SAINT JOHN BERCHMANS: The Story of the Saint of Innocence

SAINT JOHN BERCHMANS: The Story of the Saint of Innocence

Catholic. John was born March 13, 1599. Shakespeare was living across the Strait of Dover, and the intriguing Queen Elizabeth was still widening the breach between England and Rome in the pursuit of selfish political ends. The town of Diest where John was born was one of those energetic Flemish cities which furnish so many stirring episodes in the exciting pages of Froissart. The sturdy burghers were always stubborn defenders of their rights against the encroachments of kings and nobles. In the modern sense of the word they could hardly be called democratic. Like Oliver Cromwell and Hampden, they fought for an extension of liberty beyond the narrow confines of court and castle; but, with the wresting of their own rights from the tyranny of monarchs, they lost all enthusiasm for any further enlargement of liberty and enlightenment which would include the working classes be low them. It is clear that the world of John’s youth was considerably different from what it is today. Making due allowance for such external differences we shall be able to reduce the unfamiliar conditions in which the Saint lived to something like their modern equivalents. One thing has not changed since then, and that is human nature. Its difficulties are substantially the same in every age amid the constant shifting of externals.