Saint John of God, Religious – Readings

Commentaries on 1 John 3:14-18; Matthew 25:31-40

It would be difficult to find a more appropriate Gospel passage with which to honour St John of God.  It is the final section of chapter 25 in Matthew, a chapter which deals with the end times and about being prepared for the time when we will come face to face with our final appraisal. The chapter begins with the parable of the ten bridesmaids—five of them who took precautions to be ready whenever the bridegroom would arrive, and five who made no preparations and were caught off guard and so excluded from the wedding celebrations.

The second is the parable of the talents where three people are entrusted with different amounts by their superior and told to trade with them until he returned, whenever that would be.  Two of the servants used their capital very well and even doubled it.  But the third, hid his in the ground, afraid even to lose what he had.  When the master returned, this last had nothing to offer except the original sum he had been given.

The last part of the chapter (which forms today’s Gospel) is not exactly a parable, but an imagined enactment of our final calling to account at the end of our lives.  People are going to be divided into two groups, just as a shepherd divides off the sheep from the goats.

The sheep are first called forward and invited into God’s Kingdom.  What is interesting are the reasons why they have earned this reward.  If, left to ourselves, we were asked the kind of expectations God would have of us at the end of our lives, I wonder what kind of things would we bring up?  Would we say, for instance, that we never missed Mass, that we went to confession regularly, that we practised all kinds of prayers and devotions, that we kept the Commandment with great fidelity, were very conscientious in our work and so on?   On what basis are the sheep called in this story? 

Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’

Apparently, the ‘sheep’ are very surprised to hear this and ask:

Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?

And the King will say to them:

Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.

There is no mention of spiritual practices, or even of Mass, and no mention of keeping the Commandments.  There is no mention of God!  In fact, the two great acts which the Gospel emphasises are love and service of one another and that is exactly what is described here, for:

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:35)

Once love and service are taken care of nothing else really matters.  That is not to say that we can forget about Mass and prayer—not at all.  But it is the love and service of each other that must come first.  And it is on that that we will be measured. St John of the God, of course, was outstanding in his care and compassion for the sick poor and the abandoned.

The First Reading from the First Letter of John is saying exactly the same thing in slightly different words:

We know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brothers and sisters.

And to love, of course, is not just to have nice feelings towards them, but to do much more, to serve them in all their real needs:

Whoever does not love abides in death. All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them.

As our example, we need look no further than Jesus himself who laid down his life out of love for us.  And we need to do the same not just for Jesus, but for Jesus present in all our brothers and sisters.  There is no short cut to Jesus, bypassing those around us:

How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?

So the writer says:

Little children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth.

It is very easy to make all kinds of proclamations of love to Jesus in our prayers, but unless they are backed up by solid deeds of service, especially to the needy, they are very hollow indeed. St John of God has much to teach us about all of this.

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Saint John of God, Religious

John (João Cidade) was born on 8 March, 1495, in Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal.  His family, formerly well-off, had fallen on hard times, but was deeply religious.  His mother died when he was very young, and his father then entered a monastery.

But even before that, John ran away with a priest who had inspired him with stories of adventurous new worlds to be explored.  He would never see his parents again.  The priest and the boy begged their way from place to place and then John fell sick.  The manager of an estate who helped restore his health adopted John as his son.  Until the age of 27, John worked as a shepherd on the estate.  Urged to marry his employer’s daughter, whom he loved as his own sister, John ran away to join the army of Charles V in a war against France.  He was a typical soldier of his day—gambling, drinking and plundering.  One day, near the French lines, he was thrown from his horse.  Afraid of capture, he looked back over his life and decided on a radical change.

On his return to his unit, his fellow soldiers, while accepting his conversion, were not happy at his imposing its restrictions on them.  They tricked him into deserting in order to go to the help of a needy person.  He should have been hanged for this, but he escaped with being beaten, stripped and thrown out of the army.  After a short stint back at his shepherding work, he enlisted in another war and, when that was over, went looking for his parents only to find both had died.  Now 38 years old, he decided he should go to Africa to buy back Christian prisoners.

While waiting for a ship at Gibraltar, he came to the help of a noble family being exiled to Africa for political reasons.  He volunteered to be their servant.  On reaching Africa, the family became sick and John both nursed them and worked to earn money to feed them.  His Catholic employers on a building project treated the workers so badly that John’s faith was threatened.  He was advised by a priest not to blame his faith and to go back to Spain, which he did, but only after the noble family had received pardons.

Back in Spain, he laboured as a dockworker by day, and visited churches and read spiritual books by night.  The books gave him such satisfaction that he now became a pedlar of religious books, going from town to town.  At the age of 41, a vision led him to Granada where he continued to sell books.  Then on 20 January, the feast of St Sebastian, after hearing a sermon by St John of Avila, he experienced a major conversion. 

John of Avila would become his spiritual director and encourage him in his desire to work for the poor.  But people around him thought he had gone mad.  He destroyed all the secular books in his shop, and gave away the religious books and all his money.  His weeping and torn clothes made him the target of jokes and insults.

Sympathetic friends brought him to a hospital where he was put in with people suffering from mental illness.  Here he experienced the standard treatment of the time—he was tied down and whipped daily. His director came to visit and said his penance had been sufficient. After 40 days (like his Lord in the desert), he had John moved to a better part of the hospital.

Now, with more freedom, although still a patient, he began to help other patients.  The hospital was glad to have unpaid nursing help, and were not too happy when he went off to start a hospital of his own.  From that time onward, he vowed to devote the rest of his life to the sick and the poor, and under better conditions than he had experienced.

However, people still saw him as a kind of madman, and it did not help when he tried to raise finances for his project by selling wood in the city square.  In the evenings, he would take his meagre earnings to provide food and comfort to the homeless.  His first hospital was in the abandoned buildings and bridges of Granada.  Then a chance came for him to rent a house, although he had no money to equip it.  After going out begging for money, he would carry sick patients back on his shoulders.  He would dress their wounds and mend their clothes, devoting his nights to prayer. Instead of peddling goods, he took anything he was given —scraps of goods, clothing, anything at all.  Some time later, he was able to move his ‘hospital’ to an old Carmelite monastery and used part of it as a shelter for the homeless.  He was accused of pampering troublemakers, to which he would reply that the only bad character he knew was himself!

One remarkable instance was when he single-handedly rescued patients, as well as much of the bedding and blankets, from the main hospital after it had caught fire, while others looked on doing nothing.  His final escape from the building was regarded as little short of a miracle.

Gradually a dedicated circle of people were attracted to John and the work he was doing. He organised them into the Order of Hospitallers, now better known as the Brothers Hospitallers of St John of God, who care for the sick in countries around the world.

Not unexpectedly, his death came about out of his impetuous urge to help others.  While collecting valuable driftwood from the river in flood, one of his helpers fell into the water.  John immediately jumped in to rescue him.  The boy could not be saved and John himself contracted pneumonia.  He died on his 55th birthday, 8 March, 1550.

John was canonised by Pope Alexander VIII in 1690, and later named patron saint of hospitals, the sick, nurses, firefighters, alcoholics, and booksellers. One mark of honour to his labours is that his congregation has been officially entrusted with the medical care of the Pope.

From the time he was a young boy until the day of his death, John followed the impulses of his heart. The challenge for him was to follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit rather than his own inclinations. But unlike many who act impulsively, when John made a decision, no matter how quickly, he stuck with it, no matter what the hardship.

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