Blessed John Berchmans

However, the blessed child was approaching his eleventh year, without having yet approached the Holy Table, when suddenly, after a secret and fervent preparation, on the eve of a solemn feast whose precise date is unknown to us, he went to naively ask Pierre Emmerick to hear his general confession and to admit him the next day to the sacred banquet. It was only then that Pierre Emmerick saw with astonishment the incomparable beauty of this soul, henceforth unveiled to his eyes; for, far from having ever lost the friendship of God and the first flower of his innocence, the young penitent could offer his confessor, despite the most serious examination, only completely involuntary venial faults, without discovering in his entire past life any certain matter for absolution; so faithfully had he followed the inspirations of the most filial love of God!

"Also," adds the venerable disciple of Saint Norbert in his deposition, "by the divine radiance with which the face of this blessed child was all illuminated, when I placed the body of the Savior upon his lips, it was easy for me to glimpse to what degree Jesus delighted in taking possession of such a pure soul."

From that day on, despite his youth, the angelic child sighed only for the happiness of often approaching the Holy Table; and he immediately obtained this grace, at least two Sundays a month, without prejudice to the feasts of the Savior and his most holy Mother. To better prepare for it, he did not even let a week pass without confessing, nor a day without examining his conscience for a few minutes; and furthermore he

went, with a truly enchanting candor, to humbly ask his dear master to forgive him all his alleged negligences, on the eve of each of his communions.

He had a great love for the Queen of Angels. He loved to recall that a Saturday had been the day of his birth, and that he had thus entered into life under the auspices of this divine Mother. To belong to her even more closely, and in his desire to resemble her trait for trait, as soon as he had been able to glimpse the excellence of virginity, he had pronounced a vow of it. The more he grew in age and wisdom, the more he multiplied the testimonies of his tenderness toward her. Very often, but preferably as some feast approached or on Saturdays, he deprived himself of his breakfast for the love of her, even though he felt the need for it keenly; and turning his mortification to the benefit of charity, he secretly gave it to some poor person.

One of his sweetest recreations was to visit sometimes in pilgrimage the pious sanctuary of Our Lady of Montaigu, a league away from Diest; and the road seemed very short to him, spent entirely in med itati Diest City of origin of John Berchmans. ng or affectionately reciting his rosary. But the holy child knew above all how to make his devotion toward the most pure Mother of God consist in offering her each day, from morning to evening, his obedience, his recollection, his constant application to the slightest duties of a good schoolboy; sparing nothing so that all his words and all his acts were truly worthy, by their perfection, of being accepted by the Queen of Angels. For he understood from then on perfectly well that the cordial fulfillment of all his duties, for a supernatural motive, was for him the first and most excellent of virtues.

Such happy beginnings in a child seemed to promise one of those souls predestined for the honor and defense of the faith, who never let the generation of Saints perish in the Church. But while he was growing up at the foot of the altars, God had tested his family with painful deprivations. The little they were content with to live on was almost on the verge of running out.

Despite the most ardent desire to see his son one day consecrated to the Lord through the priesthood, John's father could no longer afford the upkeep, however modest, of the young schoolboy. Having suddenly brought him back to the paternal home one day, there, in the presence of his mother, after explaining to him the inevitable necessity of the sacrifice that God himself seemed to demand of them: "Now, my dear son," he added, "since this noble and holy career is closed to you, there is nothing left for you but to seek, together with us, one that will allow you to earn your living in a Christian and honorable way."

These words were a thunderbolt to John's heart. He saw his holiest and dearest hopes vanish in the blink of an eye. But regaining all his faith and courage, after a first moment of stupor: "My dear father and my good mother," he replied firmly, throwing himself at their knees, "God forbid that I should aggravate your deprivations and those of my brothers! But will you not at least allow me to try, for the love of Our Lord, if I can finish my preparation for holy orders, without claiming any other expenses for my food than a little bread and water each day?"

Deeply moved by such a heroic and holy generosity, which placed such a price on the happiness of becoming a priest, without shrinking at that age from the very austerities of the Saints of the desert, John's father did not feel the strength to insist; but he began to look for a new arrangement that could both meet the desires of the pious child without imposing such a burden on him and without creating new charges for his family. Now, he soon discovered that one of the most virtuous canons of Malines, named Jean Froymont, was precisely looking for a poor young cleric who w ould be Malines City where John Berchmans studied and completed his novitiate. willing to fulfill t Jean Froymont Canon of Mechelen whom John Berchmans served as a clerk. he humble duties of companion and servant for him.

At this happy discovery, John could not contain his joy. To serve a priest was in his eyes far above serving a king. It was nonetheless a true domestic service, to which nothing had accustomed him until then. But far from seeing it as a subject of shame, he made it, on the contrary, from day to day, a more vivid subject of joy to let it be seen, and even to recall it later, as he better tasted the happiness of having a share in the cross and the humiliations of Jesus Christ.

Jean Froymont did not take long, it is true, to recognize the value of the new treasure that God had entrusted to him; and finding in the Blessed one the care and heart of a son who joyfully renders the humblest services to his father, he no longer treated him in effect as anything but his son. The lovable child was only more docile and devoted for it. He constantly kept for the good canon a gratitude that neither distance nor the years could weaken; and we find a touching testimony of this later in some letters that he addressed to him.

During this time, the Blessed, who could dispose of several hours each day, pursued his studies with as much success as application; and when the Society of Jesus ope ned a new college compagnie de Jésus Religious order to which Peter Canisius belonged. in Mechelen the following year, he was admitted as an external student to the lessons of the rhetoric class, of which he soon became the most brilliant, as well as the holiest, student.

Freer in many respects in his new position than among his young companions in Diest, at least outside of class and the service of Jean Froymond, to distribute as he pleased or to extend his hours of study and devotion, the Blessed began from then on, around the age of fourteen or fifteen, to often devote several hours of the night, and sometimes even the entire night, either to working or to praying. Often also, after his final exercises of piety, he would lie down fully dressed on the bare floor, to take less softly the little rest he could not refuse to nature; for it was also around this time of his youth that he began more habitually to practice mortification.

On Fridays in particular, to better testify his love to the suffering Jesus, he was accustomed, in all seasons, to make the Way of the Cross barefoot; but, saintly jealous of hiding his penance as much as possible, he would take old shoes from which he had detached the sole, and would choose, for this holy exercise, the first shadows of the night, in order to more surely hide his pious artifice from all the gazes of passersby.

Scarcely had the Society of Jesus in Flanders opened the new college of Mechelen to Catholic youth, than, faithful to the examples and lessons of the great and venerable Father François Coster, it hastened to naturalize there the congregations of the Blessed Virgin, the surest asylum for three centuries for the innocence and piety of children devoted to the service of the all-powerful Mother of God. Jean Berchmans was well worthy of being admitted there without delay; and as soon as he had obtained this grace, he seemed to have nothing so much at heart, after his own fidelity to the commitments he had just made to the Queen of Angels, than to win for her new and faithful servants every day; with them he vied in testimonies of love for this divine Mother; and soon the brilliant crown of children of Mary who pressed around the altars was in large part the work of the zeal of Jean, her beloved son.

To learn to better imitate her, he would go to find in particular, at the beginning of each month, the director of the congregation, asking him to tell him to which virtue he should apply himself more energetically and which defect he should combat in honor of the Queen of Heaven, until the beginning of the following month. He would have it specified at the same time what preparation he should bring to the celebration of each feast, and what practice he would embrace to honor his holy patron of the month. Moreover, he resolved from then on, and his resolutions were unshakable, to no longer pass any day without reciting the Psalter of Our Lady by Saint Bonaventure, nor any Saturday or any eve of the feasts of Mary without fasting rigorously in her honor. And if the detail of his other mortifications at this time is unknown to us, we can judge by this single trait, that, charged with carrying one day to Louvain some message from the good canon of Mechelen, he made this double journey of three leagues on foot and returned very late, but still fasting, as he was forced to admit ingenuously to his master, who had conceived some suspicion.

However, the young servant of Mary was almost at the end of his rhetoric, always full of the same desire to consecrate himself to God through the priesthood, but without yet thinking of religious life. To attract him to it imperceptibly, with that sweetness and strength which make the character of every divine vocation, Our Lord employed mainly the indirect lessons of two heroic children of the Society of Jesus, whose admirable way of life on earth, reward in heaven, and glory even on the altars, Jean was to share, if he were faithful to the designs of God.

In the midst of incessant struggles for the salvation of Germany, against the furies of the heresy unleashed by Luther, the Blessed Peter Canisius had not forgotten the delicate care of Christian youth. In his short moments of leisure, if one dares to apply the word leisure to such a life, he had made and published a selection of the most beautiful letters of Saint Jerome, especially for the use of students who frequented the classes of the Society of Jesus. This fortifying and healthy reading had already won many young souls to Jesus Christ. But had it snatched from the world only that of Jean Berchmans, the work of the valiant apostle would have been worthily rewarded. It was indeed there, by his own admission, that with the deepest contempt for all perishable things, this holy child drew his first love of religious life and perfection; a divine germ that the sweet influence of the virtues of the angelic Aloysius Gonzaga soon brought to bloom, recounted by the very one who was to become, a few years later, the confidant and historian of the virtues of Jean.

From this decisive impulse, the more he contemplated the life and zeal of his masters, the more he lent an ear to the heroic accounts of the successors of Francis Xavier on the most distant shores of the Orient, or those of Edmund Campion in the tortures and on the scaffolds of England, the more his heart was inflamed with the desire to do or to suffer something similar for Jesus Christ. But in order to proceed only with all the desirable maturity in the matter so important of his vocation, the Blessed wished to ensure above all the grace and light of God itself. Then, not wishing to leave any resource to the cowardice of nature or to inconstancy, he first committed himself by vow to neglect nothing to be admitted as soon as possible into the Society of Jesus, and hastened to write then to his father and mother, to obtain their consent and their blessing, a letter that he ended with these touching words: "The child of Jesus and yours, Jean."

At this news, so little expected, the paternal and maternal tenderness was troubled. Very forgivable hopes, but which had not had God alone as their object, vanished in a moment. Brilliant dreams of the future had been founded on the talents and successes of the young student, whom everything seemed to predestine to become the support of his family. To these too natural calculations, Jean opposed a response more worthy of him: "O my dear father, how much better you would do," he cried out, "to raise your thoughts toward the eternal riches, which God offers us so liberally and for such a light labor!"

However, they did not consider themselves defeated. They tried to shake his resolution, but the victory remained his. Under the auspices of Mary, on Saturday, September 24, 1616, he made his entry into the novitiate of the Society of Jesus, in Mechelen. Scarcely had he crossed its walls than he could not hold back his tears of joy; and they did not cease to flow gently until evening, so profound was his emotion. He believed himself to be in Compagnie de Jésus Religious order to which Peter Canisius belonged. the abode o Malines City where John Berchmans studied and completed his novitiate. f the Saints; and, from that hour, he lived there like the Saints. He was especially remarked for a perfect and constant fidelity to the Rule, for the love of humiliations, and for a continuous application to mortify his senses. God tested him with great desolations and great dryness in his exercises of piety; but that did not alter in any way the serenity of his face, which never faltered for a single instant.

Did his brothers sometimes ask him for the secret of his constant fidelity to the Rule and his attractive kindness? He was accustomed to point them immediately to the inexhaustible double source from which all the great Saints of the last centuries have drawn so abundantly: devotion to the holy Sacrament of the altar and to the most pure Mother of God.

Among all the exercises of the novitiate, one of the dearest to the new son of Saint Ignatius was to teach the catechism to the poor and to little children. It can be said that he truly put his whole heart into it. He spared no preparation, no effort, to bring the elements of Christian doctrine within their reach, to open their souls to the impressions of a solid and lively piety, especially through the most beautiful traits of the lives of the Saints. Then he joined example to precept, and prayed himself with them, employing in turn the different methods of Saint Ignatius. His young audience was so hanging on his lips that often they all accompanied him on his return, and would still solicit a pious story, or a few words of explanation and encouragement, without ever wearying his patience or his kindness; and passing one day by the same road after several hours, after having taught them to recite gently and affectionately the holy Rosary in honor of Our Lady, he found them in groups, kneeling behind some hedge, repeating with the tone of voice and the most filial air the angelic salutation, from the moment he had left them.

This first flame of the apostolate, which was already taking such lively and rapid growth in his heart, pushed him around the same time, with the approval of his superior, to study the French language, during the few free moments left to him by the other exercises of the novitiate. If God destined him to work in his homeland for the salvation of souls, this new instrument was to be almost indispensable to him; especially for one of the types of apostolate that smiled upon him the most, the assistance of Catholic or heretical soldiers, on the battlefields and in the hospitals.

Nevertheless, the first object of the zeal and charity of the young novice was above all the service and sanctification of the brothers with whom he shared his life. For them, he seemed to know neither obstacle nor reluctance; and as soon as it was a question of consoling them, his own interest and his comfort counted for nothing. Several, whose vocation was wavering, even saw him, on many an occasion, kneel before them, without any regard for himself or human respect, begging them, in the name of the Savior and his merciful Mother, to delay at least their departure for the world by one or two days. Then, in this interval, he knew how to find them so many and such powerful intercessors, he himself offered so many prayers and penances for them, that God, unable to resolve, so to speak, to leave such charity without reward, would suddenly lift up these dejected hearts by a marvelous change, and make them find again with joy all the sweetness of paradise in this life which had seemed intolerable to them but a moment before.

This devotion, so active and so delicate, of Jean Berchmans, in the face of the peril or the pain of one of his brothers, did not let him taste any rest as long as he had not put everything into action to help them. One of them having breathed his last at the moment when the novitiate bell gave the signal for bedtime, he went in all haste to solicit permission not to give himself to sleep before having recited with fervor three whole rosaries for the soul of the deceased, rejoicing to offer a part of his rest for that of a soul so dear, who perhaps owed it to him not to languish until the next day in the flames of the justice of God.

Shortly after his entry into the Company, Brother Jean had lost his pious mother, and one can guess all that he offered in prayers and sacrifices for her who had given him, along with life, the first lessons of love and filial service to God. His father, no longer aspiring from then on but to embrace also a life entirely holy, but without neglecting, of course, the care of a numerous family, had prepared himself for the sacred orders, and had just received the priestly character, when the time arrived for the holy novice to pronounce, after two years of trials, his first vows. Almost on the eve of this blessed day, Jean wanted to give his father this consoling news, and on the appointed day, he consummated his sacrifice with all the fervor of an angel. Then, called almost immediately by a message from the Provincial who was waiting for him at the college of Antwerp, before crossing the threshold of the novitiate, he went to solicit once more the advice and the blessing of his superior.

Jean spent few days at the college of Antwerp; and it was enough to acquire there, as at Malines, that beautiful name of angel which followed him everywhere. But he soon received the news of his imminent departure for the Roman College, where the studies, then very flourishing, gathered a numerous elite youth from all the provinces of the Company. He was, in the meantime, to go as soon as possible from Antwerp to Diest, to take leave of his father. But, on his passage through Malines, he learned that death had just snatched him from him; and as they vied with each other to lavish upon him the consolations of charity: "Oh! from now on," he replied, "my consolation will be to repeat, with an even more filial abandonment: Our Father who art in heaven!"

It was a month after his vows, on October 24, 1618, that the Blessed set out for Italy, with another young religious destined for the same studies. The journey to Rome was, in those days, a true pilgrimage, equally long and arduous; and it was to be prolonged for them until the greatest rigors of winter, for more than two whole months. But the grace of obedience and the joy of soon visiting some of the most venerable places in the Christian world made the hardship light for them. They had the happiness of arriving at Loreto on the very eve of the holy day of Christmas, and all fatigue was forgotten, to leave room only for the joy of sharing, in vigils and prayers, during such a beautiful night, the humble dwelling of Jesus and Mary.

Finally, the two young pilgrims entered Rome almost in the last hours of the year 1618, to celebr ate Rome Birthplace of Maximian. there with their brothers one of the principal feasts of the Company, that where the Savior, as the price of his blood, received the glorious imposition of the name of Jesus.

From the very first days, his holiness struck the brothers deeply, and Jean Paul d'Oliva, who later became General of the Company, and Fr. Jean-Baptiste Ceccotti, who knew all the secrets of the Blessed's soul, gave glorious testimony to his zeal for sanctifying himself and learning.

Since every common or particular rule was, in the eyes of Jean Berchmans, an equally certain expression of Our Lord's good pleasure and a pledge of His blessing for a religious, he had firmly resolved never to change office or position without immediately becoming acquainted with all the prescriptions proper to them, in order to conform his slightest actions to them to the letter. He therefore began his new life by studying and meditating for several days on the rules of the scholastics of the Company, and then pledged, at the feet of his crucifix, to work no less energetically from then on to acquire knowledge than he had done until then to learn to conquer himself and become a saint. Wishing even for this idea to be always present to him, he wrote it down and fixed it before him, below the image of Jesus on the cross.

These were not vain acts, "for so great was his ardor and his application," one of his professors, Fr. François Piccolomini, tells us, "that I believe it impossible to surpass him on this point; and I have not even known anyone who could, in my opinion, be compared to him. As soon as obedience applied him to a new study, even if he were, by all appearances, never to derive any fruit from it, he spared neither care nor fatigue. Should not the knowledge of a religious of the Company, he would say to me, be vast enough to suffice for half a world? But at the same time, I admired in him a candor and a docility incomparable in giving the most faithful account of everything he did or proposed to do in this regard; ready to leave at the first sign everything that would not have been approved by those who held the place of God for him!"

To this application, the Blessed added all the resources of an elite intelligence. In the judgment of the same Fr. Piccolomini, he was capable of applying himself to all branches of sacred or profane teaching, and of excelling in everything.

Violent headaches sometimes stopped him, however, and they tormented him until his death. But, forced to suspend his work for a few moments, he would soon return to it, after having calmed his pains by the recitation of the holy Rosary, which never tired him. Moreover, it was not the fear of tiring himself and suffering, but obedience alone that prompted him to rest.

The thought of God, always present and which never left room for indolence and cowardice, was Jean Berchmans' great secret for keeping intact, in the midst of the most stubborn work, that flower of devotion he had brought from the novitiate. If he was reduced to fewer exercises of piety and penance, he knew, according to the beautiful expression of Saint Ignatius, that to work in the presence of God and for His love is to pray and suffer for Him. For everything else, he entrusted himself without worry to his superiors, sharing with them the holy desires he believed came to him from Our Lord, without insisting, however, or appearing afflicted by their decision; but also without omitting anything that was prescribed or permitted to him by obedience. He would have preferred to lose in a moment, he said, all the natural gifts with which his soul was enriched, than to steal from the slightest exercises or to employ with negligence a minute of the time that the rule assigned to them. Until then, he had recited the Office of Our Lady every day. This pious practice was taken away from him for class days, and only granted on feast days and holidays; a decision he received as if from the mouth of Mary, and which he did not attempt to evade a single time. His austerities were also limited, well below his initial desires and everything he had managed to make himself suffer at the novitiate, when study did not yet claim all his strength. Very rarely, and at most on the eve of some feasts, was he permitted to wear a hair shirt. But as the discipline seemed less dangerous to his health, he obtained permission to take it three or four times each week, and even more often in some solemn circumstances, such as the approach of Passiontide, when one of his companions assures us that he did not let a single evening pass without scourging himself.

But the holy exercises of humility which, without harming the body's strength, so effectively maintain the fervor of the soul, had a very different value in the eyes of Jean Berchmans, and he did not miss any opportunity to practice them. Not content with serving up to three and four times a week in the refectory or the kitchen, and frequently soliciting all the public humiliations in use in all religious Orders, he obtained, to his great joy, to clean and maintain every day the lamps intended for the service of the community, in the staircases and corridors of the Roman College. Nothing was sweeter to him than this humble office, and he ingenuously brought to it numerous motives well worthy of a Saint. "First, is this not the job," he said, "that the blessed Aloysius Gonzaga recently filled, right here? And what greater honor for me than to resemble him, however little!" Then he also found in it a trait of resemblance, almost equally dear to his heart, with the lay brothers of the Co mpany; for his af Louis de Gonzague Jesuit saint, a model for the youth of the Work. fection for their jobs and for their degree was always so lively that he had solicited the grace to spend his entire life in them; and obedience alone prevented him. Nothing at least charmed him more than to be taken for one of them by the strangers who walked through the house during his work; and he even let this word escape one day: "Oh! how pleasant it would be for me to clean my lamps before the door of the college, under the gaze of all the passersby!" Finally, one of his favorite exercises, during the holidays, was to go from time to time to spend a day in some hospital; and the consolation he tasted there, by serving the most disgusting sick people, seemed to his soul a true rest.

Finding himself, however, still very far from the perfection of this virtue, he devoted his particular examinations to humility for an entire year. However, without returning here again to everything we have already let glimpse, of his fidelity to prayer, of his frequent visits to Our Lord, of his angelic demeanor at the foot of the altars, especially during the divine sacrifice, let us stop only at some of the holy industries he used during his studies, to advance more and more in the ways of perfection.

And first, the first means he adopted, as very salutary and one of the most practical, was to employ invariably, at least half a day each week and an entire day each month, in the renewal of the inner man and in the rigorous examination of all his affections. He therefore submitted to his superiors this double resolution, the smallest details of which they approved, and which since then has not ceased to have countless imitators. It included first the morning of communion days, whenever there was to be no class; the Blessed spent it in pious exercises until dinner, still under the very vivid impression of the sacramental presence of Jesus Christ.

As for his retreat each month, he took care in advance to set a holiday or feast day that was entirely free, and here is the invariable order he had prescribed for himself to observe. From the previous day, he began to prepare for it, by offering Our Lord some acts of public humiliation and penance, then abstained from the evening recreation, to recollect himself and foresee in detail all the exercises of the next day. "I will no longer expose myself like this," he said, "to losing precious time in uncertainties and late deliberations." He then went to bed fully penetrated by the holy thoughts he wanted to occupy himself with as soon as he woke up. In the morning, his first action was to adore Our Lord, and to offer Him, with a redoubling of fervor, all the moments of this blessed day, the success of which he entrusted to the holy protectors he had chosen for himself, but especially to the glorious Queen of the angels and of the Company of Jesus. During this whole day, he gave no less than four hours to important meditations, and compared in the interval, at the feet of his crucifix, the month that was ending at that moment with the one that had preceded it, asking himself, without lazy complacency and in the divine light, if he had advanced or retreated on the path of perfection; returning to God alone the glory of his efforts or his progress, and attributing only to his negligence the faults of which he believed himself guilty and punished himself with rigor; finally taking without delay the surest means to preserve himself from them in the future, and praying with tears to the Savior and his holy Mother to help him effectively to correct himself. He also applied himself to recognizing the graces he had received since his previous retreat; those he asked for and hoped for for the following month; finally the new acts of virtue that Our Lord desired from him; and he took a firm and detailed resolution to spare nothing to satisfy Him.

Another means of perfection no less effective, employed by the Blessed, was his perpetual presence of God and his familiarity with the Saints, whom he called to his aid in every encounter, which made several say that he prayed all day long. Knowing also, by the institutions and by the doctrine of Jesus Christ and His Church, how much sensible signs have power to recall the mobility of the mind and senses toward God, he made perpetual use of them, and recommended them strongly to his most intimate friends. Did he meet the image of some servant of God? He greeted it immediately and invoked it affectionately. At the mere sight of one of his brothers, or of a stranger, he saw near him, with the eyes of faith, his guardian angel, and took off his hat to honor both. From the moment he woke up, he excited himself to devotion, by kissing in turn his cassock, his crucifix, and an image of the most holy Virgin. All his actions, in a word, were intimately penetrated by the spirit of God.

Finally, more than ever, during the last three years of his life, the Blessed believed he could find no better way to rise to the height of holiness than a devotion growing from day to day toward the glorious and all-powerful Virgin Mary. "His tenderness for her was truly inexplicable," says one of his roommates, Pierre Alfaroï, "Very often he spoke to me of her as our beloved Mother, provoking me to love and serve her. And I noticed more than once, when he prayed to her, the radiance of a divine joy in his eyes and an ineffable smile on his face." He called her the patroness of his holiness, of his health, of his science; a triple gift that he asked of her every day, and that he also solicited for his brothers, while subordinating it to the designs of divine Providence; as being able to be used very usefully for the service and glory of God. "My refuge," he said again, "in times of desolation and bitterness, is patience, prayer, the wounds of Jesus, the bosom of Mary!" At his last moments, a young religious, his compatriot, wanted to know from him what had been the most effective instrument of his sanctification; and the Blessed replied: "My brother, as soon as I thought of becoming a saint, I laid as the foundation of my edifice the love of the Queen of heaven. If I have been able to make some progress, it is to her that I owe everything. Be also until death a true son of this divine Mother!" —"Finally," he repeated in every encounter, "he who truly loves her is sure to obtain everything he wants!" Fr. Bruni, one of the most assiduous at his deathbed, gives us in a touching way the impression that this tender devotion of the Blessed had produced on him and on all his brothers. "During the days that preceded the departure of our brother Jean for heaven, I felt," he writes, "very strongly moved to contemplate him and to serve him as the child of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to such a point that I had to ingenuously declare it to him!"

This virtue which exhaled, without him having the slightest suspicion of it, from the whole person of the Blessed, would have been more than sufficient, by the testimony of his companions, to enchant the Roman College. Even among the strangers and the smallest schoolboys, there was a holy emulation, as to who would see him just pass by (so much did his gait and his modesty have something angelic), and especially as to who would see him pray at the foot of the altars. But God was pleased to show in him what the habitual apostolate of the word can be, even on the part of the youngest and most obscure religious, by granting him the very rare gift of a very lovable, very holy, and very salutary conversation. Through it, Jean was truly an apostle, and procured the sanctification of a multitude of apostles.

A final exercise of charity, where the Blessed Jean even seemed to want to rival his glorious Father Saint Ignatius, was his marvelous tenderness for the sick. "I will not let a single day pass without visiting and consoling them, with the permission of my superiors," he wrote in his resolutions; and not wanting to steal a moment, neither from work during study hours, nor from his other brothers during recreation time, he devoted to the sick, in the afternoon, the entire hour that the custom of Rome and Italy allows to be given to rest; for he had also resolved never to grant himself this relief. One never tires of hearing and rereading, in the acts of the beatification of the holy brother, the testimony of these poor infirm people, whom he had so often and so fraternally consoled. Recounting one day himself, for a motive of zeal and charity, some of the blessings and joys with which he abounded in this pious exercise: "Our Lord," he said, "made me find in it, among others, this reward, of never having gone to the sick without meeting at least one who wished to talk openly about the things of heaven, and in particular about the Blessed Virgin Mary."

However, this apostolate of the Blessed in the midst of his brothers could hardly exceed the limits of his short religious life, if Our Lord had not inspired him, no doubt in reward for his holy desires, with a very simple idea, but of incalculable scope, and which, even in our days, does not cease to bear its fruits. The servant of Jesus Christ had very often reflected on this disposition of heart, so familiar to young religious, to welcome willingly, at least in the first times following their novitiate, every holy and easy industry, suitable for preserving, without harming studies, the first flower of their devotion. After having prayed at length, and consulted several times those who held the place of God for him, he resolved to associate with himself first some of his most fervent fellow students, and to devote with them about an hour each week, on the afternoon off, to a completely familiar conference on some subject of piety. They fixed together, each time, by common agreement, the object of the next conference. This small meeting, composed at first of four or five members, was to have a completely spontaneous, perfectly free character; and its utility was by that very fact full of charm and abandonment. Thus it did not take long to grow; and soon all the youth, whom the sweet influence of the Blessed drew without effort, solicited the grace and the pleasure of being part of it.

One of the most lovable traits of the Blessed's graceful physiognomy would be missing if we did not add a few more words about his lively and candid gratitude for all those from whom he had received some good. From his earliest childhood, he showed it, as we have seen, to his parents and his first teachers, with the most charming amiability. He saw from then on in them only the image of God, loving and instructing him, or even correcting and punishing him through their ministry: an admirable thought of faith, well above such a tender age and which redoubled his love for them. This completely filial sentiment only grew and blossomed in the Company of Jesus, where the Blessed did not let a single day pass without offering, especially at holy Mass, fervent prayers and generous sacrifices, for all those he regarded as his benefactors; and the slightest service was never forgotten by him.

But he did not stop there. Feeling wonderfully, by a secret instinct of the divine Spirit, how sensitive the heart of man is to a mark of gratitude, how much he even draws from it courage and momentum even in the things of God, the holy young man went ingenuously, every month, to offer to each of his teachers a list of the communions, prayers, and penances he had prescribed for himself for them, in return for their pains. "I have kept several of these notes and I keep them preciously, like the relics of a Blessed," said, after the death of Jean, Father François Piccolomini, the one of all his professors whom the servant of God seemed to have loved most filially; because he also venerated him as a Saint, whose lessons inspired all his students equally with the love of science and virtue.

Two full years had passed since the arrival of the Blessed at the Roman College, when toward the last days of February of the year 1621, his superiors ordered him to prepare, for the feast of Saint Joseph, for a solemn session of philosophy. It was for him the order of God Himself; he therefore resolved immediately to put into action all the natural and supernatural means, in order to satisfy fully what obedience required of him.

The success was such that not one of his fellow students seemed as worthy of being chosen to support, four months later, the honor of the Roman College, in an act even more solemn on the whole of philosophy. This choice did not fail to alarm his humility for a moment; but he immediately had recourse to his ordinary refuge, obedience, and was content to go and ask his confessor what he judged solely to be more pleasing to Our Lord, whether to accept this honor without saying anything, or to attempt some step to make it fall on another. The answer was immediately that it was better to remain silent; and after a second preparation, similar in everything to the first, the Blessed again obtained the unanimous applause of a brilliant and learned assembly. "In truth," said, upon leaving this new trial, the assistant to the Father General of the Company for the provinces of Spain, "if God had sent us an angel just now in place of Brother Jean, we would not have had, I believe, a more beautiful spectacle!"

During this last year of his life, the Blessed had chosen, for the sole subject of his particular examinations, the queen of all virtues, charity. At times, the flames of divine love seemed to consume his body and soul. Everything served to activate them; and he would not even trace a page without writing, next to the holy name of Jesus: "O love! love! love!" His health, however, did not yet inspire any serious fear; but upon examining him in his agony, one of the most skilled doctors in Rome did not hesitate to say: "This death is entirely divine! Our remedies can do nothing for it!"

In the course of the month of July, while chatting with Father Jérôme Savignano, the Blessed could not hide his desire to soon see death break his bonds. "What then! my brother Jean," the latter replied, "are you already so ready to leave that you would have no pain in doing so?" — "Oh! I confess it, my Father," the holy young man answered him, "if Our Lord left the choice to me, it would be very sweet to have a few days beforehand to better prepare myself, through the exercises of Saint Ignatius. But if it were His good pleasure that at this instant I should surrender my soul to Him, yes, I would surrender it to Him without fear, very willingly." Moreover, the Blessed was no longer living, in effect, according to his expression, except "for the day, for the present hour," attaching himself only to making it more worthy of God.

Shortly after, he accompanied Father Famien Strada on a pilgrimage to Saint Mary Major; and the latter, who knew Jean's pious preoccupations wonderfully well, told him, throughout the journey, of the truly heavenly deaths of some fervent religious of the Company, deaths of which he had himself been a witness; then, letting the holy envy he felt for their happiness break out: "May Our Lord grant us also, my dear brother," he exclaimed in finishing, "to die one day ourselves the death of the Saints!" But the blessed brother, raising his eyes toward him with a sweet gravity: "Oh! yes, my Father," he replied, "may we die a holy death! But for this desire to be accomplished, must we not first wish that our soul live the life of the Saints?"

On July 31, the feast of his Father Saint Ignatius, drawing lots with his brothers for a new patron for the following month, he received at the same time this sentence from the holy Gospel: "Watch and pray, for you do not know when your hour will come!" Words which were accompanied as if by a voice and an interior light, announcing to him, without a doubt, that the hour of his deliverance was approaching; and he went immediately to share it with one of his most intimate confidants, Father François Piccolomini.

Nevertheless, the first four days of August passed without any symptom that his desires were to be granted so soon. But on the morning of Our Lady of the Snows, a sudden indisposition seized him, without, however, preventing him yet from accompanying his brothers that day to the college's country house, or from arguing the next day at the Greek college, with as much ease and fire as modesty. The following night was without rest for him; but, accustomed for a long time never to listen to the complaints of nature, he rose at the usual signal, and performed his exercises of piety as if he had truly suffered nothing. It was only in the afternoon that, for fear, too well-founded, of failing in one of his rules if he did not finally make his illness known, he went to the room of the Father Rector and explained his state. At the first word, Father Cepari ordered him to go and place himself, like a child of obedience, in the hands of the infirmarian brother; and the latter, who saw him every day at the bedside of other sick people, said to him while welcoming him: "Well! this time, Brother Jean, what shall we do with you?" — "Whatever it pleases Our Lord," he replied immediately with a smile.

It was not, however, until the evening of the tenth, after having been weakening all day, that the holy sick man came to cause too serious worries, and that all hope of saving him vanished in a few moments. Here is how Father Louis Spinola recounts the last moments of the Blessed.

"On the evening of the feast of Saint Lawrence, I had gone," he says, "to knock at the door of the Father Rector, to speak to him about some personal matters. He listened to me personally, satisfied my requests, and added: 'I want to go now to see our brother Jean Berchmans, for I fear very much that we may lose him.' Quite moved by this news, I urgently requested authorization from the Father Rector to follow him, and he consented. Seeing us both enter his room, the holy brother greeted us with the most amiable and serene air, then spoke to us of death and paradise, with as much joy as a captain chatting about battles and victories. As we answered him that perhaps, before going to enjoy God, he would still have to work and suffer much in this world, in the service of His divine Majesty, he told us how the holy Father François Coster had said to him one day, in Flanders, during his novitiate: 'My brother, you will later win many souls for Our Lord!' But after a short pause, 'I really do not know,' he added, 'if he might not have meant that it would be from the heights of heaven.' The conclusion of this first visit was that, if the state of our holy brother did not improve that night, the Father Rector would bring him, the next morning, the holy Viaticum, and we withdrew to go and take our rest. But I begged the FATHER RECTOR to have me called in time, if there were occasion; for I felt an extreme desire to be present at this great action."

Father Cepari had only shared his plan with the infirmarian brother; but some time later, the latter, seeing the sick man weakening: "Brother Jean," he said to him, "has the Father Rector announced nothing to you? For my part, I think it would be good for you to receive the visit of Our Lord tomorrow morning." — "Would it be to receive the Viaticum?" the holy young man replied calmly. — "Yes, my dear brother, for from now on we have very little hope left." — Then, with a face radiant with joy, as if he had received at that moment the most gracious news, the servant of God raised himself, and throwing both his arms around the neck of the infirmarian leaning over him, kissed him tenderly. But as the latter was melting into tears and could not articulate a word: "Ah! my dear brother," he exclaimed, "rejoice then with me! for this is indeed the best announcement and the sweetest consolation that it was possible for you to give me." Then immediately, taking his crucifix: "O my good Jesus," he resumed, "you have always been my only treasure here below. Do not abandon me in my last moments!" And as the infirmarian brother gently urged him not to weaken and tire himself further with too vehement affections: "Oh! fear nothing," he replied, "these affections are, on the contrary, all my strength and all my joy!"

Some moments later, he asked the brother to write, under his dictation, his spiritual testament, and pronounced it in the greatest calm, always with the same serenity. In it, he first asked pardon of the Reverend Father General of the Company for having been such an unworthy son of such a sweet and holy mother, from whom he had received so much good. Then, after the most vivid testimonies of gratitude for each of his Fathers and brothers, who had devoted themselves, he said, to so many labors because of him, and for all those who had visited him during the days of his illness, he asked, as a final grace, to receive the holy Viaticum, surrounded by all his brothers, laid on the ground, fully dressed, and to die wearing the cassock of the Company. The infirmarian hastened to carry these few lines immediately to Father Cepari; and the latter, after reading them, not without deep emotion: "Tell this Brother Jean," he replied, "that all his requests will be granted."

Let us now return to the personal memories of Father Spinola.

"Early in the morning," he says, "the Father Rector came to wake me himself and told me that, if I wanted to see the holy Brother Jean receive the Viaticum, it was time. Driven by my desire, I rose in great haste and went to the room of the holy brother, who with a smiling and gracious face said to me, as soon as he caught sight of me: 'I greet you, my dear brother; here we are about to leave for heaven!' Words which pierced my heart so much that I went out at once to hide my tears, under the pretext of going to the sacristy to join the Father Rector and those who were to accompany the Blessed Sacrament. When we returned to our dear brother, we found him lying on the ground, on a mattress, dressed in his cassock, his hands joined; and he remained in this state until the blessing of the room, the Confiteor, and the absolution were finished, according to the tenor of the rubrics. But when the Father Rector turned toward him with the body of Our Lord, to give it to him, suddenly we saw him rise like a flash and kneel; although his excessive weakness should have made him fall instantly, had not two of his fellow students hastened to support him until after the holy communion. He then made his profession of faith and protested firmly that he was dying, or that at least he wished to die, as a true son of the Company of Jesus and as a true son of the Blessed Virgin Mary; then he received the holy Viaticum. At this spectacle, we were all seized with compunction no less than with regrets, thinking that this incomparable treasure of all holiness was so soon to be snatched from us.

"I remained there almost all day, that is to say, with the sole exception of class hours; and we were there in great numbers; for everyone ardently desired to see him, and to render him, if possible, a last service. During all this time, his conversations were only of paradise, to which he aspired incessantly through a thousand ejaculatory prayers, each more beautiful and more ardent than the last. He repeated often in particular: 'O Mary, do not permit my hope to be in vain! I am your son, you know it well; for I have sworn to you to be so forever!'

"On the evening and night of the 11th to the 12th, I remained again near him, with several others of our brothers. And, as I went out from time to time for a few minutes, in order to breathe for a moment the fresh night air, for the heat had been extreme, returning toward him, about three hours before the rising signal, I found him awake, his hands very cold; and supposing that this coolness must also be agreeable to him, I said nothing. But it was for him, on the contrary, a vivid suffering, as he admitted the following day; and the fear alone of tiring the infirmarian brother, who was taking a little rest, had prevented him from speaking.

"The day having come, his room filled with new visitors, who had rushed in crowds to see this death, which each of us would certainly have redeemed with a glad heart, at the price of several of his years. All wanted to receive from his mouth a last piece of advice, with the assurance of a remembrance before the Savior and his holy Mother, as soon as he would be in heaven. Despite his fear of exhausting his strength, Father Cepari did not dare to turn away this multitude, which seemed to him drawn by God himself, to gather from the lips of the holy dying man the highest and most effective lessons of every virtue. He therefore decided to let each visitor enter alone, in turn, once more and for barely a few minutes. To all without exception, the Blessed, always smiling, urgently recommended three things: a filial tenderness for the most holy Virgin Mary, a great love of prayer, and the most unalterable fidelity to all the rules of the Company. Then he added in a few words some particular advice, according to the state of soul of each, showing clearly, according to the express deposition of several, that he read clearly into the depths of their souls. 'Also, despite his modesty and his humility,' adds Father Golfi, 'at the superhuman majesty and the freedom of his speech, we could not doubt that God was speaking to us in him.'

"The evening came," continues Father Spinola, "much more rapidly than we would have wished; for the hours seemed to us to pass like minutes, at the bedside of our holy brother. I remained there again all that night, with several other Fathers and Brothers, who feared nothing so much, like me, as not to be near him, when he would render his blessed soul to God. I only went, around two hours after midnight, to wake one of our brothers to whom I had promised it the day before, and who hastened to come." (It was during this short absence that the demon tried to wage a harsh battle against the dying man, as the latter had predicted shortly before. Suddenly the sick man threw himself into the middle of his bed; his eyes fixed on heaven, his face distraught, his lips trembling, he cried with all his strength: "I repent with all my heart, Lord, for having offended you!... No, I will not do it... Me offend you, Lord?... Mary, me offend your Son?... No, never, never; no, I will not do it; I would rather die a thousand times, ten thousand times, a hundred thousand times, a million times, a million times, a million times, a million times," and he repeated about forty times this cry: "Get thee behind me, Satan, I do not fear you...".) When I returned, he was saying: "Give me my weapons: my crucifix, my rosary, and the rules of the Company! These are the three objects that I love most in the world. I will die without pain with them!" But as they presented him with a book of rules where those of the scholastics were missing, he asked for another that I hastened to go and take and brought to him. Then he pronounced very affectionately the formula of the vows, and had recited to him afterward several prayers and the litanies of the Saints, where he had added the invocation of the four Blessed of the Company, our holy Father Ignatius, Francis Xavier, Aloysius Gonzaga, and Stanislaus Kostka, as well as the two Fathers, Francis Borgia, Joseph Anchieta, and the brother Alphonsus Rodriguez. Almost immediately after, he lost the power of speech, and remained about three hours in this state, showing well, however, by the modesty of his pose and the angelic recollection of his features, that he had not lost consciousness. So when the Father Rector, or one of his professors who was assisting him at that moment, invited him to pronounce from the heart the name of Jesus, and to give, if he could still do so, some sign that he heard, one saw him from time to time gently incline his head.

"I must not forget here to say that, the day before, when everyone was asking him for advice and a remembrance, I did the same; and he answered me: 'May God Our Lord make of you a child of prayer, a child of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and may He give you the double spirit of our blessed Father Ignatius with regard to God and souls!' I then begged him to obtain for me some particular graces; which he promised me very kindly; and as I added: 'Take good care, Brother Jean, for I will not let a single day pass without reminding you of your promise.' — 'I will keep it,' he answered me in a tone full of energy; 'be certain of it!'

Finally, three and a half hours before his last breath, the Blessed having recovered his speech by making a new effort to invoke the holy name of Jesus, repelled the last assaults of the demon, who was striving to trouble him still, by the memory, not of his faults, he found none to reproach himself with, but of his very acts of virtue. Jean, with the help of prayer, and by his obedience to the Father who was assisting him, triumphed again victoriously over his enemy, and soon recovered all his serenity. Then invoking in turn the holy patrons he had received each month, since his entry into the Company, uniting himself one last time to the litanies of the Queen of angels, his eyes fixed on these three objects that were so dear to him, his book of Rules, his rosary, and his crucifix, he gently rendered his holy soul to God. It was the morning of August 13, 1621, the anniversary day, according to a pious conjecture, of the separation of the body and soul of his divine mother the glorious Virgin Mary. Thus died in the odor of sanctity, at the age of twenty-two years and five months, the blessed Jean Berchmans.

He is represented carrying in his hands the book of the Rules of Saint Ignatius, a cross, and a rosary. It is thus that he wished to die, saying: "These are my treasures, with which I will present myself joyfully before God."

[APPENDIX: CULT AND RELICS.]

Scarcely had the body of Blessed Berchmans been carried to the church and properly exposed, than popular devotion honored him with the cult of the Saints. Several miracles were performed in the presence of an immense crowd. On August 14, the holy body was placed in a wooden coffin with a lead inscription and was provisionally interred in a tomb in the chapel of Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, where no one had been laid until then.

From that moment, the chapel was never empty of people, and the cult of Berchmans took on larger proportions day by day. To stop the gathering of the faithful, the body of the Blessed was buried in the chapel of the Holy Cross, where the common burial place of the Fathers of the college was located. He was placed in the very spot that the body of Saint Aloysius had occupied until his beatification. The gathering occurred at this chapel just as it had at that of Saint Aloysius, without anything being able to slow its fervor. Ex-votos of all kinds arrived there in great numbers. In 1623, the chapel where he rested was adorned by the people with flowers and greenery. Belgium vied with Rome to honor his memory. Germany invoked him with even more enthusiasm than Italy. The most astonishing healings did not cease to occur at his tomb and to encourage the confidence of those who came to surround him with their tributes and their vows.

At that time, Rome had not yet forbidden such tributes, rendered to those whose brilliance of miracles seemed to proclaim so loudly the glory and power of the heavens. Only a few years later, on March 13, 1625, the Sovereign Pontiff Urban VIII was to reserve henceforth to his sole infallible judgment as Vicar of Jesus Christ the examination of the virtues and wonders that would give the right to the title and public honors of the Blessed. On September 11, 1745, Pope Benedict XIV signed the commission for the introduction of the cause, and from then on the servant of God could be honored by all with the official title of Venerable. By a decree dated June 5, 1843, Pope Gregory XVI proclaimed, before the entire world, that the venerable servant of God, John Berchmans, cherished by God and men, had practiced to a heroic degree the theological and cardinal virtues, as well as the moral virtues that derive from them. Finally, on May 9, 1865, the Sovereign Pontiff Pius IX signed the brief of beatification of the vener able s Pie IX Pope who canonized Josaphat in 1867. ervant of God, and on May 28, the promulgation was made in the metropolitan church of Saint Peter.

The wooden coffin that contained his body having been found all rotted, the bones, ashes, parts of the habit preserved, and even fragments of the coffin were collected with extreme care, and everything was placed in a lead box, with the inscription of which we have spoken. In 1729, Father François Piccolomini, rector of the Roman College, verified the box and noted that all the bones were there, with the exception of the teeth, some fingers of the hands and feet, and some small ossicles. A few years later, his successor, Father Casotti, enclosed the bones in a wooden box covered with a copper casing. On May 11, 1865, the verification of this august deposit took place at the Roman College. On the occasion of the solemn beatification, some bones were taken from the common treasure and brought to Belgium, to be the object of the veneration of the faithful. The Cardinal Archbishop of Mechelen obtained a bone of the forearm, which was placed, on July 23, 1865, in the metropolitan church, on an altar newly erected and consecrated to the Blessed. The cathedral of Antwerp possesses a small bone, as well as the shirt that the Blessed wore in his final moments; the church of the Gesù, in Brussels, a vertebra, as well as the church of Diest; the Jesuit house in Leuven keeps his heart. At the Notre-Dame college in Antwerp, a sleeve of the Blessed's cassock is still preserved.

We have borrowed this account from a life published by a Father of the Society of Jesus, without an author's name, at Ménicile. Sometimes we have analyzed it, but often we have also reproduced it verbatim. — Cf. Life of Blessed John Berchmans, by H. P. Vanderspooten, of the Society of Jesus.