Gerard Majella

Gerard Majella was born on 6 April 1726 at Muro Lucano in the province of Potenza, southern Italy, the youngest of five children of the tailor Domenico Maiella and Benedetta Galella. The family was very poor yet devout; Gerard was baptized the day he was born and from infancy showed signs of special holiness. His childhood joys were religious ceremonies and hymns learned in the churches of Muro. In the little church of Capodigiano the Child Jesus is said to have given him a small loaf of bread in thanks for his daily visits; when he was refused Communion at San Marco because he was too young, he later confided to a neighbor that the Archangel Michael had brought him the Sacrament. With playmates he built little altars and imitated the sacred rites.

At twelve his father died, leaving the household in deeper poverty. Gerard was apprenticed to the tailor Martino Pannuto, whose foreman treated him harshly for lateness caused by morning prayer at Capodigiano. After four years he entered the service of the severe Bishop of Lacedonia, who confirmed him on 5 June 1740 in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine at Muro and took him as a domestic to Lacedonia. One day the key of the episcopal residence fell into a well; undismayed, Gerard lowered a small statue of the Infant Jesus and drew it up with the key hanging from the Child's hand. When the bishop died, Gerard returned to Muro and resumed tailoring, first as a journeyman and then on his own, earning little.

Twice refused by the Capuchins because of frail health, he was drawn in the cathedral of Muro by Redemptorist missionaries of the Congregation founded by Saint Alphonsus Liguori. He begged admission; Father Cafaro at first judged the life too hard for so slight a youth. After persistent pleading and a farewell to his mother—"Mamma, I am going to become a saint"—he was accepted on trial about the age of twenty-three and sent to Deliceto with a letter describing him as a "useless subject." There he threw himself into the hardest field labor. Saint Alphonsus soon called him "a prodigy of regularity." As gardener, sacristan, tailor, porter, cook, carpenter, and clerk of works at Caposele, Gerard served the community and the Neapolitan peasantry with tireless charity.

Around the age of twenty-seven a pregnant woman named him as the father of her child. To spare her, he kept silence; Alphonsus forbade him Holy Communion. Years later she retracted the charge. Gerard's patience under calumny, his gift of reading souls, bilocation, and many wonders of healing and provision for the poor made him beloved. In 1755 tuberculosis overcame him. On 16 October he died in the Redemptorist house of Materdomini at Caposele, aged twenty-nine years and six months. On the door of his cell he had written his last will: "Here the will of God is done, as God wills, and as long as God wills."

Pope Leo XIII beatified him on 29 January 1893; Pope Pius X canonized him on 11 December 1904. On 21 April 1994 he was proclaimed Patron of Basilicata. His sanctuary at Materdomini draws the faithful who seek his intercession, especially mothers and those who suffer injustice.

May Saint Gerard Majella obtain for us the grace of humble obedience and trustful surrender to God's will today.

ADDRESS OF THE HOLY FATHER PIUS X

ALLOCUTION TO THE BISHOPS

Venerable Brothers,

I would have wished to receive you one by one, in a private audience, and to speak to each of you face to face. But in the midst of such a large gathering — you yourselves will acknowledge it — my desire, ardent though it was, could not be satisfied. Besides, most of you desire to return to your own dioceses, and in this you have my full approval; for nothing is sweeter to a Father than to find himself in the midst of his children, especially on the eve of the holy solemnity of Christmas. Receive therefore now my thanks for having responded to my invitation and, by your presence, having rendered more solemn both the feast of Mary Immaculate and the canonization of the new saints, Alexander Sauli and Gerard Majella.

Receive at the same time the affectionate greeting of Him who feels Himself to be for you both father and brother. As I bid you farewell, I leave you with the words of the Apostle as a parting gift: Gaudium meum et corona mea! Yes, you are my joy! For, called to share with me the apostolic labors in the governance of the Church of Jesus Christ, I rightly expect from you the most generous and most effective collaboration. You are my crown! For the virtues that shine in you increase the splendor of the dignity with which the Lord has willed to invest me, in spite of the lowliness of my merit.

The times are becoming difficult and painful for the Catholic Church: let us not be troubled. On earth the Church is militant: it is for us to be the captains who lead the troops into battle. Do we not have, as a powerful encouragement, the certainty of victory? Before our eyes are always these divine words: Non veni pacem mittere sed gladium. Si me persecuti sunt, et vos persequentur. Sed confidite, ego vici mundum.

If we know how to be, by our doctrine, the light of the world; by our examples, the sun of the earth; if, in a word, we make good use, as of a treasure, of what Saint Paul recommended to his disciples Titus and Timothy — that is, first, the holiness and perfection of life; second, the vigor of doctrine; third, the spirit of abnegation and sacrifice; fourth, active and enlightened zeal; fifth, charity that is at once strong and gentle — we shall win the love and veneration of the good, and the esteem and respect even of our enemies.

In this difficult work, may the loving Providence of Him who, in sending His own apostles into the world like lambs in the midst of wolves, reassured them and exhorted them to fear nothing, persuaded that He would always remain at their side, be our support: Ecce ego vobiscum sum usque ad consummationem saeculi.

On the other hand, the difficulty of the work, when compared with our poor strength, will lead us always to regard ourselves as useless instruments in the hands of the Lord, and to have recourse to Him in our greatest needs. He will hear us and thus make us repeat: Omnia possum in eo qui me confortat. I make only one recommendation to you, Venerable Brothers: watch over the seminaries and over those aspiring to the priesthood. You know it: too strong a breath of deadly independence for souls is blowing upon the world, and this independence has entered even into the sanctuary; independence not only with regard to authority, but also with regard to doctrine. From this it follows that some of our young clerics, animated by this spirit of unbridled criticism that dominates today, come to lose all respect for the learning derived from our great masters, from the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, interpreters of revealed doctrine. If ever you should have in your seminaries one of these newly minted wise men, rid yourselves of him promptly, and on no account lay hands upon him. You will always regret having ordained him, were it only one; you will never regret having excluded him.

Upon returning to your dioceses, tell your faithful that the Holy Father blesses them all from his heart and commends himself to their prayers. Each of you, on the feast day you deem appropriate, may solemnly impart to the people the papal blessing with a plenary indulgence for those who have gone to confession and received Holy Communion. May this blessing accompany you during your journey — the blessing that I impart to all of you with special affection, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

PIUS PP. X