"The supreme priority of the Church is love": The Pope's new letter

Today, the Holy Father released an amazing, moving letter that strikes me as historic in its content and tone. “Never before in his Pontificate has Benedict XVI expressed himself in such a personal manner and with such intensity on a controversial subject,” comments Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, head of the Vatican Press Office.

The letter, addressed by the pope to his “brother bishops,” is his personal reflection on the recent painful controversy brought on by his lifting of the excommunications of four Lefebvrite bishops, one of whom turned out to be a notorious denier of the historical reality of the Holocaust.

The letter is moving precisely because it is personal and humble. It is clearly written by an intellectual, and is characterized by the depth and nuance, the elegance and delicacy that are the hallmarks of Joseph Ratzinger’s writing. But this is also clearly a letter written from the heart, addressed to the heart. One senses that the Pope is seeking to respond to the hurt and bewilderment caused by his act, and hoping to contribute a measure of healing.

Without defensiveness or arrogance, the Pope tries to explain why he chose to lift the excommunications as an act of mercy. More importantly, he expresses real regret that the manner in which this was carried out created unnecessary confusion and pain. What he had intended to be a modest gesture of reconciliation was interpreted instead as a retrograde stepping away from all the recent efforts of the Church at Jewish-Christian reconciliation and a repudiation of Vatican II.

What is touching about the letter is the willingness of the Holy Father to show himself so vulnerable and human. His suffering at how he was misinterpreted is on clear display, as is his surprise at the controversy he unleashed. He admits mistakes and expresses a willingness to learn. To paraphrase him, the Pope says: we should have done our homework better; we should have paid more careful attention to the information available on the Internet; we should have made the announcement more carefully, explaining what it meant and what it did not mean.

As Father Lombardi points out, the Pope does not blame any of his collaborators in the Roman Curia, although he easily and justifiably could have done so. "With great nobility," Fr. Lombardi observes, "he doesn't make others shoulder the responsibility."

For me, the most significant part of the letter comes when Benedict addresses the anguished question raised by many bishops (most notably by the Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna): even if the act of lifting the excommunications was defensible, was it necessary? At a time when the Church faces so many challenges, aren’t there more important problems to address, more urgent priority tasks?

What IS the priority of the Church today? I was deeply struck by the simplicity and the accuracy of Benedict’s articulation:

“In our days, when in vast areas of the world the faith is in danger of dying out like a flame which no longer has fuel, the overriding priority is to make God present in this world and to show men and women the way to God. Not just any god, but the God who spoke on Sinai; to that God whose face we recognize in a love which presses “to the end” (cf. Jn 13:1) – in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. The real problem at this moment of our history is that God is disappearing from the human horizon, and, with the dimming of the light which comes from God, humanity is losing its bearings, with increasingly evident destructive effects.”

It is within the struggle for faith, hope and love in an unbelieving world, Benedict explains, that his act finds meaning: “Leading men and women to God, to the God who speaks in the Bible: this is the supreme and fundamental priority of the Church and of the Successor of Peter at the present time. A logical consequence of this is that we must have at heart the unity of all believers. Their disunity, their disagreement among themselves, calls into question the credibility of their talk of God.”

The world cannot believe when believers are divided. Their divisions call faith into question. So the building up of unity, the healing of polarizations, the prevention of extremism, the promotion of ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue are all concrete steps which contribute, however modestly, towards responding to the greatest challenge of our time: “If the arduous task of working for faith, hope and love in the world is presently (and, in various ways, always) the Church’s real priority, then part of this is also made up of acts of reconciliation, small and not so small.”

I find that there is much in the letter to reflect on, beyond the immediate issue that gave rise to it. How do we overcome the “biting and devouring” that, quoting St. Paul to the Galatians, Benedict sadly observes continues in the Church today? How do we, in his words, “always learn anew the supreme priority, which is love?” These are searching questions worthy of serious consideration, particularly during this Lenten season.

The Holy Father reflects on Social Networking

Last January 24, the Holy Father published an important message on the new means of digital communication. It makes for interesting and thought-provoking reading, and deserves, I think, serious consideration by all of us involved in social networking.

The tone of the letter is very positive, appreciative of the "extraordinary potential" that these new technologies make possible. Pope Benedict's words resonate with the experience of many of us, young or old:  "Young people, in particular, have grasped the enormous capacity of the new media to foster connectedness, communication and understanding between individuals and communities, and they are turning to them as means of communicating with existing friends, of meeting new friends, of forming communities and networks, of seeking information and news, and of sharing their ideas and opinions. "

In this appreciative context, the Holy Father then highlights three important calls for Christians engaged in these new technologies: first, the promotion of respect for the human person; second, the promotion of dialogue with a certain depth rather than merely superficial contact; and third, the promotion of authentic friendship and of networks of solidarity concerned with global issues such as "peace and justice, human rights and respect for human life and the good of creation."

For Facebook and Multiply users,  some of the Pontiff's reflections on "friendship" seem to me to be quite "on-target": "The concept of friendship has enjoyed a renewed prominence in the vocabulary of the new digital social networks that have emerged in the last few years. The concept is one of the noblest achievements of human culture.  . . . We should be careful, therefore, never to trivialize the concept or the experience of friendship. It would be sad if our desire to sustain and develop on-line friendships were to be at the cost of our availability to engage with our families, our neighbours and those we meet in the daily reality of our places of work, education and recreation."

The letter ends with a striking invitation to mission, addressed especially to young people: "It falls, in particular, to young people, who have an almost spontaneous affinity for the new means of communication, to take on the responsibility for the evangelization of this "digital continent". Be sure to announce the Gospel to your contemporaries with enthusiasm. You know their fears and their hopes, their aspirations and their disappointments: the greatest gift you can give to them is to share with them the "Good News" of a God who became man, who suffered, died and rose again to save all people. Human hearts are yearning for a world where love endures, where gifts are shared, where unity is built, where freedom finds meaning in truth, and where identity is found in respectful communion. Our faith can respond to these expectations: may you become its heralds!"

An "Ordinary" Jesuit: Bl. Nicholas Keian Fukunaga, SJ

Jesuits in formation are constantly being evaluated by other Jesuits. (And I am referring here, of course, only to the formal processes of evaluation, rather than the ongoing, informal assessments that, no doubt, occur!)

As they pass from stage to stage, information is collected from reliable sources, in order to discern whether Novice X or Brother Y or Scholastic Z can be prudently allowed to pronounce first vows, or go on regency, or move on to theology, or be admitted to ordination. When a Jesuit is being considered for a position of governance, a similar process of evaluation is undergone. Information concerning his aptitude for governance is collected, and, if the Jesuit is being considered for a position like Rector of a large community or Novice Master that requires the appointment of Fr. General, the whole dossier of information and evaluations is forwarded to Rome.

The documents surviving in Rome concerning Nicholas  Keian Fukunaga (one of the four new Jesuit blessed beatified last November 24, 2008) all have a simple unanimous theme: his superiors considered Nicholas “ordinary.” No doubt, in the Latin they used at that time, the word would have been more pointed:  “mediocritatem.”

He was never ordained.  He never passed the evaluations.

 Born in 1569 (around twenty years before Pedro Kibe), he entered the novitiate in Amagusa at the age of 18, in 1588. The future saint, Paul Miki, had entered a few years ahead of him and was still in Amagusa when Nicholas entered.  Nicholas made his first vows in 1590. The years after that saw him studying for the priesthood, doing excellent ministry as a preacher, but somehow never being considered “fit” enough to be ordained.

One of his classmates, for example, Blessed Julian Nakaura (beatified along with him last November 24) was ordained in 1608. Nicholas was sent to assist him in Fukuoka, was considered a great help as a lay preacher, but was, mysteriously, not considered ready for ordination.

In 1614, Nicholas was one of those expelled from Japan to Macau, along with Peter Kibe, who was then a lay catechist or dojuko. Nicholas was put in charge of these lay catechists. He was finally admitted to final vows in 1619, when he was fifty years old, an unusually long thirty-seven years after he had entered the Society. He was still, it seems, not considered worthy of ordination.

In 1620, he was sent back to Japan, apparently because he dared to express an opinion that differed from that of his superiors.  From 1620 till 1633, he ministered in the Fukuoka area, till he was arrested in 1633 in Nagasaki. He was one of the first, if not the first, to suffer the terrible torture of the pit. It was in the pit that he gave his most powerful sermon. When his torturers asked him if there was anything he regretted in his life, Nicholas answered: “Yes, I regret very much that I was not able to lead all the Japanese people, beginning with the shogun, to Christ.” Nicholas died after three days in the pit, significantly on the morning of the feast of St. Ignatius, 31 July 1633.

Having done my fair share of evaluations of Jesuits over the years, the story of Blessed Nicholas Fukunaga is both humbling and inspiring. After all, it was the Jesuit Provincial, Cristobal Ferreira, who apostasized, not this ordinary Jesuit, whose apparent deficiencies kept him from being ordained, and whose final vows were constantly postponed. The preface of the Mass of Martyrs says it most powerfully: “You choose the weak, and make them strong in bearing witness to you.”

Nicholas’ story is, to me, a striking reminder about the limits of human judgments—or a testimony to the limitlessness of God’s power at work in us.  It invites me to be careful in making and trusting human judgments, and at the same time, calls me to be daring in my hope and trust in God’s surprisingly creative grace.

"The man who would not give in": Blessed Peter Kibe, SJ

I first heard about Pedro Kibe during GC 35. One of the delegates from Japan, the 42-year old Argentianian Jesuit Renzo de Luca, who is director of the Shrine of the Japanese Martyrs in Nagasaki, shared Kibe’s amazing story during a homily. 

Last November 24, 2008, in the presence of a crowd of 30,000, Pedro Kibe, a Jesuit priest who was martyred in 1639, was beatified, along with 187 other Japanese martyrs, among them, three other Jesuits. It was Kibe’s name, however, that was chosen to lead the group of martyrs; and I was happy to read in the accounts of the beatification that the ceremonies began with my friend Renzo carrying the relics of Pedro Kibe to the altar. I can only imagine how happy he was.

Who was Pedro Kibe? He was born in 1587, in what is now the Oita Prefecture on the island of Kyushu. At the age of 14, he studied under the Jesuits and learned Japanese, Latin and religion. By the time he was 19, he had become a dojoku, a lay catechist who accompanied the Jesuits in their missions. He felt in his heart, however, that God was calling him to become a Jesuit priest. What he endured in order to fulfill what he believed was his vocation is truly astounding.

In 1614, when he was 27 years old, he was expelled from Japan along with 115 Portuguese Jesuits, Japanese priests, seminarians, and dojoku. In Macau, he continued his studies, but was not admitted to the Society. Instead of giving up, in 1617, he took a ship to Goa, the site of Francis Xavier’s first Asian mission, to seek admission there, only to be refused again. 

Undeterred, he decided to do the impossible. He would go to Rome to ask the Jesuit General himself. Traveling along the paths of the famed Silk Road, he went by foot, through India and Pakistan, through Persia and Arabia, finally arriving in Jerusalem two years later, in 1619. (He was thus the first Japanese to ever visit the Holy Land.) From there, he was finally able to board a ship for Venice, and arrived in Rome in May of 1620.

The General was impressed by Kibe’s astonishing determination and fortitude, and arranged, first for his ordination, on November 15, 1620, at the Basilica of St. John Lateran, and secondly, for his admission to the Society of Jesus. On November 20, 1620, at the age of 33, Kibe entered the Jesuit Novitiate in Sant’Andrea al Quiranale. Kibe was fortunate to be in Rome to witness the canonization of St. Ignatius Loyola and St. Francis Xavier, on March 12, 1622.

It took years for Kibe to reach Rome and enter the Society. It would take years again for him to return to Japan. In 1623, in the company of other Jesuits, he left Lisbon to return to Goa. His goal was to return to Japan, to provide spiritual encouragement to the beleaguered Japanese Christians. It took him seven years of traveling around Southeast Asia before he could find a way to return. From Goa, he went to Macau, then to Thailand, and finally, in 1629, ended up in Manila.

In Manila, along with another Japanese priest, he was able to make arrangements for a termite-ridden sailboat to make the dangerous trip to Japan. Aware of the perils involved in traveling in such an untrustworthy vessel, Kibe decided to entrust himself to divine Providence. Leaving Manila finally in May of 1630, Kibe’s boat found itself caught in a violent typhoon, which ultimately destroyed the vessel. Kibe and his companion priest only survived because they were rescued by natives of Southern Kyushu.

From there, Kibe, finally in Japan after seven years, walked to Nagasaki, where he found, to his dismay and sadness, that the persecution of Japanese Christians had become more intense and violent in the years of his absence. Three years later, in 1633, Kibe moved to an area north of Tokyo, where he ministered to the suffering Christians for six years.

Finally , on March 17, 1639, Kibe was arrested along with two other Jesuit priests, Frs. Porro and Shikimi. They were sent to Edo (Tokyo), and met there by the prize of the Japanese persecutors: the former Jesuit Provincial Cristobal Ferreira, who had apostasized while in the pit, under the cruel handling of the master inquisitor and torturer Inoue. Ferreira tried to persuade Kibe and his companions to apostasize. Eventually, unable to bear the rigors of the pit (the same torture Lorenzo Ruiz had to endure, in which one is hung upside down in a pit of excrement, with one’s face cut to prolong the agony), Frs. Porro and Shikima apostasized.

Showing the same kind of tenacity and perseverance that marked his whole life, however, Pedro Kibe refused to deny his faith. Finally, his persecutors, frustrated by what they saw as his obstinacy, removed him from the pit and killed him. Accounts of his death differ: one Portuguese account describes how red-hot metals were applied to his body till he died; another account speaks of wood piled on his bare stomach and set afire there; still another account speaks of his being disemboweled by his torturers. He died in July, 1639, 52 years old, 19 years a priest and Jesuit.

Inoue, the chief torturer, sent back the best account of Kibe: Kibe, he wrote the Shogun, was “the man who would not say, ‘I give in.’”

There is a Greek word found often in the New Testament. The word is hupomonē. It is difficult to translate. Some translate it as “patient endurance” or “fortitude” or “strength to persevere.” In Filipino, we might say hupomonē is pagtiyatiyaga, pananatiling tapat sa gitna ng kahirapan at mga pagsubok. It is the virtue of staying the course, of not giving up even when one is discouraged or tired, of continuing the journey, even if it means just putting one weary foot in front of the other. 

When I think of Kibe—of his amazing three-year trek across the Silk Road, his seven-year search through Asia for a way to return to Japan, his six years of dangerous ministry in Sendai, his ten days of cruel torture—I think of the word hupomonē. And I remember that the secret of hupomonē in the New Testament is a secret that anyone who cares for someone else understands: for those you love, you are willing to endure difficulty; and if your love is deep, you are willing to endure anything.

A constant theme of Fr. General in his talks and letters is the spiritual depth Jesuits today need. I know all too well, from my own life, what the fruit of superficiality in love and faith is: a tendency to complain too often, to be discouraged too easily, and to give up too quickly. This Advent then, Kibe is an inspiration and invitation to pray for a share of the depth of love, the intensity of passion for Christ, that makes fortitude and perseverance in the face of life's difficulties possible.

A Tomb and a Letter: the Passion and Freedom of Francis Xavier

Francis Xavier was always depicted as a man with a burning heart: a man on fire with passion. Today, on the feast of this great and beloved Jesuit saint, father of so many of us who have gone to schools carrying his name, or who have sought to follow his missionary path, I thought I would share two excerpts from previously given talks that focus on two "relics" of Xavier. The first reflects on his empty tomb in Shangchuan, which I had the privilege of visiting in 2006; the second contains an excerpt from the letter Xavier wrote to his friend Ignatius, before embarking on the journey that would separate them forever, which was read during the close of GC 35.

Both capture the passion and freedom of Xavier: his passionate commitment to mission, that led him halfway around the world, to so many different cultures, climes and tongues, to share with those different from him what was, to him, the most precious gift in the world: the Gospel; and his passionate love for the brothers and friends he left behind, a love that led him to say, in all simplicity and sincerity: "Society of Jesus--Society of love." 

Both the icon of McNichols and the painting of Murillo depict, in different ways, the source of Xavier's passion for mission and his brother Jesuits: the love of Christ, depicted in the icon with the image of the Pelican, ancient symbol for Christ, because of the way the pelican feeds its young from its very blood.

From an article written in November 2006:

Off the southern coast of China, there is a small island called Shangchuan. Four hundred years ago, it was a quiet fishing village. Today, it is still little more than that, a striking contrast to the booming cities that are sprouting up so quickly in today’s hectic, development-driven China. A few kilometers out of the modest commercial center, on a hillside fronting the sea is a rundown chapel with an empty tomb. Here, we believe, was the place, where Francis Xavier, at the age of 46, died and was laid to rest for a few years, before parts of his body made their way all around the world again.

        When I visited that tomb last July with the other Provincials of East Asia, we found ourselves spontaneously drawn to silent and prolonged prayer. I was moved at the pathos of Xavier’s last moments. Here he died alone, half a world away from home, without his friends in Europe even knowing that he was in extremis. Here he died, after years of pioneering work of bringing the Good News to Asia: after baptizing till his arms ached with weariness in India; after traveling through the steaming jungles of Malacca; after enduring humiliation because of his appearance, his wretched Japanese, and his strange doctrine in Japan. And he died here, on this lonely island, precisely because, in order to win the peoples of Asia for Christ, he was convinced he had to do the impossible: enter the great and mysterious Empire of China and preach the Gospel there. He died with an unfulfilled dream, a longing unrequited.

That tomb is the image for me of Xavier’s gift: his burning and intense Passion. Only that passion—for Christ, for the peoples of Asia, for service—could explain why Francis Xavier, scion of a noble family who grew up in a castle in Navarre, died alone and with arms outstretched toward China on desolate Shangchuan.  Only that passion makes sense of Xavier’s constant, almost driven pushing beyond familiar boundaries into new territories. It was that passion that enabled him to endure physical hardships, cultural disorientation, piercing loneliness, frustrations and persecutions—and not give up.

From a homily preached in May 2008:

On the last day of GC 35, at the start of our final session after more than two months of being together as a discerning community, an older member of the General Curia read a remarkable passage from a letter of Francis Xavier to Ignatius, written by Xavier as he was about to leave Lisbon for India. Let me share what he read:

            We ask you, Father, and repeatedly entreat you in our Lord, because of our intimate friendship in Jesus Christ, to write to us and to advise us on how we may better serve God our Lord . . . In addition to your usual remembrance, we ask you to be particularly mindful of us in your prayers, since our long voyage and new contacts with gentiles together with out own inexperience will require much more help than usual. . . . There is nothing more to tell you except that we are about to embark. We close by asking Christ our Lord for the grace of seeing each other again in the next life; for I do not know if we shall ever see each other again in this, because of the great distance between Rome and India and the great harvest to be found there . . . Whoever will be the first to go to the other life and does not there find his brother, whom he loves in the Lord, must ask Christ our Lord to unite us all there in his glory.

  As he read this letter, that senior Jesuit’s voice broke, and soon, many of the delegates of the Congregation found ourselves in tears. I think many of us wept because we were moved by the poignant relevance of the letter as we were about to part. But now I see that what also moved me was that, at that moment, I was granted a glimpse of the inner truth, if you wish, of the Society of Jesus, what it was from its beginnings in our first fathers and what it is even to this day: a company of flawed, fallible, foolish men, it is true; but, at its best, and because of God’s goodness, a company of true friends in the Lord, free to serve the Lord in dispersionem, but always united, despite distances, by the deepest bonds of friendship and love that have their source in God himself.

  May the prayers of St. Francis Xavier obtain for us a share of his passionate love and his freedom.

Mixed Blessings: A Thanksgiving Sermon

On Thanksgiving Day, I wanted to share excerpts from a beautiful sermon preached by Barbara Brown Taylor--to my mind, one of the finest preachers in the "business" today. How does one give thanks when events in the great world, and in the smaller world of one's own life, do not seem to lead one to gratitude? Taylor's faith-filled response to that question merits reflection.

Without too much etymological violence, Thanksgiving Day becomes Eucharist Day, a day when we are called to offer thanks to God for the whole of our lives.

Which is not always an easy thing to do.

Last week, I found a bumper sticker that summed it all up, an example of the laugh-until-you-cry school of humor. “Life is hard,” it says. “Then you die.” . . . As I was showing it around yesterday to great hilarity, one perceptive person declined to laugh, cocked her head, and asked, “Have you had a hard week?”

I have had a hard year, and not just me; the world has had a hard year.

Three thousand years ago the Jews formulated blessings—berakoth—for every circumstance of their lives. Come weal or woe, they had a blessing. If it were good news, then “Blessed be he who is good and does good.” If it were bad news, then “Blessed be the judge of truth.” As far as they were concerned, humankind has a duty to pronounce a blessing on the bad in life as well as the good, because all life came from God.

And when we gather for eucharist, for thanksgiving, what we toast is the whole of our Lord’s life, the defeats along with the victories, the gentle birth alongside the violent crucifixion, the sleepless night in Gethsemane alongside the empty tomb on Easter morning. Because, in retrospect, in faith, we believe that it is all a single tapestry and the removal of a single thread diminishes the whole creation.

Our challenge this Thanksgiving morning is to see our own lives the same way, to learn how to give thanks at this altar not only for the mixed blessings of Christ’s life but also for our own, to say “thank you” for the whole mess, the things we welcome as well as the things we risk our souls to escape.

“Thanks be to God,” we say, because we believe that God is somewhere to be found in everything that happens to us. “Thanks be to God,” we say, because we believe that the cords of God’s love are never severed, however dark or convoluted our path through life may sometimes be.

God is God, and our lives are our lives, and we can love them or leave them, give thanks for them or whittle them away with regret. Our dare this morning is to embrace all that we have ever been and done and haul it up upon the altar, and there to recognize our lives as sacraments, outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace.

So happy Thanksgiving. Happy Eucharist. Whether we leave this place to join friends and family or to dine alone . . . God goes with us, and there is no corner of our lives that he does not inhabit. Let us be on the lookout for him, and ready with our chorus: “Thanks be to God. Alleluia. Amen.”

A Joyful Giver: St. John Berchmans

There is a lot that a cynic could make fun of in the story of St. John Berchmans, who died at the age of 22 in Rome in 1621, and whose feast we celebrate today.

For one thing, one could say that he died as a martyr to studies and because of the imprudence or, at best, the obliviousness of his Jesuit superiors. During a terrible Roman summer, he had studied perhaps too intensely for his final exams in philosophy (today, we would call them his “comprehensives”), and as a result, he felt very weak. Although he had hoped to get some rest after his “comps,” his superiors didn’t give him a chance. They chose him to represent the Roman College at a disputation with the Greek College. The effort of all this study was just too much for the poor scholastic. He developed a fever and died a few days later.

Too much study, one could say, led to Berchmans’early death. About which one can make two further comments. First, that some things change: one doubts whether too many scholastics today are in danger of dying from too much study; and second, that some things don’t, like clueless superiors.

Berchmans was also known as a paragon of fidelity to the rules. As he lay dying, it is said that he asked for three things: his crucifix, his rosary, and the rule book. “These are the three things most dear to me; with them I willingly die,” he is reported as saying.

I wonder what Scholastic X or Scholastic Y of today would clasp to his chest in his dying embrace. Perhaps a cell phone and an MP3 player? The latter, of course, would be dear to him only because that it is what he used, of course, for prayer, aided perhaps by the “Pray as you go” podcast of the British Province.

Having given in to cynicism for a while, however, one looks at Berchmans brief life and finds things one cannot mock. Such as his youthful passion for and complete dedication to Christ. The other “boy saints,” Kostka and Gonzaga, came from noble families and gave up their privileged lives and promising futures. Berchmans was the son of a shoemaker. He was what we would call today a “working student”; more specifically, Filipinos would call him a “convento boy,’ doing menial jobs in a priest’s rectory in exchange for the chance to study. To follow what he felt was Christ’s call he had to turn a deaf ear to his parents’ entreaties that he help the family in their needs. I do not know who made the bigger sacrifice: the noble Gonzaga or the Berchmans the shoemaker’s son. But having encountered situations similar to that of Berchmans in scholastics today, and having seen the real, heartbreaking pain of their not being able to help their families in the latter’s needs because of their faithfulness to their Jesuit vocations, I am inclined to see Berchmans’ choice as involving the greater cost.

One can see Berchmans’ famous fidelity to the rules in the light of this complete, loving dedication. There was nothing, it seems, of servile fear, or currying favor with superiors, or scrupulous self-righteousness in Berchmans’ attitude towards the rules of common life. In a letter to his parents, very simply, he spoke of Jesus as his “beloved.” It was in the desire to give himself completely to his beloved, to respond to Christ’s love with generosity, in all the ordinary details of daily and communal life that one finds the meaning of Berchmans’ attitude.

Finally, what clearly emerges from his biographers is the attractive, winning personality of Berchmans, particularly his joy and gentleness. The children he taught catechism to when he was a novice were greatly attached to him, because of his kindness and joy. He was clearly beloved by his community, and in his illness, the entire community, his classmates, and even the General of the Society, came to visit him. When he died on August 13, 1621, he was deeply mourned by all. There seems to have been a luminous kind of simplicity, goodness and gladness that flowed effortlessly from him, an overflow, one surmises, of his closeness to Christ.

So, in the end, it is not cynicism that has the upper hand where Berchmans is concerned, but inspiration and gratitude for the gift of this young saint, whose spirit continues to live in many formands and formed members of the Society. The lovely opening prayer for the Mass of the feast of John Berchmans captures well the grace one can pray for today: “Lord our God, you invite us always to give you our love, and you are pleased with a cheerful giver. Give us a youthful spirit to be like St. John Berchmans, always eager to seek you and to do your will.”