Page 33 - FLIPBOOK - Life of Saint Gerard Majella - Vassall-Phillips

LIFE OF SAINT GERARD MAJELLA

managed by himself to do the work of four. At the same time, none
knew so well as he how to unite the contemplative to the active life,
by making every external occupation one long prayer, an act of
unbroken homage to the Majesty of God.
He never forgot Who was the Master that it was his privilege to
serve in the Religious State. The convent in which he dwelt was in his
eyes the Palace of the great King. In the sunshine of His real
Presence in the midst of His Own, Gerard found the supreme
happiness of his life, and his loyal heart rejoiced to do fealty to his
Lord not only in word but also in deed, “in much patience, in
labours, in watchings, in fastings, in sweetness, in the Holy Ghost, in
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charity unfeigned.”
For a short time he was employed in the garden. This kind of
manual labour must have been strange and hard enough for the
young tailor. But he never complained. On the contrary, he used to
do the work of others in addition to his own, saying with a smile on
his face:
“Let me do it. I am the youngest. Do you please rest yourselves
awhile.”
The more humble the nature of the duty assigned to him, the
better was he pleased. Deeply rooted in humility, he had taken labour
for his bride, and was never happy when separated from her. We may
say at once that this was one of the most marked characteristics of
Saint Gerard's sanctity throughout life. His at least was no dreamy,
useless, or unpractical existence.
The mysterious mastery that we shall see him exercising again and
again over the inanimate creation and the hidden forces of nature,
God seems to have given to Saint Gerard, as to St. Francis and to
many of his first children, in reward for the purity of heart by which
they almost returned to that state of “Original Justice,” when Man,
before sin had torn the sceptre from his grasp, was in very truth Lord
of all creation. But this perfect purity of spirit, this undimmed
clearness of vision, which was theirs in such perfection that, for
them, Nature seems to have raised her veil that thus she might
disclose the powers of the unseen world behind her, could be
purchased only at the price of a complete self-mastery, and heroic
mortification of all that is merely of this earth earthly, and of the

11 2 Cor. vi. 4 et seq.

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