who watched the doings of Saint Gerard could doubt
the possibility of miracles, for Gerard worked miracles all his life
through, and that continually and often under circumstances of much
publicity. For this reason alone the story of his life is full of useful
teaching for a materialistic age. It breathes the supernatural as its
native air. In the world, but never of the world, he seems a visitant
from the everlasting shores, come for a little while to dwell in our
midst. Such a life as his tells silently of the Invisible Presence which
ever governs all we see around us. It is meant to burn into our minds
and hearts in letters of fire the remembrance of the Sovereignty of
God.
In writing this little sketch of Saint Gerard, we can only state some
few of his miracles. Should anyone wish to study in detail the proofs
on which they rest, we would refer him to the testimony adduced in
the Processes of his Beatification. If evidence such as this, given on
oath by a mass of witnesses in every way worthy of credence, be
rejected as inconclusive, it is hard to see what would be accepted as
satisfactory.
In Gerard's early childhood Our Lord was, in His wonderful
condescension, pleased to make free with him in ways most strange
and lovely. Thus we are told that, when he was but five years old, he
went one day to a chapel in a hamlet called Capotignano, a little more
than a mile outside of Muro, where is venerated an image of Our
Blessed Lady holding the Divine Child in her arms. No sooner had
the boy knelt down to say his prayers, than He who tells us that His

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