Page 35 - FLIPBOOK - Life of Saint Gerard Majella - Vassall-Phillips

LIFE OF SAINT GERARD MAJELLA

Saint Gerard always remains — especially, no doubt, for those
called, like himself, to the Religious State, but also for all who will
study his life — a most perfect model of hard-working charity. Those
who “live laborious days,” as did Brother Gerard, and who, like him,
are ever kind to all they meet, will become, like him, dear to God and
dear to their fellow-men.
So great, in truth, was his meekness, so devoted and self-forgetful
his life, that it used to be said of him in the Noviciate: “Either this
Brother is a fool, or he is a great Saint.” Verily Gerard was a Saint
indeed, captivated with the holy folly of the Cross of Christ.
Saint Gerard was not long left in charge of the garden. Soon he
was given the more congenial office of Sacristan. We may easily
imagine with what joy he undertook duties that brought him so
continually into the immediate presence of that Lord Who was the
only love of his heart. Fifty years after the death of the holy Brother,
people still spoke with admiration of the care which he lavished on all
that related to the House of God. The taste with which he adorned
the altars, especially on great Feasts, was the subject of general
admiration. His whole heart was in his work. His one thought was to
beautify the place where Jesus dwells, his one great trouble that any
should be found to neglect visiting the Most Blessed Sacrament.
For his own part, every spare moment was spent before the
Tabernacle. Father Tannoia, the venerable biographer of St.
Alphonsus, tells us that once he chanced to be in a part of the church
where he could not be seen by anyone, when he observed the holy
Brother pause and kneel down before the altar. Then he commenced,
as it were, to wrestle with himself, as though he would fain steal away
from some powerful attraction. After some moments of effort, as if
he were still unable to escape, he — thinking that no one else was
present — cried out aloud:
“O Lord, let me go, I pray Thee! I have work that I must do.”
Then obedience and duty triumphed in his soul. He tore himself

the fruit of a dark unlovely pessimism that withers all it touches. Sane
asceticism, on the other hand, that which alone we see blessed and canonized
by the Church, is the inevitable outgrowth of the only perfect optimism —
springing from the Heaven-sent Faith in a world saved by sacrifice on the hill of
Calvary through the Death of the Son of God for man.

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