Saint John Joseph of the Cross

He was born on the island of Ischia, in the kingdom of Naples, on August 15, 1654, the feast of the Assumption. ²³⁴ Butler names his parents as Joseph Calosirio and Laura Garguilo, and says he was baptized the same day with the name Charles Cajetan; the Martyrology gives his name as Carlo Gaetano Calosirto. ²⁵ The 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia says he was of noble birth but would always wear the dress of the poor. ¹

Butler's life, compiled from the postulator's account for the canonization, describes a boy who picked the most secluded room in the house, set up a little altar to Our Lady there, slept on a hard bed and fasted on fixed days of the week. ² He kept the best part of his meals for the poor and gave them his pocket money. ²

His way into religious life came, Butler says, when Father John of San Bernardo, a Spanish friar of the Alcantarine reform, arrived to establish it in the kingdom of Naples, and the boy was won over by the poor habit and the bearing of the friars. ² He went to Naples and was admitted at sixteen. ¹²³⁴ The encyclopedia and Franciscan Media both note that he was the first Italian to join the reform, which Saint Peter of Alcantara had begun in Spain. ¹³ He took the name John Joseph of the Cross and made his vows on the feast of Saint John the Baptist in 1671. ²

The encyclopedia sums up the austerity that followed in one sentence: he fasted constantly, never drank wine, and slept three hours a night. ¹

While he was still young his superiors gave him a new house to found. Franciscan Media says it was even before his ordination. ³ The encyclopedia names it as a friary at Afila, in Piedmont, in 1674, and says he helped build it with his own hands; Hoever, quoted by Catholic Culture, says it was a monastery in Piedmont, founded within three years of his profession, where he set the most perfect silence. ¹⁴ He became a priest out of obedience, Butler and Hoever say, and the encyclopedia adds that it was much against his will. ¹²⁴

Butler says that after his ordination he made a kind of desert in the wood beside his convent, with a small church and five little hermitages around it, where he and some companions lived as the old hermits had. ² At twenty-four he was made master of novices, and later guardian at Piedimonte, then novice master again. ² Franciscan Media lists the offices that obedience brought him as novice master, guardian and finally provincial. ³

In all of them he took the lowest work. ¹ As guardian, Franciscan Media says, he was not above working in the kitchen or carrying the wood and water the friars needed. ³ Butler adds that he ordered that no beggar be sent away from the convent gate without help, and in times of scarcity gave away his own portion and the community's, trusting Providence to make it up. ² Once, told that a man he was trying to help to a good post was his enemy, he answered "that therefore he was under the greater obligation of serving him." ²

He was called home to Ischia when his mother was dying, and was with her when she died; Butler and Hoever both say he offered Mass for her soul. ²⁴

At one point the Spanish Alcantarines obtained from Rome their separation from the Italian friars, Butler says, and the Italians, left on their own and facing suppression, turned to him. ² He took up their cause, and in 1702 he changed the minds of the cardinals and bishops, and the reform was established in Italy as a province. ² Its government, Butler says, was forced on him. ² The encyclopedia says he was appointed Vicar Provincial of the reform in Italy in 1702; Hoever calls him Provincial of the Province of Naples, erected by Clement XI, and says the work brought him much suffering through calumny. ¹⁴

He did not want office. Butler says he finally obtained a papal brief that freed him from all charges, and in 1722 retired to the convent of Saint Lucy in Naples, newly given to the Alcantarines, and did not leave its seclusion again. ² Franciscan Media says that once his term as provincial was over he gave himself to hearing confessions and to mortification, both of them, it observes, out of step with the dawning Age of Enlightenment. ³

The encyclopedia says he was favored to a high degree with the gift of miracles, and that people of every condition were brought to him in sickness. ¹ Butler says he tried to hide it, crediting cures to the faith of the sick or to the intercession of the saints, and sometimes telling those he healed to take some medicine so that the cure would be put down to it. ² Butler and Hoever both report ecstasies in prayer, and Hoever says he was once found in the chapel raised far above the floor. ²⁴

Butler also describes penances beyond his rule: hair shirts and chains, nails between his feet and the sandals his superior made him wear at forty, and a cross set with nails fastened over his shoulders that opened a wound which never closed. ² His great devotion, the encyclopedia says, was to Our Lady, and he urged his penitents to cultivate it. ¹ Butler records some of what he used to say: "whoever walks always in God's presence, will never commit sin," and "Were there neither heaven nor hell, still would I ever wish to love God, who is a father so deserving of our love." ²

On the last day of February, Butler says, after Mass and communion, he spent the morning giving advice to the people who came to him, and at noon told the lay brother with him: "Shortly a thunderclap will lay me prostrate on the ground." ² That evening a stroke threw him to the floor. ² He lived five more days, and died on the morning of Friday, March 5, with his eyes on a picture of Our Lady. ² Hoever, quoted by Catholic Culture, says he died of apoplexy at his convent in Naples, an octogenarian, on March 5, 1734. ⁴

On the year, the sources part. Franciscan Media and Catholic Culture give 1734; the 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia gives March 5, 1739. ¹³⁴ He was beatified in 1789, and Pope Gregory XVI canonized him in 1839, on Trinity Sunday, May 26, by Butler's date. ¹²⁴

None of the sources consulted for this page names a patronage for Saint John Joseph of the Cross, so none is given here. ¹²³⁴⁵ The Martyrology remembers him for restoring religious discipline, in the footsteps of Saint Peter of Alcantara, in many convents of the province of Naples. ⁵

Saint John Joseph of the Cross is remembered on March 5, the day of his death. ³⁴ The Roman Martyrology enters him at Naples on that day. ⁵ Butler notes that his day of death was "a day yet unoccupied in the calendar, as if purposely left for him." ²

Franciscan Media draws one lesson from him and states it plainly: self-denial is never an end in itself, only a help toward greater charity. ³ It says his mortification made him the kind of forgiving superior Saint Francis intended. ³

The penances Butler records are hard to read, and nobody is asked to copy them. What the sources set beside them is ordinary: the guardian carrying water, the beggar not turned away, the enemy helped to a better job. ²³

He spent years refusing offices and kept being given them, and when the reform he belonged to was about to be shut down in Italy he took on the fight for it and won. ² Then he asked to be let go, and spent his last years in one convent, hearing confessions. ²³ Franciscan Media borrows a line from Chesterton for him: "It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own." ³