Festa!

 

This week, legions of tourists and others with money to spend have been pouring into the downtown Manhattan neighborhood which is still somewhat anachronistically labelled "Little Italy" for the  Festa di San Genaro. In the traditional Roman Catholic calendar, September 19 has long been observed as the feast of Saint Januarius (San Gennaro, in Italian), Bishop of Benevento, martyred c. 305 along with six others during the persecution of Emperor Diocletian, the last serious Roman persecution prior to the conversion of Constantine. His relics eventually made their way to Naples, where for centuries, San Gennaro's body has reposed in the Cathedral of Naples. As patron of that city, he continues to be invoked for protection from fire, earthquakes, and the ever-present threat from Mount Vesuvius. 

In the early 20th century, the massive wave of Neapolitan immigrants from one of the poorest regions of the newly created Kingdom of Italy to America made devotion to San Gennaro a popular part of immigrant Italian life in New York City - in the neighborhood that then really was "Little Italy" (and where my mother was born 104 years ago). 

The still popular street festival originated on Mulberry street on September 19, 1926. By 1930, there were 440,250 Italian-born New Yorkers - including all my grandparents and several of my aunts and uncles. As strangers in a foreign land, Italian immigrants faced all the challenges - and opportunities - inherent in immigration. As Catholics, they faced the added challenge of being perceived primarily as a problem by an unwelcoming, predominantly Irish ecclesiastical establishment. As much as anything else, the New York Italian street festivals celebrated an alternative quality of community experience. While the establishment lamented what the immigrants didn't do, the festa demonstrated who they were at heart.

The one-day festa eventually expanded into today's 11-day street fair and a major tourist attraction - New York's biggest and most famous street festival and a great place to go for sausage and zeppole - a combination carnival and charity fundraiser. Operated by a not-for profit community organization, the contemporary festa distributes donations to various charitable organizations. Today's money-spending, sausage and zeppole consuming tourists may know little and may care even less about San Gennaro and his miraculous intercession against volcanic eruptions, but  even now the festa still features a religious procession on the actual feast day, an authentic expression of an immigrant community's heart and the spiritual strength that sustained the struggle of the Italian immigrant experience.

Meanwhile, back in Naples on his feast day, a silver bust containing the head of the saint and a glass reliquary containing a solidified sample of the saint's blood are exposed for veneration. Led by a group of women, called zie di San Gennaro,  the people pray for the famous miracle of the liquefying of his blood. When that happens, the ritual announcement is made to the great joy of all, Il sangue si è sciolto, Il miracolo e fatto ("The blood has liquefied. The miracle has happened"). The Te Deum is then sung, and the reliquary is made available to be kissed by the people. San Gennaro's blood traditionally also liquefies on the Saturday before the first Sunday of May to commemorate the transfer of his relics to Naples and again on December 16, the anniversary of the day in 1631 when a flow of lava from Mount Vesuvius miraculously bypassed the city - thanks, it was believed, to the saint's intercession.

The presence of Mount Vesuvius - a mere 9 miles from the center of Naples, highlights the paradox of Naples, a vibrant, exciting city, on a beautiful bay, in a setting of of incomparable natural beauty, blessed with fertile volcanic soil, but forever threatened by one of nature's most dangerous and unpredictable destructive forces. In a sense, Naples is like a parable of life itself - the blessings and dangers of ordinary human life on earth as well as of the spiritual journey through life on earth to the kingdom of God. How fitting then that the Neapolitans turn so regularly to a saint who has already passed through the blessings and dangers of this life to assist them as they struggle to do the same! 

Image: Flag of the Kingdom of Italy, 1861-1946.