Sometimes, Furthermore, He Took A Passenger, If Such A Term Can Properly
Be Applied.
So once, while the monks were at prayers, he was observed to rise up and
run swiftly towards the
Confessor of the convent, and "seizing him by
the hand, he raised him from the ground by supernatural force, and with
jubilant rapture drew him along, turning him round and round in a
violento ballo; the Confessor moved by Joseph, and Joseph by God."
And what happened at Assisi is still more noteworthy, for here
was a gentleman, a suffering invalid, whom Joseph "snatched by the hair,
and, uttering his customary cry of 'oh!' raised himself from the earth,
while he drew the other after him by his hair, carrying him in this
fashion for a short while through the air, to the intensest admiration
of the spectators." The patient, whose name was Chevalier Baldassarre,
discovered, on touching earth again, that he had been cured by this
flight of a severe nervous malady which had hitherto afflicted him. . . .
Searching in the biography for some other interesting traits of Saint
Joseph of Copertino, I find, in marked contrast to his heaven-soaring
virtues, a humility of the profoundest kind. Even as a full-grown man he
retained the exhilarating, childlike nature of the pure in heart. "La
Mamma mia" - thus he would speak, in playful-saintly fashion, of the
Mother of God - "la Mamma mia is capricious. When I bring Her flowers,
She tells me She does not want them; when I bring Her candles, She also
does not want them; and when I ask Her what She wants, She says, 'I
want the heart, for I feed only on hearts.'" What wonder if the "mere
pronouncement of the name of Maria often sufficed to raise him from the
ground into the air"?
Nevertheless, the arch-fiend was wont to creep into his cell at night
and to beat and torture him; and the monks of the convent were terrified
when they heard the hideous din of echoing blows and jangling chains.
"We were only having a little game," he would then say.
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