The sanitized version of St. John of God’s childhood has an eight-year-old John listening to the eloquent words of a visiting priest and then later the same evening running away with the priest. Supposedly, the pair roamed the countryside, begging for food, until John became sick. Then a manager of a rich estate took pity upon John and adopted him.
St. John’s Parents Grieve
In his book, Saints Behaving Badly, Thomas Craughwell conjectures that a stranger abducted the young John. The abduction theory is acceptable if one doubts that a kindly priest would let a young boy journey with him without obtaining the consent of John’s parents.
Nonetheless, the eight-year-old John disappeared from the house of his parents, Andrew and Theresa. Before long, his mother died of despair, surely a sign that she did not willingly give up her child. Andrew sold his farm and joined the Franciscan order as a lay brother.
St. John Raised by a Loving Family
The circumstances surrounding John’s appearance with his foster family may be murky, but some facts are certain. John’s new family was pious and his foster father did work as a manager for the Count of Oropresa. So religious was John’s adopted father that he required John to recite twenty-four Hail Marys each day.
St. John Joins the Army
At the age of twenty-two, John joined the army of King Charles V. John assimilated into the army with ease, picking up all the bad habits he could; he swore, gambled, drank heavily, and engaged the services of prostitutes.
Unfortunately, John he did not make a good soldier. Assigned to guard a cache of loot, the lazy John disappeared from his post and the plundered loot became plundered again. Many of John’s superiors wanted him hanged. However, a senior officer came to his rescue and had John dishonorably discharged.
St. John Goes To Ceuta, Morocco
John fiddled around looking for something to do and came up with the idea of going to Ceuta, Morocco and ransoming Christians from the Moors. Spain had recently conquered Ceuta from the Moors and the Spanish were using convicts to build fortifications. The Spanish treated the convicts brutally and some escaped to the Moors. If they converted to Islam, the Moors declared the men free.
John met one such convict and was appalled to learn that the man gave up Christ to be free. This fact weighed heavily on John, so much so that a priest advised he leave Morocco and go back to Spain.
St. John of God Meets St. John of Avilla
John survived by doing odd jobs here and there. In January 1537, an event happened that changed his life. St. John of Avilla came to Granada to preach on the feast of St. Sebastian. John was in the audience when all of a sudden he began to wail, calling on God to forgive his sins. John ran from the church screaming and beating his breast. After a few days of acting like a lunatic, the authorities captured John and put him in an asylum.
St. John of Avilla visited John in the asylum and told him to give up the histrionics and find something useful to do with his life. St. John of Avilla told John that God would forgive his sins if he did something good for the people.
St. John of God Opens a Hospital
John searched for something good to do and decided to open a hospital. On his own, John opened a hospital, with forty-six beds, for the poor. The townspeople still thought of John as a lunatic and initially no one came forth to help. So John did all the work himself, he nursed patients, did the laundry, cooked, cleaned, and hiked the woods gathering firewood.
John also begged for food in the streets and eventually the people saw that he was doing God’s work. Benefactors appeared and that allowed John to expand his work to the homeless, orphans, and the elderly. He soon had a group of regular assistants working in the hospital and the Church recognized the men by granting them an order. The Church encouraged John to take the name John of God.
John’s Death and Canonization
John died at the age of fifty-five, on his birthday 8 March 1550, and Pope Alexander VIII canonized him on 16 October 1690. St. John is the patron saint of hospitals, the sick, firefighters, alcoholics, and booksellers.
References:
Craughwell, Thomas J., Saints Behaving Badly, United States, Doubleday, 2006
Larry Putt - Larry Putt is a Steam Plant Operator, Radiological Controls Technician, Nuclear Chemist, and an Episcopal Lay Preacher. A veteran of the ...
