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| St. John of God |
Saint John of God
Feast Day: March
8
From the time he was eight to the
day he died, John followed every impulse of his heart. The challenge for him
was to rush to follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit gave him, not his own
human temptations. But unlike many who act impulsively, when John made a
decision, no matter how quickly, he stuck with it, no matter what the hardship.
At eight years old, John heard a
visiting priest speak of adventures that were waiting in the age of 1503 with
new worlds being opened up. That very night he ran away from home to travel
with the priest and never saw his parents again. They begged their way from
village to village until John fell sick. The man who nursed him back to health,
the manager of a large estate, adopted John. John worked as a shepherd in the
mountains until he was 27. Feeling pressure to marry the manager's daughter,
whom he loved as a sister, John took off to join the Spanish army in the war
against France. As a soldier, he was hardly a model of holiness, taking part in
the gambling, drinking, and pillaging that his comrades enjoyed. One day, he
was thrown from a stolen horse near French lines. Frightened that he would be
captured or killed, he reviewed his life and vowed impulsively to make a
change.
When he returned he kept his spur of
the moment vow, made a confession, and immediately changed his life. His
comrades didn't mind so much that John was repenting but hated that he wanted
them to give up their pleasures too. So they used his impulsive nature to trick
him into leaving his post on the pretext of helping someone in need. He was
rescued from hanging at the last minute and thrown out of the army after being
beaten and stripped. He begged his way back to his foster-home where he worked
as a shepherd until he heard of a new war with Moslems invading Europe. Off he
went but after the war was over, he decided to try to find his real parents. To
his grief he discovered both had died in his absence.
In Spain he spent his days unloading
ship cargoes and his nights visiting churches and reading spiritual books. Reading gave him so much pleasure that he
decided that he should share this joy with others. He quit his job and became a book peddler,
traveling from town to town selling religious books and holy cards. A vision at
age 41 brought him to Granada where he sold books from a little shop. (For this
reason he is patron saint of booksellers and printers.)
After hearing a sermon from the
famous John of Avila on repentance, he was so overcome by the thought of his
sins that the whole town thought the little bookseller had gone from simple
eccentricity to madness. After the
sermon John rushed back to his shop, tore up any secular books he had, gave
away all his religious books and all his money. Clothes torn and weeping, he was the target of
insults, jokes, and even stones and mud from the townspeople and their
children.
Friends took the distraught John to
the Royal Hospital where he was interned with the lunatics. John suffered the
standard treatment of the time -- being tied down and daily whipping. John of
Avila came to visit him there and told him his penance had gone on long enough
-- forty days, the same amount as the Lord's suffering the desert -- and had
John moved to a better part of the hospital.
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| The miracle of St. John of God |
John of God could never see
suffering without trying to do something about it. And now that he was free to move, although
still a patient, he immediately got up and began to help the other sick people
around him. The hospital was glad to have his unpaid nursing help and were not
happy to release him when one day he walked in to announce he was going to
start his own hospital.
John may have been positive that God
wanted him to start a hospital for the poor who got bad treatment, if any, from
the other hospitals, but everyone else still thought of him as a madman. It didn't help that he decided to try to
finance his plan by selling wood in the square. At night he took what little
money he earned and brought food and comfort to the poor living in abandoned
buildings and under bridges. Thus his
first hospital was the streets of Granada.
Within an hour after seeing a sign
in a window saying "House to let for lodging of the poor" he had
rented the house in order to move his nursing indoors. Of course he rented it without money for
furnishings, medicine, or help. After he
begged money for beds, he went out in the streets again and carried his ill
patients back on the same shoulders that had carried stones, wood, and books. Once there he cleaned them, dressed their
wounds, and mended their clothes at night while he prayed. He used his old experience as a peddler to beg
alms, crying through the streets in his peddler's voice, "Do good to yourselves! For the love of God,
Brothers, do good!" Instead of selling goods, he took anything given
-- scraps of food, clothing, a coin here and there.
When he was able to move his
hospital to an old Carmelite monastery, he opened a homeless shelter in the
monastery hall. Immediately critics
tried to close him down saying he was pampering troublemakers. His answer to this criticism always was that
he knew of only one bad character in the hospital and that was himself. His urge to act immediately when he saw need
got him into trouble more than a few times. Once, when he encountered a group of starving
people, he rushed into a house, stole a pot of food, and gave it to them. He was almost arrested for that charity! Another time, on finding a group of children
in rags, he marched them into a clothing shop and bought them all new clothes. Since he had no money, he paid for it all on
credit!
Yet his impulsive wish to help saved
many people in one emergency. The alarm went out that the Royal Hospital was on
fire. When he dropped everything to run there, he found that the crowd was just
standing around watching the hospital -- and its patients -- go up in flames.
He rushed into the blazing building and carried or led the patients out. When
all the patients were rescued, he started throwing blankets, sheets, and
mattresses out the windows -- how well he knew from his own hard work how
important these things were. At that point a cannon was brought to destroy the
burning part of the building in order to save the rest. John stopped them, ran
up the roof, and separated the burning portion with an axe. He succeeded but fell
through the burning roof. All thought they had lost their hero until John of
God appeared miraculously out of smoke. (For this reason, John of God is patron
saint of firefighters.)
John was ill himself when he heard that a flood was bringing
precious driftwood near the town. He
jumped out of bed to gather the wood from the raging river. Then when one of
his companions fell into the river, John without thought for his illness or
safety jumped in after him. He failed to
save the boy and caught pneumonia. He
died on March 8, his fifty-fifth birthday, of the same impulsive love that had
guided his whole life.
John of God is patron saint of
booksellers, printers, heart patients, hospitals, nurses, the sick, and
firefighters and is considered the founder of the Brothers Hospitallers.
