About the book: "This little book (1921, 2015) is an attempt at a study and interpretation of a lovable young saint, Saint John Berchmans (1599-1621), a Belgian Jesuit scholastic, who is recommended as a patron of altar servers, Jesuit scholastics, and students, and helper in solving the difficult problem of maintaining agreeable and efficient relations without cooling in faith and reverence, of making the love of God the dominant motive of conduct without sacrificing any of the courtesies or failing in human sympathies.
I have depended for most of the facts in my sketch upon the excellent and exhaustive biography of the Saint by the Rev Francis Goldie, SJ. The English Jesuit drew a large part of his material from official processes and enquiries, and from the contemporary The Life of Blessed John Berchmans, of the Society of Jesus (1866) by Father Cepari, SJ, the Saint's superior and confessor.
As far as facts go, I can, to use a quaint phrase, be tracked in their snow. In the interpretation of facts, I have sometimes allowed myself latitude. In the following brief sketch of the life of Saint John Berchmans, there will not be room for an elaborate description of the rich historical setting which Europe, and especially the Brabant and the Rome of that time afforded. To tell the truth, there is not much call for it.
The interest of John's life lay in its contact with the big affairs of another world than this. The Saint touched human life, not at its points of earthly splendour and importance, but at its less obtrusive and less impressive surfaces of homely and domestic rounds of routine.
Like most of us, he was forced by circumstances into a pack-horse gait. His days, like ours, were much of a kind, singularly beggarly in their opportunities for spectacular heroism. And yet, he achieved heroism. With the scanty materials supplied by the stern realism of an ordinary every-day life, he succeeded in kindling a splendour which has burnt its way brightly through the mists of time, and, after three centuries, remains a fixed and steady glow in the night that has fallen upon the deeds of by-gone generations."
- James Jeremiah Daly, SJ (author)
St John Berchmans was declared Blessed in 1865, and canonized in 1888. Statues frequently depict him with hands clasped, holding his crucifix, his book of rules, and his Rosary.
About the author: The Reverend James Jeremiah Daly (1872-1953), professor emeritus of English at the University of Detroit and the author of several religious works, died Monday in Mount Carmel Hospital, Detroit. His age was 81. Professor Daly had been a Jesuit for sixty-three years and a teacher for fifty-six years, the last twenty-two of them at the University of Detroit.
Among his literary works were “Life of St John Berchmans," "A Christian Ascetic," "The Road to Peace," "The Jesuit in Focus" and a volume of verse, “Boscobel and Other Rimes." He was literary editor of America from 1909 to 1911, assistant editor of The Queen's Work from 1920 to 1924 and literary editor of Thought from 1924 to 1939. In addition, he wrote book reviews for The New York Times. Born in Chicago, he studied at St Ignatius College and entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1890. He was ordained at St Louis in 1905 and took his Master of Arts degree at St Louis University in the next year. In one of his books, he discussed the spirit of the Society of Jesus as revealed in its constitution, rules and spiritual exercises.
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