FROM his ignorance of secular learning, and his extraordinary humility, he was surnamed the Simple. He served God in the world to the age of sixty, in the toils of a poor and laborious country life. The incontinency of his wife contributed to wean his soul from all earthly ties. Checks and crosses which men meet with in this life are great graces. God's sweet providence sows our roads with thorns, that we may learn to despise the vanity, and hate the treachery of the world. "When mothers would wean their children," says St. Austin, "they anoint their breasts with aloes, that the babe, being offended at the bitterness, may no more seek the nipple." Thus has God in his mercy filled the world with sorrow and vexation; but woe to those who still continue to love it! Even in this life miseries will be the wages of their sin and folly, and their eternal portion will be the second death. Paul found true happiness because he converted his heart perfectly from the world to God. Desiring to devote himself totally to his love, he determined to betake himself to the great St. Antony. He went eight days' journey into the desert, to the holy patriarch, and begged that he would admit him among his disciples, and teach him the way of salvation. Antony harshly rejected him, telling him he was too old to bear the austerities of that state. He therefore bade him return home, and follow the business of his calling, and sanctify it by the spirit of recollection and assiduous prayer. Having said this he shut his door: but Paul continued fasting and praying before his door, till Antony, seeing his fervor, on the fourth day opened it again, and going out to him, after several trials of his obedience, admitted him to the monastic state, and prescribed him a rule of life; teaching him, by the most perfect obedience, to crucify in himself all attachment to his own will, the source of pride; by the denial of his senses and assiduous hard labor, to subdue his flesh; and by continual prayer at his work, and at other times, to purify his heart, and inflame it with heavenly affections.[1] He instructed him how to pray, and ordered him never to eat before sunset, nor so much at a meal as entirely to satisfy hunger. Paul, by obedience and humility, laid the foundation of an eminent sanctity in his soul, which being dead to all self-will and to creatures, soared towards God with great fervor and purity of affections.
Among the examples of his ready obedience, it is recorded, that when he had wrought with great diligence in making mats and hurdles, praying at the same time without intermission, St. Antony disliked his work, and bade him undo it and make it over again. Paul did so, without any dejection in his countenance, or making the least reply, or even asking to eat a morsel of bread, though he had already passed seven days without taking any refreshment. After this, Antony ordered him to moisten in water four loaves of six ounces each; for their bread in the deserts was exceeding hard and dry. When their refection was prepared, instead of eating, he bade Paul sing psalms with him, then to sit down by the loaves, and at night, after praying together, to take his rest. He called him up at midnight to pray with him: this exercise the old man continued with great cheerfulness till three o'clock in the afternoon the following day. After sunset, each ate one loaf, and Antony asked Paul if he would eat another. "Yes, if you do," said Paul; "I am a monk," said Antony; "And I desire to be one," replied the disciple; whereupon they arose, sung twelve psalms, and recited twelve other {541} prayers. After a short repose, they both arose again to prayer at midnight. The experienced director exercised his obedience by frequent trials, bidding him one day, when many monks were come to visit him to receive his spiritual advice, to spill a vessel of honey, and then to gather it up without any dust. At other times he ordered him to draw water a whole day and pour it out again; to make baskets and pull them to pieces; to sew and unsew his garments, and the like.[2] What victories over themselves and their passions might youth and others, &c., gain! what a treasure of virtue might they procure, by a ready and voluntary obedience and conformity of their will to that of those whom Providence bath placed over them! This they would find the effectual means to crush pride, and subdue their passions. But obedience is of little advantage, unless it bend the will itself, and repress all wilful interior murmuring and repugnance. When Paul had been sufficiently exercised and instructed in the duties of a monastic life, St. Antony placed him in a cell three miles from his own, where he visited him from time to time. He usually preferred his virtue to that of all his other disciples, and proposed him to them as a model. He frequently sent to Paul sick persons, or those possessed by the devil, whom he was not able to cure; as not having received the gift; and by the disciple's prayers they never failed of a cure. St. Paul died some time after the year 330. He is commemorated both by the Greeks and Latins, on the 7th of March. See Palladius, Rufinus, and Sozomen, abridged by Tillemont, t. 7, p. 144. Also by Henschenius, p. 645.
Footnotes: 1. Pallad. Lausiac. c. 28, p. 942. Rufin. Vit. Patr. c. 31. Sozom. l. 1, c. 13. 2. Rufin. & Pallad. loc. cit.
MARCH VIII.
ST. JOHN OF GOD, C.
FOUNDER OF THE ORDER OF CHARITY.
From his life, written by Francis de Castro, twenty-five years after his death, abridged by Vaillet, p. 98, and F. Helyot, Hist. des Ordres Relig. t. 4. p. 131.
A.D. 1550
ST. JOHN, surnamed of God, was born in Portugal, in 1495. His parents were of the lowest rank in the country, but devout and charitable. John spent a considerable part of his youth in service, under the mayoral or chief shepherd of the count of Oropeusa in Castile, and in great innocence and virtue. In 1522, he listed himself in a company of foot raised by the count, and served in the wars between the French and Spaniards; as he did afterwards in Hungary, against the Turks, while the emperor Charles V. was king of Spain. By the licentiousness of his companions, he by degrees lost his fear of offending God, and laid aside the greatest part of his practices of devotion. The troop which he belonged to being disbanded, he went into Andalusia in 1536, where he entered the service of a rich lady near Seville, in quality of shepherd. Being now about forty years of age, stung with remorse for his past misconduct, he began to entertain very serious thoughts of a change of life, and doing penance for his sins. He accordingly employed the greatest part of his time, both by day and night, in the exercises {542} of prayer and mortification, bewailing almost continually his ingratitude towards God, and deliberating how he could dedicate himself in the most perfect manner to his service. His compassion for the distressed moved him to take a resolution of leaving his place, and passing into Africa, that he might comfort and succor the poor slaves there, not without hopes of meeting with the crown of martyrdom. At Gibraltar he met with a Portuguese gentleman condemned to banishment, and whose estate had also been confiscated by king John III. He was then in the hands of the king's officers, together with his wife and children, and on his way to Ceuta, in Barbary, the place of his exile. John, out of charity and compassion, served him without any wages. At Ceuta, the gentleman falling sick with grief and the change of air, was soon reduced to such straits as to be obliged to dispose of the small remains of his shattered fortune for the family's support. John, not content to sell what little stock he was master of to relieve them, went to day-labor at the public works, to earn all he could for their subsistence. The apostacy of one of his companions alarmed him; and his confessor telling him that his going in quest of martyrdom was an illusion, he determined to return to Spain. Coming back to Gibraltar, his piety suggested to him to turn pedler, and sell little pictures and books of devotion, which might furnish him with opportunities of exhorting his customers to virtue. His stock increasing considerably, he settled in Granada, where he opened a shop, in 1538, being then forty-three years of age.
The great preacher and servant of God, John D'Avila, {543} Apostle of Andalusia, preached that year at Granada, on St. Sebastian's day, which is there kept as a great festival. John, having heard his sermon, was so affected with it, that, melting into tears, he filled the whole church with his cries and lamentations; detesting his past life, beating his breast, {544} and calling aloud for mercy. Not content with this, he ran about the streets like a distracted person, tearing his hair, and behaving in such a manner that he was followed everywhere by the rabble with sticks and stones, and came home all besmeared with dirt and blood. He then gave away all he had in the world, and having thus reduced himself to absolute poverty, that he might die to himself, and crucify all the sentiments of the old man, he began again to counterfeit the madman, running about the streets as before, till some had the charity to take him to the venerable John D'Avila, covered with dirt and blood. The holy man, full of the Spirit of God, soon discovered in John the motions of extraordinary graces, spoke to him in private, heard his general confession, and gave him proper advice, and promised his assistance ever after. John, out of a desire of the greatest humiliations, returned soon after to his apparent madness and extravagances. He was, thereupon, taken up and put into a madhouse, on supposition of his being disordered in his senses, where the severest methods were used to bring him to himself, all which he underwent in the spirit of penance, and by way of atonement for the sins of his past life. D'Avila, being informed of his conduct, came to visit him, and found him reduced almost to the grave by weakness, and his body covered with wounds and sores; but his soul was still vigorous, and thirsting with the greatest ardor after new sufferings and humiliations. D'Avila however told him, that having now been sufficiently exercised in that so singular a method of penance and humiliation, he advised him to employ himself for the time to come in something more conducive to his own and the public good. His exhortation had its desired effect; and he grew instantly calm and sedate, to the great astonishment of his keepers. He continued, however, some time longer in the hospital, serving the sick, but left it entirely on St. Ursula's day, in 1539. This his extraordinary conduct is an object of our admiration, not of our imitation: in this saint it was the effect of the fervor of his conversion, his desire of humiliation, and a holy hatred of himself and his past criminal life. By it he learned in a short time perfectly to die to himself and the world; which prepared his soul for the graces which God afterwards bestowed on him. He then thought of executing his design of doing something for the relief of the poor; and, after a pilgrimage to our Lady's in Guadaloupa, to recommend himself and his undertaking to her intercession, in a place celebrated for devotion to her, he began by selling wood in the market-place, to feed some poor by the means of his labor. Soon after he hired a house to harbor poor sick persons in, whom he served and provided for with an ardor, prudence, economy, and vigilance, that surprised the whole city. This was the foundation of the order of charity, in 1540, which, by the benediction of heaven, has since been spread all over Christendom. John was occupied all day in serving his patients: in the night he went out to carry in new objects of charity, rather than to seek out provisions for them; for people, of their own accord, brought him in all necessaries for his little hospital. The archbishop of Granada, taking notice of so excellent an establishment, and admiring the incomparable order observed in it, both for the spiritual and temporal care of the poor, furnished considerable sums to increase it, and favored it with his protection. This excited all persons to vie with each other in contributing to it. Indeed the charity, patience, and modesty of St. John, and his wonderful care and foresight, engaged every one to admire and favor the institute. The bishop of Tuy, president of the royal court of judicature in Granada, having invited the holy man to dinner, put {545} several questions to him, to all which he answered in such a manner, as gave the bishop the highest esteem of his person. It was this prelate that gave him the name of John of God, and prescribed him a kind of habit, though St. John never thought of founding a religious order: for the rules which bear his name were only drawn up in 1556, six years after his death; and religious vows were not introduced among his brethren before the year 1570.