Author: ANTONINO

by Father Gameiro

Maybe this saint was somehow a fool when dealing with poor people. And was Jesus not asking us to give everything to the poor and to follow him? Once a friend of Saint John of God met with him and tried to blame and to advise him to be wiser when he gave alms on the street, and on whom he admitted in his hospital. He humbly answered:

«I know nothing, brother…When they ask me for some aid, for God’s love, I have to give it, even if it is my life. The rest is up to them» (cf. Pleyto, witness Benito de los Rios 15th question and CASTRO,
chap. XIIII).

On another occasion he was still more specific on his vision and respect of his divine anthropology principles:

«I ask for God’s love, they give me for God’s love, and I have to give for God’s love». And anticipating an objection to the misuse of his good intentions, he added: «What they do with the aid I give them, it is up to them. They are accountable to God».

Jesus told Peter to forgive his offenders 70×7. Saint John of God is an example of promptitude in pardoning. Better soon than later. One day a woman he had taken from the prostitution house, and whom he was helping in her process of getting an independent and autonomous life, offended him. She used some black-mail with him, demanding more than he could give her. At that moment he had nothing with him to give to her. She offended him, calling him a hypocrite and other bad names. His answer was very calm:

«take these two little coins, and go and tell everyone in the market place what you said».

She became even more angry and doubled the offensive words. As he saw her so upset, and to leave her more comfortable, he told her calmly:

«sooner or later I have to forgive you. Well, I will forgive you right now». It was a blessed forgiveness. The biographer adds that she proclaimed all this aloud at the Saint’s funeral (CASTRO, chap XV).

ALL IS DOING GOOD FOR GOD. John teaches us that the righteous way of doing good is a golden rule. The heart logic of his life is clarified with an answer given in the town of Valladolid two years before his death. Saint John of God went on a nine month journey, on foot, taking with him some recommendation letters to the Prince-King in order to collect some alms and donations in the royal Court, so that he could pay the debts he had made by assisting his poor patients in Granada, which he could not afford to pay.

During these months there in Valladolid, he received a lot of money, but at the same time as he went around, he met many poor and patients and could not but help them. So his generous benefactors started to worry and alerted him:

«brother John, you have to keep the money for your poor and to pay the debts in Granada, you are giving everything here»… Brother John replied: «to give here or in Granada, all is doing good for God, He is everywhere» (CASTRO, chap. XVI ).

The benefactors had to start giving him certificates which could only be payable in Granada, instead of money. And so, arriving there in Granada, he could pay some debts and buy dowries for girls he had in adoption families to be educated and trained to get married. John took sixteen of them to the altar for marriage in only one day, says his biographer (CASTRO; chap XIII).

John was alone and was poor, too. How could he help other poor people? Yet, he cared for hundreds of patients in his hospital and of needy people outside. So he had to organize a network of volunteers and benefactors. At the same time he started his letters with these words:

« In the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ and of Our Lady the Ever-Virgin Mary; God before all and above everything in the world. God save you, my brother my sister, in Jesus Christ…».

So he put God and Jesus Christ before everything, and called Our Lady Ever-Virgin. In Spanish it is more meaningful: “always whole”; that is, with no stain or sin, in the sense of the Immaculate Conception to whom he was very devoted.

To a young boy called Luis Baptista, he wrote, at the end of his letter:

«I shall stop now, although I shall not stop praying to God for you and for everybody. I must tell you that I have been getting on very well with the Rosary, and I hope in God that I shall recite it as often as I can and as he wishes».

He called all his benefactors, volunteers and patients his brothers and sisters.

From one letter we can have an idea of the people he cared for. To his benefactor Gutierrez Lasso, he says:

«this letter will let you know in what dire straits and in what very great need I am… my most beloved and dear brother in Jesus Christ, so many poor people flock here… many poor people come here… – the sick, the healthy, servers, and pilgrims – there are more than one hundred and ten».

And he goes on, specifying the categories: «there are cripples, the maimed, lepers, mutes, the insane, paralytics, people with ringworm, and also very old people and many children – and… pilgrims and wayfarers who come here and to whom we give fire, water, salt, and pots, so that they can cook».

He describes a touching story to the Duchess of Sesa about the needy whom he helps in their homes.

«My sister, I must tell you that while I was walking through the city of Cordoba the other day I came across a household in very dire need: two girls whose parents had both been sick and bedridden for ten years… So poor and in such distress that it broke my heart. They were half-naked and totally lice-ridden, and their bed consisted simply of bundles of straw. I gave them what little assistance I could, since I was in a hurry to go and talk with Master Avila; however, I did not give them as much as I should have… They have written me a letter and what they tell me in it is heartbreaking…»

And he proposes a kind of a strange deal.

«Thus, good Duchess, if it so pleases God I should like you to gain these alms which the others have lost. They consist of four ducats: three for those poor girls, so that they may buy two blankets and two skirts».

And to persuade the Duchess, he put the values of people above everything.

«Because a soul is worth more than all the treasures of the world and those girls should be saved from sinning for such a small thing». And he adds that «the other (ducat is) for Angulo, my companion, for his journey to and from Zafra, because I am expecting him to come back with some assistance».(I DS).

In the II letter to the same Duchess of Sesa, he pictures a realistic scenario of his work of hospitality.

«This letter is to let you know… my needs and troubles… The debts and the poor increase by the day, and many of the latter arrive naked, barefoot, and covered in sores and lice, so that one or two men need to be employed (with their cloths) just to kill the lice in a cauldron of boiling water. This work will continue throughout the whole winter, from now on until next May. Thus, my sister in Jesus Christ, my work grows each day». (2nd DS).

So were the merciful saints. And what about us? … (To be continued)

Fr. Aires Gameiro, OH,
(Brother of Saint John of God)

Brought to you by Fr. Aires Gameiro (aires.gameiro@isjd.pt)

SAINT JOHN OF GOD’S PROVOCATION AND PARABLE (2) … continued from last week’s newsletter

John helped the poor by giving them material means of living. But to those still poorer of life’s meaning, he accompanied them to help discover their purpose. We wonder how he received a so challenging gift from the Holy Spirit: to help women in prostitution conditions to find a meaningful goal for their lives. I will tell you two surprising stories taken from the excellent biographer Francisco de Castro:

(1) Whatever another man gives you, I will give you more. John used to visit the prostitution house to try and take some of them out of there and propose a new way of life for them. He used to go there, his biographer says, on a Friday, carrying a small cross with him. He went directly to one prostitute who he thought was more inclined to a change of life and to moving out. He said to her: “My daughter, whatever another man gives you I will give you more… on condition that you accept to hear me for a while”.
And so he could talk to her, and propose a cognitive restructuring of her self-image and a new life project based on values and Christian virtues (CASTRO, Cap. XIII).

(2) Parable of a third cargo of fish. The following step was to offer the women who accepted his proposal, the means to achieve a new project. One way was to find an adoptive family where these women could find rearing and training to be prepared for a future life, either as married wives or as residents in a women autonomous community home. There is a beautiful story about four of these women who accepted John’s proposal, but on one condition: he had to take them to Toledo to regulate some business. John arranged four mules for them; and he and the hospital servant, John of Avila, nicknamed Angulo, accompanied them on foot for hundreds of kilometers to Toledo. Approaching there, on the way, three of them, one by one, escaped. Angulo was quite angry and upset with John, telling him that this journey with these kind of women was nonsense. And he went on by saying that as they were all the same it was more advisable to let them all go, and come back to Granada immediately. John listened patiently and told him the following parable full of wisdom and mercy.
“Come here, brother Angulo, and listen. Suppose you go to Motril fishing port to carry four cargoes of fish. On the way back, three of them get ruined but one is still good. Would you throw away this cargo together with the other three? Be patient. Let us go on with this one to Toledo for her to regulate her problems there.”

The biographer ads that this woman married and lived an honest life, and she herself told her story to the writer (CASTRO, Cap. XIII).
… (To be continued)

Fr. Aires Gameiro, OH,
(Brother of Saint John of God)

– Brought to you by Father Gameiro (aires.gameiro@isjd.pt)

Saint John of God (1495-1550), Portuguese, was forty-two when he went to hear the famous John of Avila’s sermon in Granada on the 20th of January 1538. Hearing it, he was called by God, and went through a strong spiritual transformation. He had been searching for a real and deep unified self and was blessed with a strong modification, called a Christian conversion. His personal life and behavior went through cognitive and emotional transforming experiences and he found a more satisfactory meaning of life (cf. Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy). He became upset, emotionally moved and unbalanced, crying that he was a great sinner and clamouring for God’s mercy.

For some weeks, people considered him a fool and he was taken into the royal hospital. This experience restructured the whole perception of his past life and unified his self in a more coherent one. After this personal transformation, his empathic relationship and hospitality praxis became universal, without frontiers, and extended to all kinds of people, either unadjusted or unbalanced, stigmatized and marginalised, rich and poor people, even to prostitutes and criminals.

After the strong illumination that he experienced, he felt himself to be so great a sinner as any other unworthy man or woman that he met on his way. He felt identified with the so-called naughty people and sinners. As he had the experience of being nobody, he could identify with any person excluded from the mainstream and also with unbalanced people. At the same time, he could easily be empathic and merciful to them. Somehow he felt identified and as a brother of whoever was marginalised and excluded. John had a sense of humour and such a strong maturity that he was able to take himself with humorous irony and mockery.

After a pilgrimage to the Guadalupe sanctuary (in Spain), he started to collect firewood in the mountain to make a living and to help the poor on the streets. In Place Bivarrambla the irreverent boys mocked him, asking if he had another folly now.

Laughing, John entered the game in a surprising way. He told them joking:
“Brothers, this is like the game of birimbao, three galleys and a ship, the more you see the less you will learn”. This game is a Portuguese show-hide game played by the boys in John’s birthplace, Montemor-o-novo, until today. At one time, the Saint was accused to the archbishop (they said that he was supporting unworthy and false needy people in his hospital). Or so they thought. Some of them, they said, were abusers, women of bad example, thieves and lazy people. They were really dangerous and were damaging the hospital’s image, eating unworthily the poor’s bread and throwing away his benefactors. He had to quickly clean his hospital of such people, the archbishop concluded.

John listened respectfully. After a while he said:
“ My Father and Good Bishop, in my hospital all are good people, nobody is unworthy and so as God makes his sunshine come on everybody so there is no reason to throw away the helpless and the afflicted from
their own home. I am the only bad person there, unworthy of eating the poor’s bread ” (CASTRO, Cap. XX). (To be continued)

Fr. Aires Gameiro, OH, (Brother of Saint John of God)

Note: Father Gameiro has been celebrating Mass at the chapel while Father Bernadino is on holiday. He has degrees in both theology and psychology and has written many books including one about alcoholism in Madeira and the Açores.
He has been the director of the Casa de Saúde São João de Deus of Madeira, which provides care in the area of mental health and the rehabilitation of those suffering from dependency on drugs and alcohol.