Fantastic news! Last Saturday, on the nineteenth of September, the blood of San Gennaro liquefied again. An event which was closely followed by the Neapolitans, and also millions of Italians, who collectively held their breath. San Gennaro is the patron saint of the city of Naples, and after he was beheaded in the year 305, a woman managed to capture some of his blood in an ampoule. Since the seventeenth century his remains are kept in the Cathedral of Naples. Nineteen September each year is one of the three days when the relics are taken out of the crypt to commemorate his martyrdom. After an intense prayer, his age-old coagulated blood in the ampoule hopefully liquefies again. Thank God this also happened this year, because when this miracle of blood takes place, Naples is saved from disasters in the near future. Although I am the first to believe in miracles, I still could not help it but to text Tobia, a good friend and born and bred Neapolitan, to ask him how it is possible for the granular mass to liquefy again, seemingly out of nowhere. His answer was clear: “Non lo so, per questo è un miracolo”. “I do not know, that is why it is a miracle”. He couldn’t speak for long however, as he was too busy celebrating this joyous fact just like the rest of the city.
Miracles are there to be cherished and as I continue to read about San Gennaro, I think that we should not deny or even dismiss the miraculous nature of the things that happen in our lives, even though – unlike the liquefying blood of San Gennaro – there exists a logical explanation for them
So, it’s a miracle! A little Google search teaches me that there have been years in fact in which the blood of Saint Gennaro did not liquefy. In the year that Napoleon invaded the city, in the year that the plague broke out, in 1980 when a severe earthquake hit the city and in years when Mamma Vesuvius, the gigantic volcano that watches over the city, erupted. But luckily, Naples is facing another year of prosperity now, which could possibly be interpret as a message that the coronavirus will hopefully vanishe very soon. In itself, this is an encouraging thought that gives hope far beyond the city walls of Naples. Miracles are there to be cherished and as I continue to read about San Gennaro, I think that we should not deny or even dismiss the miraculous nature of the things that happen in our lives, even though – unlike the liquefying blood of San Gennaro – there exists a logical explanation for them. Because Italy? That is, and will remain, one great country of miracles to me.
It also felt like a miracle when suddenly something seemed to click in my head and from one day to the next (so it seemed) I could actually understand Italian without having thrown myself into some intensive language study
Five years ago, when I had only just arrived in Italy, I enjoyed the miraculous fact that wine was coming from the city’s fountains instead of water during the annual wine festival in Marino – a small town in the Castelli Romani and a huge recommendation! – making you refill your cup indefinitely. It also felt like a miracle when suddenly something seemed to click in my head and from one day to the next (so it seemed) I could actually understand Italian without having thrown myself into some intensive language study. My wonderful, endless summer this year, in which I spent many days at crowded beaches amongst large Italian families, also felt like a true miracle at times. How different did the world, and especially Italy, look like in March when the terrible images of piled-up coffins in Bergamo reached the entire world – forever engraved in our collective memory – and rumour had it that Italy would not open its borders before the year-end.
When I then point out the liquid, black miracle in my little espresso cup of which I enthusiastically inhale the aromas and which, in terms of taste, smell and experience, is unmatched in any place in the Netherlands, they nod their heads in agreement
It may be called a miracle that Venice, built on sand lagoons in the sea, was not washed away by the sea yet and that the Pantheon – with a circular aperture in the roof with a diameter of no less than 8.7 metres – still stands proudly upright in Rome after more than two thousand years. Then there is the miraculous story of the pastry chef Pietro Ferrero, who added hazelnuts to chocolate at the time of the Second World War due to the scarcity of cocoa and accidentally invented the world’s most famous chocolate paste. And let us be honest, who could do without Nutella nowadays? I also find it a miracle how very elderly Italian women still climb the steep streets in high heels and how elderly Italian men never, ever feel too old to give you compliments. As a miracle, the Scottish-Italian Sara was seated right next to me when we went out for dinner with at least one hundred and fifty students, so that a friendship for life could be born right on the spot (after she had posed with a Coca-Cola bottle labelled Miss Perfezione for a photo that I had to take). At the very least it felt like a small miracle how |I, after I had actually already obtained my master’s degree in Amsterdam (another miracle in itself, looking at the impossible mathematics and statistics subjects I had to struggle through), still went to Rome to study at a prestigious business university. I was selected for the only available exchange place and that’s how a long-cherished dream still came true after years. Eventually it would be the beginning of a very big new Italian adventure that might last a lifetime. That’s a miracle in itself, if you’d ask the old Italian men in the coffee bar, who regularly tell me I must be crazy to prefer the chaotic character of Rome to the strictly organised system in The Netherlands. When I then point out the liquid, black miracle in my little espresso cup of which I enthusiastically inhale the aromas and which, in terms of taste, smell and experience, is unmatched in any place in the Netherlands, they nod their heads in agreement after which they enthusiastically start ranting about the coffee, the tiramisu, the pasta and the wine. It truly is a country full of miracles, that Italy of theirs, and I see them growing with pride.
Cherish all your miracles, as they make life worth living and beyond.