Father Cipolla Sermon for the Feast of St. Januarius

Today is the feast of Saint Januarius, bishop of Naples and martyr, who
died for the faith in the persecution of the Emperor Diocletian in the first
years of the third century. But his significance goes far beyond that of
one of the martyrs of the Church. He is much more well known by his
Neapolitan name, San Gennaro, which name I am blessed to carry as my
middle name. Many of us who live close to New York City associate his
name with the big festival in his honor on this date in what is called
Little Italy, a place that hardly exists anymore, for the Italian immigrants
who lived in this enclave of Manhattan are long gone and their
descendants have moved to the greener pastures of Long Island and New
Jersey. The only Italians who still live in Little Italy are those who run
the countless Italian restaurants there, serving food whose origins are
from Campania, the most famous being pizza from Naples.

But this is not why San Gennaro is so venerated even today in the
Church. One of the great occasions in Naples every year, with a few
exceptions, is the liquefication of the blood of San Gennaro on his feast
day and two other days in the year. The blood, usually in powder form,
is kept in two vials in the Cathedral of the Assumption in Naples, said to
have been collected by a Christian woman at the time of his martyrdom.
Today, at the Mass celebrated in the cathedral at 9 am, the Cardinal of
Naples showed to the people the two vials that had indeed liquefied into
blood. And this made them personally very happy, for those times when
the miracle has not occurred has presaged a calamity for that part of
Italy, not the least of which comes from living at the base of a volcano
that has destroyed the area several times through the centuries.
The Cardinal said to the people at the Mass: “Today the sign of Bishop
Januarius’ bloodshed for the sake of Christ and his brethren tells us that
goodness, beauty and righteousness are and always will be
victorious….Here is the meaning of this blood which, united with the
blood shed by Christ and that of all martyrs of every place and time, is a
living testimony that love always wins.” He went on to caution against
the veneration of San Gennaro as a mere superstition. “It matters little, my brothers and sisters, whether the blood liquefies or not; let us never
reduce this celebration to an oracle to be consulted.”

For those of you who have been to Naples you know the beauty of the
city. But as the bishop pointed out, to live in that city is made terribly
difficult by the city’s mafia culture. He said: “the cancerous evil of the
Camorra and mafia culture, educational poverty and unemployment are
like a plague, especially for our young people.” He ended his sermon
with these words: “People of Naples, what makes you magnificent is
your ability to love, what can make you so even more is to draw from
the source of love which is Christ himself; do not be afraid to follow him
and magnify the Lord for what he will work in you”.

In a reverie of romanticism I wish that we had something like the
miracle of the blood of San Gennaro here in this country of ours. But
that is not necessary. What is needed at this time in our own society, a
time of great unrest, of great division, of violence that is becoming
normal, of the secularization even of the Catholic Church: what is
needed is for those who call themselves followers of Jesus Christ to be
examples of what love means –within our families, within our culture,
within our society. And we need bishops today like St. Januarius who
understand that sacrifice is at the heart of what it means to follow Jesus
Christ and preach that to their people, no matter what the cost.