St. John of God
Born: March 8, 1495
Died: March 8, 1550
Feast day: March 8
Patron saint of: Booksellers, hospitals, nurses, the mentally ill, the dying
If anyone urges you to become a fool for Christ, just be careful. In recent years this phrase has sent hundreds of otherwise sane adults flocking to clown workshops and mime classes. Saint John of God took things even more literally, winding up in the local asylum.
But one might excuse John for this drama—after all, he had been hit hard by a heavy-duty midlife crisis. At 42, he looked back uncomfortably on the 18 years he had just spent fighting in the army of Spain. The violence and sordid behavior had finally proved too much for him, and he got out.
Determined to do some good with the rest of his life to balance out his dark deeds, he tried his hand at several doomed projects before becoming a seller of sacred pictures and religious goods in the town of Granada.
As a daily visitor at the nearby church, John was on hand the day the famed preacher John of Avila delivered a stirring sermon on becoming a fool for Christ. John of God, who never did anything halfway, took the sermon a bit too literally. He began tearing his hair, begging for mercy, running amok in the streets, and soon found himself shut up in the lunatic asylum. Some accounts say that this behavior stemmed simply from deep remorse. Others, however, suggest that John, always painfully aware of his shameful past, decided that being treated as a madman might be an appropriate penance for his sins. (Perhaps the 16th century equivalent of “being too hard on yourself”?)
When John of Avila heard about the suddenly mad shopkeeper, he suspected the truth. He went to the asylum and told John to knock off the madman routine; he suggested that doing a true service to his neighbors might be a much better penance than bothering the whole town with his foolishness. John recovered immediately (much to the amazement of his attendants).
Soon John discovered a new work to stick with: he became a one-man hospital. He rented a house and took in all the poor of the town who needed medical care, along with offering shelter to people who were homeless or insane. He shocked the town with his skill at running this rough-and-ready hospital. It turned out that this eccentric, uneducated man had what the down-and-out needed: a capable hand to bandage their wounds, an ear for their troubles, a joke to ease their gloom.
He also had a knack for raising money, which came in handy for this enterprise. “Do yourselves a good turn, Ladies and Gentlemen, do yourselves a good turn,” he shouted as he walked through the streets seeking donations. This got a laugh, but it got purses open, too.
Not everyone was thrilled, of course. In Saints Are Not Sad, biographer Alban Goodier, S.J. reports that some citizens denounced this charity to the outcast on the grounds that it would “encourage vagabonds and idlers in their evil ways.” (Sound familiar?) Some accused him of being too free with the money given him; others were scandalized at his friendship with the town’s prostitutes, many of whom he set up in new occupations.
John’s hospital grew almost in spite of himself: volunteers emerged from the many people he had helped, and after his death they formed the order of the Brothers Hospitallers.
It all just goes to show what a healthy midlife crisis can do. Thank goodness he didn’t decide instead to blow his nest egg on a red Ferrari and run off with a woman half his age.
Originally published in the April 1992 issue of Salt magazine, ©Claretian Publications.
Image: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons
