We Redemptorists, friends and collaborators celebrate the feast of a Brother, Saint Gerard Majella, one of the most popular and beloved Redemptorist saints. Saint Gerard is known as the saint of mothers, especially expectant mothers, of children (especially the unborn), of the unjustly accused, of good confessions, of religious brothers and sisters and, above all, as the saint of joy.
Biography of Saint Gerard Majella
Below, we publish the homily prepared by Father Ivel Mendanha, CSsR, General Consultor, for the feast of Saint Gerard Majella. The author invites us to reflect on the testimony of the life of Saint Gerard, in which the love for God, for Jesus in the Eucharist, for the poor and for Mary is made visible.
Feast Day: St Gerard Majella
There is an incident that our former Superior General now Cardinal Joseph Tobin narrates from his visit to Marianella in Naples, the home where St. Alphonsus Liguori, Founder of the Redemptorists was born. In the beautiful little church attached to the house there are two altars one dedicated of the founder himself, St. Alphonsus and the other to St Gerard Majella. At the altar of St Gerard ever electric candle was lit, there were beautiful flowers adoring the altar along with many bouquets. On the other hand, the altar dedicated to St. Alphonsus was bare, just a simple bouquet and only a solitary candle lit. The difference was glaring. When Cardinal Tobin asked the Redemptorist Brother who was sacristan and who took care of the church why this stark difference, where St Alphonsus, founder, Bishop, doctor of the Church, his own home town and where almost every person and store bore his name, yet, not a bare altar with almost no candle lit. The Redemptorist Brother immediately replied, “oh dear Fr General, the people here do honour St Alphonsus for he was a great writer and teacher and such an intelligent mas but the people have always loved St Gerard as he touched their lives with miracles and still continues to do so with so many miracles so they come with their tears and sufferings to St Gerard and he responds to them today as he did when he was alive.” One a great founder and write who wrote so many books, and the other who spent his life touching the hearts of people with miracles and still does so moving people’s hearts that they come to show their gratitude to him
When one first reads the life of St Gerard Majella one is immediately struck by the fact of his being an unbelievable miracle worker on the one hand and on the other a young man who when he was not working miracles seemed to spend this life doing mortifications and penances so much so that when I first read the life of St Gerard as a young novice I found myself in awe of him but saying to myself, his life is almost too perfect, beyond me and I can never even dream of being like him leave alone trying to be like him. However, once I came to live in Rome and to visit Materdomini, where St Gerard died and where his remains lay today, having come to study his life and writing more closely I have come to see in St Gerard a man who in the very short span of his life, just 29 years of which just 6 years were spent in the Redemptorist Community and 5 as a professed Redemptorist he was so very human and lived his call to holiness in a way that was so human that he touched and still touches every human being who longs for God and wants to be in communion with God in the simple details of daily living.
St Gerard and his life and Spirituality teach each of us that we can all respond to the call to be holy, to be saints in the daily living of a life of communion with our God who loves us so much and from time to time sends us gentle reminders through people like Gerard to respond to his amazing love for us. This is for me exactly why people flock in tens of thousands to the Shrine of St Gerard at Materdomini with the deep longing in their hearts to meet and experience the God of love and tenderness, mercy and forgiveness, care and compassion that St Gerard believed in and whom Gerard wanted all to believe in. What was it that made Gerard so very human and so very accessible during his life and even so now to people? I believe it was what has come to be known as the 4 loves of Gerard’s life. These four loves, are aspects of a simple but profound Spirituality of love, of holiness of oneness with God, something every human being from the very intelligent to the very simple can emulate daily and surely that which all of Redemptorists Brothers and Priests strive to live in our daily lives as Redemptorists.
First, Gerard’s deep love for his most beloved God now made human, suffering and dying for him on the Cross. Any picture or statue of St. Gerard will always have him depicted with the Crucifix by his side or him embracing the crucifix. This is so precisely because Gerard was deeply in love with Jesus Crucified. Gerard was a passionate lover of God whom he addressed as his Most beloved God (il mio carissimo dio). Gerard had learnt from St. Alphonsus that the Crucified Lord was a deepest expression of God’s love for humanity. God loved us so much that he gave us his son and the Son loved us so much that he chose to die for us. Gerard, saw the cross as a presentation of loving, of loving with the Trinity, a love that overflows. The Father’s love sustains the Son in his amazing expression of their love for us. Like Gerard, a Redemptorist Brother and Priest, while wearing our habit also wear a crucifix which we have on a cord around our necks and tucked into our habit. As we venerate the crucified Lord on his cross, we learn from St Gerard, that in the midst of our own pain and suffering, torment and anguish, exclusion and rejection to turn our gaze to the crucified Lord and see in him the fullness of love for us as well as the grace to carry our own cross with serenity and peace knowing that the Crucified Lord grants his grace of love to all those who seek his aid as Gerard did.
Second, Gerard’s deep love for the Eucharistic Lord. Like the founder, St. Alphonsus, for whom the Eucharistic Lord in the Blessed Sacrament was the focus of his spirituality of love, Gerard too had a very deep love for the Eucharist. The Eucharist for St Gerard was the living presence of the Lord of love in our midst and so the deep longing to be in the presence of the living Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. The Eucharist was an experience of being loved, receiving the lord of love, and also the grace to be in the presence of the Lord of love. This love for the Eucharist for Gerard was right from his youth and remained all through his life as a Redemptorist. It was his external disposition and reverence, with which he used to stay for hours in the church, before the Blessed Sacrament, that he would so often visit. He had a great desire that others too would visit Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, and animated by his fervour and zealous example many would visit the Blessed Sacrament and then great and inexplicable was his joy. We learn from Gerard both the grace of living a Eucharistic life. That is a life of awareness of being loved by the Lord who chose to remain with us first in allowing us to consume his life-giving presence in holy communion and then to sit and prayer and open one’s heart out to the Eucharistic Lord, growing in his love for us, receiving the strength of his grace to live his life of love daily and with his grace from the Eucharist to face the challenges of life.
Third, Gerard’s love for the poor. Gerard’s love for the Crucified Lord and the Eucharistic Lord did not restrict him to a spirituality of the chapel or church alone but one that moved him to worship and serve the same crucified and Eucharistic Lord in the poor and abandoned. Gerard knew well that the poor were the poor of Christ and that when we respond with sincerity to their needs, we are the first to be enriched by them. This respectful and generous love for the poor is described as being “a natural inclination towards the poor”, underlining “that he was very compassionate with all and specially with the poor, for whom he had a special softness.” True holiness and life lived in Jesus is always reflected in a deep love for the poor and abandoned, the little ones, “whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers and sisters you do unto me.” Here is something that is so basic to Christian Spirituality and Redemptorist Spirituality and what touches all people especially the little ones, the suffering ones, the ones truly in need of a God of love.
Fourth, Gerard’s love for Our Blessed Mother. When one goes through the writings of Gerard one is naturally struck by the numerous references to Mary. One can say that there is not a single page in his writings where the name of the Blessed Virgin Mary is not cited in one form or another. He always began his letters with the words ‘Jesus and Mary.’ On his deathbed this ardour remained as he searched for the pictures of Jesus Crucified and Mary. His confreres noted that “His eyes did not move from the Crucifix and the beautiful painting of the Blessed Mother at the foot of the cross which was on the wall facing his bed. He would keep looking at it and let out deep sighs of love and ardour.” Gerard’s love for Mary was warm, sincere and rich in spontaneity. To Mary he prayed constantly for the grace of perseverance in his vocation and so we too Redemptorists daily pray to Mary in reciting or singing the Salve Regina for the grace to persevere in our vocation as Redemptorists Brothers and Priests, Missionaries of Hope in the footsteps of the Redeemer.
In Conclusion, One generally notes that in the Congregation Gerard is the Patron Saint of all our Redemptorists Brothers. While this is so true, I believe that St Gerard is the patron saint of all Redemptorists called to live our Religious life as Light to the world, as Missionaries of Hope in the footsteps of the Redeemer. Gerard’s four loves: The Crucified Lord, the Eucharistic Lord, the Poor of the Lord and Our Blessed Mother are the four loves of each Redemptorist Missionary.
May all of us on this the feast day of our Beloved Saint Gerard learn from him to love the Crucified Lord, to adore with love the Lord in the Most Holy Eucharist, to have a filial love for Our Blessed Mother and to reach out with love to the poor and abandoned. Gerard shows us the way of love, of joyfully living our Religious Vocation be it as a Brother or as a Priest. This is a real and yet simple, a true but holy way of being Missionaries of Hope following in the footsteps of the Redeemer.
Amen.
