Saint John Berchmans

Jesuit Seminarian (1599-1621)

Feast – November 26

The French Revolution of 1789 may appear like a botched recreation of the American Revolution, but there is a major difference between them. The American Revolutionary War was a war for independence rooted in God-given rights, while the French Revolution was a coup orchestrated by opportunistic, power-hungry, atheist, anti-Catholic politicians. The American Revolution brought freedom, peace, and prosperity to millions, while the French Revolution brought bloodshed and war to the entire European continent. Many people viewed this as a terrible one-time event, one that would never recur. The devil on the other hand, viewed this as a successful attempt to divide humanity and inflict massive pain and suffering on humanity.

Fifty years later, Karl Heinrich Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto, laying the groundwork for modern Communism. The same year their international secret society, the Communist League, started the most widespread revolutionary wave in European history, the Springtime of Nations. Over 50 countries were affected. Caught off-guard at first, the aristocracy and their allies organized a counter-revolution in Autumn 1848. The Communists suffer a series of defeats in the summer of 1849, and revolutionary Communist regimes were overthrown. During this time Pope Pius IX had to leave Rome. He was able to return after the revolts were suppressed by the French army in 1850. His policies and doctrinal pronouncements became increasingly conservative, seeking to stem the revolutionary tide.

In 1848, thirty-eight-year-old Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci, future Pope Leo XIII, was the popular and successful Archbishop of Perugia. He had spent ten years fighting corruption and liberalism while restoring local economies, first as legate to the small papal province of Benevento, then to Perugia, the capital of Umbria in central Italy, and finally as Nuncio to Belgium where for his work the King granted him the honorary orders of knighthood in the Order of Leopold. During this time, Vincenzo witnessed firsthand the atrocities of the Communist Revolution. In 1849 he called a provincial council that met in Spoleto to reform religious life in his diocese, and during this council the need for a Syllabus of Errors was first discussed.

In 1854, Pope Pius IX promulgated the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Ten years later, on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of 1864, the Holy See issued the Syllabus of Errors which condemns a total of 80 errors or heresies, articulating the Catholic Church’s teachings on many philosophical and political questions, among them communism socialism, liberalism, modernism, moral relativism, secularization, and other Enlightenment era ideas. At first the problem appeared solved, but on October 13th, 1884, Pope Leo XIII, the successor of Pius IX, after celebrating Mass had a vision of Satan approaching the throne of God, boasting that he could destroy the Church. The Lord reminded him that his Church was imperishable. Satan then replied, “Grant me one century and more power over those who will serve me, and I will destroy it.” Our Lord granted him 100 years. The Lord then revealed the events of the 20th century to the Pope. He saw wars, immorality, genocide, and apostasy on a large scale. Immediately following this disturbing vision, he sat down and wrote the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel and ordered a series of prayers to be said after Low Mass, including the prayer to St Michael.

Seeing the necessity of an ideology to oppose the evils of Socialism and Communism, Pope Leo XIII wrote the Encyclical “Rerum Novarum,” which was issued to all Catholic patriarchs, primates, and bishops on the 15th of May, 1891. Rerum Novarum addressed social inequality and social justice focusing on the rights and duties of capital and labor in the spirit of love, mutual respect, and service. The Pope declared that the role of the government is to promote justice through the protection of people rights, while the Church’s duty is to teach correct social principles to ensure class harmony.

However, Leo XIII went further; to sustain a healthy society he sought out passionate examples of faith in the Catholic Church. On January 15th, 1888 he canonized the Seven Holy Founders of the Servite Order, who were devoted to serving the Virgin Mary, and three Jesuits: Peter Claver, Alphonsus Rodriguez and John Berchmans. All these saints were soldiers of God who desired to serve the Lord and the Church. They publicly preached to defend and propagate the faith, encouraged others to grow in the Catholic life, and performed charitable works for the glory of God and for the good of those around them. Now to review the life of St. John Berchmans, one of several canonized by Pope Leo XIII as a call to action against Modernism, Communism, and the faithless brutality that had swept the European continent during and after the French Revolution.

St. John Berchmans was born on the 13th of March, 1599, named in honor of John the Baptist. He was the oldest of five children of John Charles and Elizabeth Berchmans, a very religious family of hardworking shoemakers in Diest, a northern town near Brussels, which is now the Belgian province of Flemish Brabant. Two of his three brothers and his father, after the death of John’s mother, became priests.

Beginning at the age of seven, he studied for three years at the local communal school with an excellent professor. He was a brilliant student manifesting piety which far exceeded the ordinary. His father placed him, when still very young, under the direction of Father Peter Emmerich, a monk of the Premonstratensian Order. Father Emmerich oversaw the Church of Our Lady of Diest, training boys who wished to become priests. St. John’s greatest pleasure was to serve the Mass. In priests, he saw the representatives of Jesus Christ and always conducted himself towards them with veneration. He was sometimes known to leave his bed before daybreak, and to have the blessing of God in his studies he would serve two or three Masses before going to school (beginning in the seventh century, priests were celebrating daily private Masses – Missa private – in a low voice at the side altars with the assistance of two servers, regardless of the presence of a congregation or religious community).

After residing there for three years, the family’s financial situation had declined owing to the long illness of the mother, and St. John was told he would have to return and learn a trade.

He pleaded to be allowed to continue his studies that he might accomplish his desire of becoming a priest. His aunts, who were nuns, found a solution through their chaplain; he proposed to take St. John into his service and lodge him with the privilege of attending school, so at the age of fifteen he went to Mechelen, not far from Diest, to fill the position. He was usually first in his classes at the large school, a sort of minor seminary, even when he had to redouble his efforts in order to catch up to his fellow students, all of whom had excellent talent and sometimes preceded him for a year or more in an assigned discipline.

In 1615, when the Fathers of the Society of Jesus opened a college in Mechelen, St. John was sent with the other boys from the Cathedral to attend classes. He soon distinguished himself in his studies, and much more by his unusual piety. Brought into contact with the Fathers of the Society of Jesus, he became acquainted with their mode of life, and found that it corresponded with all his own aspirations. First, however, he had recourse to prayer, had Masses said, and gave in alms whatever little pocket-money he had, that he might receive light from Heaven and asked the advice of his confessor to decide the important matter of his vocation. At length it became clear to him what God’s will is, then he wrote his parents that he wished to join the Society of Jesus “the hammer of all heresies, the vessel of virtue and perfection” offering himself to “Jesus Christ to fight under His colors.” His father was disappointed because a diocesan priest could contribute to the family while a Jesuit could not, but he gave his son permission to pursue his goal. On the feast of Our Lady of Mercy, September 24, 1616, a good lay brother who was busy working in the garden around the old palace of Charles V, which was now the noviceship for the Society of Jesus at Mechelen, was surprised to receive two youthful and voluntary assistants. On seeing the good brother at work, St. John suggested to his companion that they could not better begin than by the practice of charity and humility, and so set to work with the brother until the Father Rector came out to welcome them. Already as a novice he was wining souls for Christ. He became famous in Mechelen and the surrounding area for his catechism classes to the children. He made his instructions so lively and interesting that parents would stay with their kids to hear his lessons. Children would visit the novitiate, where he distributed holy pictures and rosaries to them.

On the 24th of January 1618, he made his first vows and went to Antwerp to begin studying philosophy. After only a few weeks the decision was made to send him to Rome to continue the same studies. Before departure he was allowed to spend few days at home where he learned that his father had died a week earlier. After making the necessary arrangements to provide for the younger brothers and sister he advised them, with a premonition that he would perhaps never see them again, to “Increase in piety, in fear of God and in knowledge.” With a fellow novice, with his belongings on his back he began the two-month journey on foot to Rome, by way of Paris, Lyons. On Christmas eve the pilgrim caught the first view of the dome and towers of Loretto, and it was his privilege to assist at the midnight Mass, beneath the same roof that sheltered Mary and the child Jesus. The young Jesuits arrived in Rome on December 31st and joined the community at the Roman College. St. John, being as faithful to his studies and religious life as he had been in the novitiate, was selected by the prefect of studies to defend the entire course of philosophy in a public disputation at the end of his third year, in 1621. His health had suffered from the effort he had put into studying for his final exam, and he became steadily weaker as he prepared for the public disputation, held on July 8th.

Later, in August of the same year, he was selected again to participate in a discussion of philosophy, this time at the Greek College, which at the time was administered by the Dominicans. During an intense heat wave, he participated splendidly in discussion, debating with great clarity and profoundness, despite the fact he did not feel well. The two events sapped too much energy out of his weakened condition, and after returning to his own quarters, on August 7th he suffered an attack of dysentery, and then was seized with the Roman fever. His lungs became inflamed, and his strength diminished rapidly.

In a residence of several hundred priests and students, there was none who did not follow, with anxiety and compassion, the progress of his illness. When other scholastics came to visit, he spoke of Paradise as if he would soon be there.

When the infirmarian told his patient that he should probably receive Communion the next morning — an exception to the rule prescribing it for Sundays only, in those times — St.  John said, In Viaticum? and received a sad affirmative answer. He himself was transported with joy and broke into tears. A priest who knew him well asked him next morning if there was anything troubling or saddening him, St. John replied, absolutely nothing.

When the Rector came to give him Holy Communion he rose from his couch, dressed in his habit, and threw himself on his knees. Two lay brothers supported him, and as he knelt he made the following act of faith: “I declare that there is here really present the Son of God, the Father Almighty, and of the most Blessed Mary, ever Virgin; I protest that I wish to live and die a true son of our Holy Mother, the Catholic Apostolic, Roman Church, a true son of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a son of the Society.” He then received Viaticum and Extreme Unction. At eight o-clock on Friday morning, August 13th, 1621, with his eyes on his crucifix and with the holy names of Jesus and Mary on his lips, he went to his reward.

During three years in Rome St. John had given unceasing proofs of his already perfected sanctity. Nothing that he did was left to chance, but instead everything was entrusted to the intercession of his Heavenly Mother, to whom his devotion continued to increase day by day, (to him is owed the Little Rosary of the Immaculate Conception) so his death was followed by an outburst of devotion in Rome. A large crowd gathered for several days to view his remains and to invoke his intercession. That same year, Phillip-Charles, Duke of Aarschot, sent a petition to Pope Gregory XV with a view to begin the process leading to St. John Berchman’s beatification.

He was beatified by Pope Pius IX on May 3, 1865, and canonized on January 15, 1888, by Pope Leo XIII.

References and Excerpts:

[1]          “Saint John Berchmans, Jesuit Seminarian.” https://sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_john_berchmans.html (accessed Nov. 05, 2022).

[2]          “Saint John Berchmans | The Society of Jesus.” https://www.jesuits.global/saint-blessed/saint-john-berchmans/ (accessed Nov. 05, 2022).

[3]          “Our Patron: St. John Berchmans,” Cathedral of St. John Berchmans. https://sjbcathedral.org/our-patron-st-john-berchmans/ (accessed Nov. 05, 2022).

[4]          “John Berchmans,” Wikipedia. Nov. 03, 2022. Accessed: Nov. 05, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Berchmans&oldid=1119803426

[5]          “Pope Pius IX,” Wikipedia. Oct. 31, 2022. Accessed: Nov. 05, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pope_Pius_IX&oldid=1119203191#Encyclicals

[6]          “Seven Holy Founders of the Servite Order,” Wikipedia. Jul. 04, 2022. Accessed: Nov. 05, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Seven_Holy_Founders_of_the_Servite_Order&oldid=1096514681

[7]          “Pope Leo XIII,” Wikipedia. Nov. 05, 2022. Accessed: Nov. 05, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pope_Leo_XIII&oldid=1120200719