Note 6 — Chapter IV · THE VOW OF CHASTITY.
Reading edition
John Berchmans was the son of a master shoemaker named John Charles Berchmans, and was born in the year 1599. His biographers tell us that as a child he grew up as gentle and guileless as a lamb, and early shared his time between the school and the altar.
When about fifteen years of age, he joined the Society of Jesus, although his parents were somewhat opposed to his taking this step. In a letter to his mother at that time he tried to bring his parents to be reconciled to his taking this step; he wrote, “God is now pleased, after much prayer, out of His goodness to give me a vocation to religion and to the ‘Society of Jesus,’ the hammer of all heresies, the vessel of virtue and perfection. I hope you will not be so unreasonable as to oppose Him, but as (as I have read in history,) the Egyptians offered their children to the crocodile, which they looked upon as a god, and, while it was eating them up, the parents made high festival, so too, I hope you will rejoice as they did, and praise God, and thank Him that your son should be found worthy,” etc.
This Jesuit saint seems to have been “celebrated for devotion to His Lord in the blessed Sacrament” and devotion to the Virgin Mary. He was looked upon as a “portent of holiness.” He is said “to have preserved unstained by grievous sin the white robe of baptism.” He died in the year 1621. At eight o’clock on Friday, Aug. 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.”
Miracles of course were said to be wrought through his relics. In 1865, Pius IX. published the decree for his beatification, and on Jan. 15th, 1888, Leo XIII., amidst the splendid festivities of his sacerdotal jubilee, solemnly canonized him as a saint.—Editor.