Page 53 - FLIPBOOK - Life of Saint Gerard Majella - Vassall-Phillips

LIFE OF SAINT GERARD MAJELLA

special honour should be paid to him and to all the angelic choirs of
Heaven.
The Father Rector acceded to the request that was made to him to
authorize a pilgrimage to this favoured mountain, and directed that
Saint Gerard should be responsible for all the arrangements and be
the guide of the whole party. Father Fiocchi remembered the life-
long devotion of our Saint to the great Archangel. Indeed, the holy
Brother's heart was full to overflowing at the thought of being thus
permitted to pay public homage to one to whose loving care he had
been so marvellously indebted in the days of his childhood for his
first Communion.
This famous expedition to Monte Gargano was an unbroken
chain of prodigies and graces. The pilgrims numbered twelve in all —
ten students, Father de Meo, and Saint Gerard. The journey there and
back could not at that time be accomplished in less than a week. To
provide for all their temporal necessities, they had the magnificent
sum of twelve shillings — exactly a shilling a-piece! But there were
giants on earth in those days. The Community at Iliceto was poor in
this world's goods, but rich in the possession of a great Saint among
its members. Superiors relied with confidence on the prudence and
charity of Saint Gerard — above all, on his power with God. The
event proved that they were not resting on a broken reed.
When, before starting, the students, in blank dismay, remonstrated
with their appointed leader on the slenderness of their resources, he
only smiled and said:
“God will provide.”
This is ever the motto of the Saints. To their unfailing confidence
in the good Providence of our heavenly Father, they owe the
wonderful answers to their prayers. It is Faith that moves mountains.
If we believed and trusted like the Saints, like the Saints also we
should be heard on high and become omnipotent with God.
The first halt made by the little band was at Foggia. Here it was
that St. Alphonsus, while preaching to a crowded congregation, had
on two separate occasions been rapt in ecstasy before a miraculous
picture of the Blessed Virgin, surrounded by rays of light that darted
towards him from Our Lady's countenance, and supernaturally raised
in the air. These extraordinary facts had been witnessed by hundreds,
and were public property at the time. We may then without much
difficulty realize the devotion with which the young Redemptorists

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