Today the Church remembers a saint who embodied that old tune, “He ain’t heavy…he’s my brother…”: Saint John of God, Patron Saint of Those Struggling with Mental Health.

Born Joao Duarte Cidade at the tail end of the 15th Century, he would spend his first years shrouded in mystery as he was abducted from his parents at the age of eight, though history has lost why or how this happened. Though he was born in Portugal, he found himself as a young boy living on the streets in Spain, and eventually was taken in by a man named Francisco Mayoral, and became a shepherd for the sheep of the estate.

Francisco took a liking to young Joao, and asked him to become betrothed to his daughter. But Joao wasn’t really feeling the marriage thing, and so as to not have to keep turning Francisco down, he went off to join Charles V in the Crusades. Military life wasn’t for him, though, and he got caught up in some unfortunate mishaps and ended up being falsly accused of stealing some of the treasure that, ironically, had also been stolen in the campaigns.

He went back to the hills of Spain disheartened, but enlisted again to fight another war. For 18 years he was a soldier and, having served his time, wound up back in Portugal in search of his family roots. He tracked down one of his uncles who told him of the sad state of his birth parents: his mother died shortly after his kidnapping from grief, and his father had become a Franciscan monk and had also died years later.

Once again Joao felt homeless and people-less, and felt an urge to visit the contentint of Africa to find purpose. On his way there he befrieded a Portuguese knight who had been exiled to the furthest reaches of the kingdom with his family. Joao traveled with them and after they arrived in Ceuta (a northern part of Africa then colonized by Portugal) it became clear that the knight’s possessions had been stolen in travel, and the whole family came down with severe illness. The knight begged Joao to care for them, and Joao took on the role of nurse, caring for the family’s daily needs and tending to their illness.

He had found his purpose.

Despite feeling purpose in caring for the knight and his family, Joao struggled with his mental health and some guilt for not having been a person of faith in his younger years. He sought Franscicans to help him sort through this anguish, and they encouraged him to return to Spain and seek God’s will for his life.

Arriving back in Spain, Joao began to wonder, waiting for God to speak to him. It was here that he had a vision where the infant Jesus spoke to him, naming him John of God, a name he would assume moving forward. He also came under the spiritual direction of John of Avila, and in what can only be described as an acute mental breakdown, began harming himself and begging forgiveness from God and anyone he met for wrongs he felt he had done.

John of Avila soothed John of God, and encouraged him to start once again healing people rather than beating himself. Spiritual Direction had reminded him of his purpose.

He went on pilgrimage to see the Black Madonna of Guadelupe and heard a Divine voice telling him to care for the sickest in the world. He did so, establishing a home for the healing of those the world wouldn’t touch, often carrying the sick there himself. He had a practice of giving his cloak to anyone who asked for it, and this happened so often that the Bishop of Tui had a habit sewn for him so that he would no longer be seen walking around in almost nothing.

Saint John of God’s devotion brought others to join him in mission. He organized the group into the Order of Hospitallers, and it was approved as a Holy Order in 1572,

Saint John of God died on this day in 1550. It is his birthday, and he was only 55 years old. His order continues on to this day, however, and has the distinction of being charged with caring for the help of the Bishop of Rome, the Pope himself.

Saint John of God is reminder for me, and should be for the whole church, that those who have mental health struggles are sometimes best equipped to touch the needs and wounds of others. They have known the shadows of the soul, and can help lead others through those shadows into healing.

-historical bits from public sources and Illes’ book Daily Magic

-icon written by Noah Gutz

Today the church honors Perpetua and Felicity, 2nd Century North African martyrs arrested just as they were preparing for baptism.

In Perpetua’s writings we have the earliest confirmed first-person account of a woman’s journey with the faith, especially her last days waiting for execution.

It’s poetic that her name means “unending,” and Felicity’s “articulate” as we see their story continue through the women who journey in the faith today, especially as Deacons, Deaconesses, and Pastors, who serve with distinction and articulation.

And using their life as a lens, we can also hear the cries of the women who are arrested or otherwise obstructed from obtaining those things they greatly desire and work hard for: promotions, border crossings, equitable pay, voting rights, and freedom.

Perpetua and Felicity are usually depicted together, often embracing, as they had a deep friendship, and perhaps even a partnership.

St Perpetua and St Felicity are another reminder for me, and should be for the whole church, that women led the way in the ancient church, and still do today.

A prayer for Fat Tuesday:

“O Lord, refresh our sensibilities. Give us this day our daily taste. Restore to us soups that spoons will not sink in, and sauces which are never the same twice.

Raise up among us stews with more gravy than we have bread to blot it with, and casseroles that put starch and substance in our limp modernity. Take away our fear of fat, and make us glad of the oil which ran upon Aaron’s beard.

Give us pasta with a hundred fillings, and rice in a thousand variations.

Above all, give us grace to live as true folk–to fast till we come to a refreshed sense of what we have and then to dine gratefully on all that comes to hand.

Drive far from us, O Most Bountiful, all creatures of air and shadows; cast out demons the demons that possess us; deliver us from the fear of calories and the bondage of nutrition; and set us free once more in our own land, where we shall serve thee as thou has blessed us–with the dew of heaven, the fatness of earth, and plenty of corn and wine.

Amen.”

-Robert Farrar Capon-

Today, March 2nd, the church remembers brothers John and Charles Wesley, renewers of the church.

John was the 15th child of Susanna and Samuel Wesley, and Charles was the 18th, born in England. Both were ordained as Anglican priests in the early 18th Century, in the midst of a serious decline in the Church of England, both in influence and conversion.

John and Charles grew dissatisfied with the religious life they were instructed in, and Charles started the “Holy Society” at Oxford comprised of those intent on finding a deeper and more meaningful way of spiritual living. They focused on frequent communion, prayer, spiritual practices like fasting, and service to the poor and disenfranchised.

This methodological way of doing things led others to disparagingly call them “methodists.”

The name stuck.

Charles and John were sent to evangelize in Georgia in the 1730’s, primarily to the colonists and the Indigenous Peoples. Their insistence on denouncing both slavery and gin, however, didn’t sit well with the colonists.

Both joined the Moravian church in prayer (though not in an official capacity), having experienced an inner conversion. This sparked the 18th Century Evangelical revival, and the brothers eventually began their own order of Christianity, a “Methodist” way of being in the world.

Charles became an accomplished hymn writer; John an antagonistic writer and theologian, not unlike Martin Luther before him, pushing the church onward. Both were often met with hostility and derision for their thinking and work, which bucked the status quo of the church of the day.

They are a reminder to the church that what at first might seem unorthodox and detrimental may, at length, be just what the church needs for revitalization, renewal and, yes, reform.

-historical notes gleaned from Pfatteicher’s New Book of Festivals & Commemorations

Today many churches remember the Festival of the Transfiguration in the lirturgy, a moveable liturgical feast (though the actual set Feast falls in August).

When it comes to the Transfiguration, Beloved, don’t be distracted by the dazzling clothes.

God who holds the law (Moses) in a hand that will be scarred will rule with justice tempered by mercy, not the other way around.

God who holds prophecy (Elijah) in a hand to be scarred will proclaim truth from behind the picket line, within the ranks of the needy and poor, from the place of poverty, not power.

Don’t be distracted by the dazzling clothes…that’s not where the miracle is.

The miracle is in the fact that God holds mercy over retribution and stands with the poor, not the powerful.

That’s dazzling.