Page 24 - FLIPBOOK - Life of Saint Gerard Majella - Vassall-Phillips

CHAPTER 2
HIS APPRENTICESHIP TO A TRADE

W
hen Gerard had left Muro and was living in a boarding-
school hard by, he received the news of his father's death.
His mother now found herself in somewhat straitened
circumstances, and was compelled to remove her son from school.
She apprenticed him to a tailor called Pannuto. Here the holy boy
gave himself heart and soul to his work, but was careful at the same
time to correspond faithfully with the inspirations from on high,
which drew him irresistibly to the interior life.
Oftentimes, whilst his fingers plied the needle, his spirit was rapt
in God. Already from time to time he was ravished in ecstasy.
It was also his custom to hide himself underneath the work-table
in order the more freely to pour forth his heart, unobserved by men,
in fervent prayer. His master, Pannuto, loved him, and recognizing
his virtues, would not check these extraordinary impulses of Divine
Grace. But this was not the case with the foreman, a person of
violent temper, who could not understand our Saint. One day he
dragged him from the place where he was praying, and belaboured
him with blows.
“Strike! strike!” cried Gerard. '“Well you may; you have cause
enough.”
On another occasion this tyrant struck the victim of his brutality
with such violence that he fell swooning to the ground. Suddenly
Pannuto appeared on the scene and demanded an explanation. The
foreman did not know what to reply, but relying, as the event proved
with good reason, on Gerard's unfailing charity, he stammered out:

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