On April 6, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro presided over the solemn Eucharistic celebration in Materdomini on the occasion of the third centenary of the birth of Saint Gerard Majella, the saint known as the “GOD’S LITTLE MADMAN” who made joyful conformity to divine will and concrete love for the poor the heart of his spirituality.
Read the full text of His Excellency Cardinal Marcello Semeraro’s homily
SAINT GERARD MAJELLA, “GOD’S LITTLE MADMAN”
I gladly accepted the invitation to celebrate this Eucharist with you and thus also to inaugurate the Year of St Gerard, established for the third centenary of the birth of our dear Saint Gerard. He is a saint very familiar to me, if only because his image constantly accompanies my daily service at the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints. In my office, in fact, there is a painting by Giovanni Gagliardi, a painter active in Rome and Lazio in the early years of the last century, who executed it in 1905 by reproducing the banner that he himself had prepared and carried in procession during the rite for the canonization of Saint Gerard, celebrated by Pope Pius X on December 11 of the previous year. It was the first canonization ceremony presided over by the new Pope, Pius X (cf. L’Osservatore Romano, December 12, 1904, p. 1).
The episode represented in the painting is well known. Its protagonist is a poor blind man, Filippo Falcone, who, in order to receive alms, used to play the flute at the gate of the convent of Materdomini. Having seen him together with many other poor people, Brother Gerard asked him to begin playing. “What do you want me to play?” the blind man replied, and Gerard answered: “Your pleasure, not mine; I love only You, my God,” that is, a little song written by Alphonsus Liguori. As soon as the blind man began to play the melody, Gerard went into ecstasy: “He was seen with his eyes turned toward heaven, lifted above the ground in the sight of all those present, who, in great astonishment, described to the blind man what was happening before their eyes” (Positio super virtutibus, I, Rome 1871, pp. 31–32).
It is precisely on this point, then, that I wish, first of all, to draw our attention: namely, Saint Gerard’s constant effort to conform his own will to that of God, and also the fact that this was for him a profound source of interior joy. He often repeated: “The will of God! Oh, how happy is he who desires nothing but the will of God” (ibid., II, p. 35).
It is necessary, however, to explain that for Gerard, carrying out the divine will, in the ways and times established by God, went far beyond simple obedience. One can, in fact, obey even reluctantly, without inwardly sharing what one is called to do; the little song that Gerard asked the blind man Filippo to play instead says: “Your pleasure, not mine; I love only You, my God.” With full reason, therefore, Father S. Majorano speaks of conformity with the will of God, explaining that it “was Gerard’s continual longing, even on his deathbed” (La spiritualità gerardina, in Spicilegium Historicum XLII [1994], p. 100).
The word “conformity” helps us understand that he did not see the will of God as something external, but as something lovable, something to be made one’s own. Saint Gerard conformed himself to the will of God, striving to adapt himself completely to what God desired. And this was precisely what Alphonsus Liguori meant when he had the words sung: “Your pleasure, not mine.” He said, in fact, that one must set aside one’s own desires, one’s own preferences, and even spiritual consolations, in order to seek only what pleases God.
When considered to its fullest extent, this also means laying bare the possibility of being ensnared by that subtle selfishness which—let us humbly acknowledge—can enter even into faith, when one loves God only because He consoles us or makes us feel good! For Saint Alphonsus, and therefore also for his disciple Saint Gerard, one must instead entrust oneself to God totally and with confidence. One must also learn to love according to God’s will and not according to one’s own taste.
With this, however, the full value of Saint Gerard’s fiat to the divine will is not yet exhausted. It must be added that his was a joyful, conscious, and fully trusting “yes”; a “yes” that made him grow interiorly. He entrusted himself to his “dear God” (as he loved to say), certain that the divine will is, for every person, a plan of life, of fullness, and of authentic happiness. He was convinced, in fact, that only in this way is it possible to continue, for the benefit of others, the saving work of the Cross of Christ.
For this reason, his “yes” remained trusting and generous even in suffering, so much so that the witnesses in the processes of beatification and canonization report that even in the most difficult circumstances he usually appeared serene. It will also be said that during his earthly life Saint Gerard practiced various forms of penance: fasts, mortifications, and other austerities… but the very decree by which Pope Pius X canonized him explains that precisely in those penances the Lord granted him spiritual gifts that sustained and strengthened him.
Having said this, it is necessary to recall the “other side of the coin,” namely that, because of God and rooted in Him, Saint Gerard loved his brothers with great intensity, especially the poor and the needy. He called them “the poor of Jesus Christ and His brothers.” At times—we must humbly admit it—we do not take into account that the two commandments of love of God and love of neighbor are bound together by the Lord Jesus with an indissoluble unity, as when, using the singular, He tells us: “There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mk 12:31).
In this regard, Gregory the Great taught that “from the love of God is born the love of neighbor, and with the love of neighbor the love of God is nourished. He who neglects to love God does not know how to love his neighbor; whereas we progress more authentically in the love of God if, first, in the womb of His love, we receive the milk of charity toward our neighbor” (Moralia, VII, 24, 28: PL 75, 780). This splendid principle of Christian life Saint Gerard lived in a luminous way.
Among the many edifying episodes of his life, I mention one that is so significant that it was cited by Pope Pius X in the decree of canonization (cf. Litt. Decr. Haud tenuit, December 11, 1904: ASS 39 [1906], p. 516). A witness describes it as follows:
“One day at the porter’s lodge… someone presented himself… showing him a leg eaten away by a foul and gangrenous wound. The Servant of God could not bear the sight. He placed it in his own mouth, thoroughly sucked it, and dried it with his own hands; and God crowned that act of singular charity with the instantaneous healing of that unfortunate man, who did not cease to cry out that he had dealt with a saint who had worked a very great miracle for him” (Positio, I, p. 41).
Faced with such a gesture, the human reaction is one of bewilderment… Perhaps, to lessen the repugnance or to seek a historical explanation, we would say that things did not happen exactly in this way… In any case, this was Saint Gerard’s “madness”: a madness born of the fullness of his love for God and translated into concrete charity toward his neighbor. He has been called God’s little madman.
In this regard, a witness recounts that “there were times when, before the Tabernacle, after prolonged ecstasy, he was seen laughing; and when later asked by the Superior why, he ingenuously said that he had heard from the Tabernacle itself a voice saying to him: ‘Madman… madman! The day will come when you will take comfort in this madness of yours!’ To which voice he himself said that he used to reply: ‘Lord, is it not from You that I learn madness? For, being an infinite God, you have shut Yourself within a narrow enclosure out of love for me!’” (Positio, I, p. 26).
What can be said? In a study on the holiness of Saint Gerard, I read that “in the imitation of Christ, in one thing he could not imitate Him, as Saint Francis and Saint Louis had done: in becoming poor from being rich. He, Gerard, had always been poor: from his first cry to his last breath. And so he imitated His madness, that of the Cross, which is not insanity, but perhaps ‘the final harbor of love’” (A. De Spirito, Gerardo Maiella e la religiosità popolare del suo tempo, in Spicilegium Historicum, p. 88).
All this Saint Gerard learned from the Eucharist, so that he translated the “madness” of love into service, availability, and total self-giving to his brothers and sisters.
The unity between the love of God and the love of neighbor, dear brothers and sisters, is the heart of Christian life. Today we carry with us this remembrance of Saint Gerard. Therefore, as we celebrate the Eucharist, let us say in the depths of our hearts:
“Lord, You who in this Sacrament make Yourself a total gift for us, grant that, like Saint Gerard, we too may learn from You to serve our brothers and sisters without measure, with a free heart filled with charity. Amen.”
Shrine of Materdomini (Avellino), April 6, 2026
