But His Distinguishing Feature, His "Dominating Gift," Was That Of
Prophecy, Especially In Foretelling The Deaths Of Children, "Which He
Almost Always Accompanied With Jocular Words (Scherzi) On His Lips."
He Would Enter A House And Genially Remark:
"O, what an odour of
Paradise "; sooner or later one or more of the children of the family
would perish.
To a boy of twelve he said, "Be good, Natale, for the
angels are coming to take you." These playful words seem to have weighed
considerably on the boy's mind and, sure enough, after a few years he
died. But even more charming - piu grazioso, the biographer calls
it - was the incident when he once asked a father whether he would give
his son to Saint Pasquale. The fond parent agreed, thinking that the
words referred to the boy's future career in the Church. But the saint
meant something quite different - he meant a career in heaven! And in
less than a month the child died. To a little girl who was crying in the
street he said: "I don't want to hear you any more. Go and sing in
Paradise." And meeting her a short time after, he said, "What, are you
still here?" In a few days she was dead.
The biography gives many instances of this pretty gift which would
hardly have contributed to the saint's popularity in England or any
other country save this, where - although the surviving youngsters are
described as "struck with terror at the mere name of the Servant of
God" - the parents were naturally glad to have one or two angels in the
family, to act as avvocati (pleaders) for those that remained on earth.
And the mention of the legal profession brings me to one really
instructive miracle. It is usually to be observed, after a saint has
been canonized, that heaven, by some further sign or signs, signifies
approval of this solemn act of the Vicar of God; indeed, to judge by
these biographies, such a course is not only customary but, to use a
worldly expression, de rigueur. And so it happened after the decree
relative to Saint Giangiuseppe had been pronounced in the Vatican
basilica by His Holiness Pius VI, in the presence of the assembled
cardinals. Innumerable celestial portents (their enumeration fills
eleven pages of the "Life") confirmed and ratified the great event, and
among them this: the notary, who had drawn up both the ordinary and the
apostolic processi, was cured of a grievous apoplexy, survived for
four years, and finally died on the very anniversary of the death of the
saint. Involuntarily one contrasts this heavenly largesse with the
sordid guineas which would have contented an English lawyer. . . .
Or glance into the biography of the Venerable Sister Orsola Benincasa.
She, too, could fly a little and raise men from the dead. She cured
diseases, foretold her own death and that of others, lived for a month
on the sole nourishment of a consecrated wafer; she could speak Latin
and Polish, although she had been taught nothing at all; wrought
miracles after death, and possessed to a heroic degree the virtues of
patience, humility, temperance, justice, etc. etc. So inflamed was she
with divine love, that almost every day thick steam issued out of her
mouth, which was observed to be destructive to articles of clothing; her
heated body, when ice was applied, used to hiss like a red-hot iron
under similar conditions.
As a child, she already cried for other people's sins; she was always
hunting for her own and would gladly, at the end of her long and
blameless career, have exchanged her sins for those of the youthful
Duchess of Aquaro. An interesting phenomenon, by the way, the theory of
sinfulness which crops up at this particular period of history. For our
conception of sin is alien to the Latin mind. There is no "sin" in Italy
(and this is not the least of her many attractions); it is an article
manufactured exclusively for export. [Footnote: "Vita della Venerabile
Serva di Dio Suor Orsola Benincasa, Scritta da un cherico regolare,"
Rome, 1796. There are, of course, much earlier biographies of all these
saints; concerning Sister Orsola we possess, for instance, the
remarkable pamphlet by Cesare d'Eboli ("Caesaris Aevoli Neapolitan!
Apologia pro Ursula Neapolitana quas ad urbem accessit MDLXXXIII,"
Venice, 1589), which achieves the distinction of never mentioning Orsola
by name: she is only once referred to as "mulier de qua agitur." But I
prefer to quote from the more recent ones because they are
authoritative, in so far as they have been written on the basis of
miracles attested by eye-witnesses and accepted as veracious by the
Vatican tribunal. Sister Orsola, though born in 154.7, was only declared
Venerable by Pontifical decree of 1793. Biographies prior to that date
are therefore ex-parte statements and might conceivably contain errors
of fact. This is out of the question here, as is clearly shown by the
author on p. 178.]
Orsola's speciality, however, were those frequent trance-like conditions
by reason of which, during her lifetime, she was created "Protectress of
the City of Naples." I cannot tell whether she was the first woman-saint
to obtain this honour. Certainly the "Seven Holy Protectors" concerning
whom Paolo Regio writes were all musty old males. . . .
And here is quite another biography, that of Alfonso di Liguori (born
1696), the founder of the Redemptorist order and a canonized saint. He,
too, could fly a little and raise the dead to life; he suffered
devil-temptations, caused the clouds to rain, calmed an eruption of
Vesuvius, multiplied food, and so forth. Such was his bashfulness, that
even as an aged bishop he refused to be unrobed by his attendants; such
his instinct for moral cleanliness that once, when a messenger had
alighted at his convent accompanied by a soldier, he instantly detected,
under the military disguise, the lineaments of a young woman-friend.
Despite these divine gifts, he always needed a confessor.
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