St. Gerard Majella

Gerard Majella is one of the stranger figures among the modern saints: a Redemptorist lay brother of the eighteenth century whose mystical life went far beyond what his humble station and modest education would have predicted. He was born at Muro Lucano in southern Italy in 1726, tried to enter the Capuchins before being accepted by the Redemptorists at Iliceto, and lived his brief religious life doing ordinary work — as tailor, sacristan, porter — while what accompanied that ordinary work was far from ordinary. The accounts from those who knew him speak of mystical ecstasies intense enough that he had to be physically moved when they occurred in inconvenient places, of knowledge of hidden things, of bilocation, and of healing.

All of this deserves caution, distinguishing between what was attested by credible witnesses and what accumulated later in the glow of devotion. The most painful episode in Gerard's brief life was a false accusation by a young woman that caused Alphonsus Liguori himself — the founder of the Redemptorists — to impose a severe penance on Gerard and exclude him from receiving communion. Gerard endured the entire period of this punishment without speaking a word in his own defense. When the woman finally recanted and admitted the accusation was false, the silence proved more impressive to his confessor and his superiors than any of the reported miracles. That willingness to suffer injustice in silence, and to accept the judgment of legitimate authority even when it was wrong, is the most compelling thing about him. Gerard died of tuberculosis at twenty-nine in 1755 and was canonized in 1904.