Hi

DE PORRES

IE DOHERTY





blessed Martin

de porrts

By EDDIE DOHERTY

Madonna House, Combermere, Ont., Canada

COVER PAINTING BY ROBERT FRANKENBERG

CATECHETICAL GUILD EDUCATIONAL SOCIETY

ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA



To the Rev. Norbert Georges, O.P.

and the Blessed Martin Guild,

141 East 65th Street, New York, N. Y.

Nihil obstat:
John M. A. Fearns, S.T.D.

Censor Librorum

Imprimatur:
* Francis Cardinal Spellman
Archbishop of New Yor\

September 28, 1953

The nihil obstat and imprimatur are official declarations that a book or

pamphlet is free of doctrinal or moral error. No implication is contained
therein that those who have granted the nihil obstat and imprimatur agree

with the contents, opinions or statements expressed.

COPYRIGHT 1953 BY CATECHETICAL GUILD EDUCATIONAL SOCIETY.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THROUGHOUT THE WORLD.

DESIGNED AND PRODUCED BY ARTISTS AND WRITERS GUILD, INC.

PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. BY WESTERN PRINTING AND LITHOGRAPHING COMPANY.

PUBLISHED SIMULTANEOUSLY IN CANADA BY

PALM PUBLISHERS, MONTREAL.



Pesseb Jfflartta be Torres

he best way to get acquainted with Blessed Martin de

'US Porres is to ask a favor of him.

It is significant that in this most unbelieving of the cen-

turies—in this day when even the most obvious truths of
science are subjected to the microscope of doubt—more and
more people should turn so confidingly for help and com-

fort to a miracle-worker who died more than three hundred

years ago.

It is significant that in this era of malice, bigotry, extreme

nationalism and extreme hate—in this day when it is es-

pecially tragic to have been born a Negro or a Jew, or a

member of any racial minority—so many millions call upon
the spirit of a half-breed for their necessities.

It is significant that in this age of dictators—in this day of
great power and mass slavery—multitudes should pay fealty
to a humble Dominican lay brother who never had anything

for himself and never wanted anything for himself.

It is significant that in this most terrible age of Christen-

dom—in this day of blood-baths, purges, persecutions, wide-
spread atheism, increasing diabolism, and mounting fear

—

so many men and women cling to hope and sanity through

their faith in the kindness and love of Blessed Martin.

It is important to get acquainted with Blessed Martin, if

one does not already know him. For it is important to get



4 BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES

acquainted with God, and Martin leads his friends to Mary,

and through her, to her Son.

Martin de Porres was the son of a white man—a proud
Spaniard, Don Juan de Porres, knight of Alcantara—and
of a Negro woman whose people had been slaves.

Because he looked more like this mother’s people than his

father’s, in color and features, he was called a Mulatto; and

many white people despised and distrusted him.

White men and women throughout history have perse-

cuted and enslaved the peoples of other races. They have al-

ways regarded themselves with the same self-esteem Christ

condemned in the Pharisee who thanked God he was not as

the rest of men. And they have always considered the child

of two races as belonging not to both, but to neither. There-

fore they have made him an outcast.

How many a time have we not read the phrase, “the worst

vices of both races were in this crafty half-breed?” Evidently

the writer has been inspired by ignorance and bias. He pre-

sumes that each race has its own particular vices; and that

the white man’s, being much “more civilized,” can be more

easily condoned. He is usually ready to forgive and “under-

stand” such white men as Nero, Caligula, Judas, Hitler, or

Stalin; but is only too often among the first to help lynch a

Negro falsely accused of crime, or shoot a “skulkin’ injun

varmint” in the back.

The world does not yet realize that Christ is Black, and

Red, and Yellow, and Brown, as well as White. He died to

redeem all men and all men were to be brothers through

Him. Whatever one does to the least of these brethren of

His one does to Him.

The world does not yet realize that a servant of Christ



BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES 5

need not be ashamed to be called a half-breed since He, the

Master, was labeled in ways that were much more insulting

to His Divine dignity. The world does not yet realize what

it has done to Christ in its treatment of His least brethren.

Perhaps it does not care.

There is hardly a city or a hamlet where Christ has not

been scourged, mocked, crowned with thorns, stripped, spat

upon, or crucified in His little ones, His colored children, His

humble half-breeds.

It is not possible that God the Father will look with

patience and mercy much longer at the treatment accorded

His Son in these countries He has blessed so graciously and

with such abundance.

The world must get rid of its bias if it is to recover and live.

Blessed Martin, who was a great doctor in his lifetime, is

the physician God seems to have appointed to administer

the emetic, since he cleanses many hearts by the favors he

grants and the miracles he works, and has, therefore, be-

come popular throughout the continent.

The world must repent of its sins against Christ in the

Negro, the Indian, the Filipino, the Chinese, and the Jew. It

must do penance in sackcloth and ashes, lest another half-

breed—anti-Christ, both devil and man—turn its fabulous
cities into dust and ashes. /

It is most important to get acquainted with Blessed Martin

de Porres. He, through his power with the Crucified par

excellence and the beautiful Jewish maiden who gave Him
birth, may save the world from all the hordes of hell!

It is related of Martin by many reliable witnesses, that he

stood by the raging Rimac river in Lima, in 1634, and

watched it in silence for a time. The flood grew ominously,



6 BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES

threatening the city, threatening particularly a church dedi-

cated to Our Lady.

The people were in panic. They prayed aloud, but with-

out hope. The river had destroyed many buildings on its

way to Lima. What could prevent it from washing away

this church, and from flooding the hundreds of homes and

stores and shops in the vicinity ? What could prevent it from

taking hundreds of lives?

Blessed Martin stilled the panic with a smile and a prayer.

He bade the hopeless to have confidence in God and His

Blessed Mother. And then he picked up three small pebbles,

in honor of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

The first pebble he tossed at the edge of the flood. The

second he tossed a little farther. The third he pitched into

the furious foaming heart of the torrent.

Then he knelt, and the others knelt with him. And they

prayed. The waters subsided as they prayed. The river be-

came its normal self again. The church was no longer in

any danger.

“We must do something to thank God,” one of the men

said. “We must build a big church to show our gratitude.

But not here. We must set it higher up on the hill so that

it will never again be in danger from a flood.”

Blessed Martin told them that was nonsense.

“From now on,” he said, “the river will behave itself. It

will never endanger the church again.”

An angry flood of atheism, a swollen red torrent, is gather-

ing power and fury in the East, waiting to burst its dams and

flood the western world. And every time a Negro is lynched,

or jim-crowed, or is politely ignored anywhere, the reservoir

of communistic devastation seethes with added venom.



BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES 7

It is impossible to say how many communist converts were

made recently when the town of Cicero, Illinois—Catholics
included—turned out to evict a Negro family. Cicero, that
fawned on A1 Capone and his hijackers, murderers, pander-

ers, and dope sellers, resented having an honest Negro

family within its pure-white town limits!

Much has been done to swell that reservoir of murder

in red Russia which is waiting to loose its waters on our

land, with intent to wash away our temples, our churches,

our cities, our civilization, our pride, our freedom, our very

life; and to leave our soil covered with debris and slime

when the red waters have receded.

When one hears that the skies are bleeding over Formosa,

Indo-China, Malaya, Germany, and the Argentine, one will

pray fervently to the “Holy Half-Breed,” imploring him to

check the flood before it reaches us.

With the pebbles of our prayers, Blessed Martin can still

accomplish wonders. It is never too late to ask a favor of

him, or a miracle.

But it is best to do it now!



2

l

ad Blessed Martin lived in our times he might have

become as fervent a communist as any of those who

died so eagerly for their religion of irreligion.

It is astonishing that he did not become an atheist, or at

least a hater of Christians, in his own day and age.

Conditions were almost as intolerable in the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries, especially in Lima, Peru, the city of

the Spanish conquistadors, as they are in the world today.

His Eminence, Herbert Cardinal Vaughan, the great Eng-

lish writer, has given us a good idea of Martin’s little world.

“The cruelties of the conquerors, the avarice of the mer-

chants and their dependents filled Lima . . . with every kind

of iniquity,” he wrote. “The heat of the climate and its in-

fluence upon morals completed the corruption which sur-

rounded the seat of government . . . Lima was without a

hospital or refuge for the destitute. Men and women died

without nurses, disease spread itself unchecked, children

were exposed to death in the streets, poor Indians and Negro

slaves died in holes and corners of want and neglect.”*

The Rev. Ignatius Smith, O.P., Ph. D., of the Catholic

University of America, expands this idea.

“The motives and the hopes of life were wrong in so many

of these adventurers, and in the poor who imitated them.

They prized money and comfort, they lusted for pleasures



BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES 9

of the flesh, they thirsted for power and they craved political

position and pomp'. . . They gloried in their buildings and

in their architecture. They prided themselves on their wealth.

They boasted of their tramping armies and powerful arma-

das. They gloried in the raucous laughter that bespoke their

licentious amusements. They disdained everything but

physical health and beauty. They had forgotten that the

Kingdom of God and the happiness of men were based on

the opposites of these things, the opposites that were preached

by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. As a consequence . .

.

the social conditions of the day were alien to the government

of God.”

Martin, rejected by his father and unloved by his mother

—

she could not help thinking that the child’s birth was re-

sponsible for Don Juan’s coldness to her—lived for his first
few years in neglect, abuse, loneliness and abject poverty.

He might have become a thief. He might have decided that

the religion the Catholics preached was a good one, but ap-

parently too good to live up to; and that what was needed

was a religion to make the poor rich and the rich poor. He

had a good mind. His intelligence was above the average.

He might have become a noted reformer, a great rebel, the

leader of a new cult or sect or philosophy or church.

Instead, he spent these early years getting acquainted with

Our Lady and her Little Boy, growingJn love for Them,

and in knowledge of Them, growing in holiness and wis-

dom, and in the fire of charity.

Martin was born in Lima on December 9, 1579, in a house

on the Street of the Holy Ghost. His father had him baptized

the same day. Some years later, Martin’s sister Juana was

born. She too looked more like her mother’s people than her

father’s. So Don Juan deserted the family. Now and then he



10 BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES

sent a few gold pieces to Lima, but not often, apparently,

and not very many. It is recorded that Martin sometimes got

into trouble because of those yellow coins.

His mother would send him out to buy food with them.

Sometimes he met people poorer than himself and gave

them the money. Sometimes he bought the food he was sent

for, but gave it to people hungrier than himself. His mother

punished him, but never could break him of the habit of

giving away whatever he had to give.

When he was about eight years old, his father came back

to Lima, and took Martin and Juana to Guayaquil. Martin

stayed there two years and was taught to read and write.

When he was ten, his father brought him back to Lima, had

him confirmed, told his mother to have the boy apprenticed

to a barber-surgeon, and deserted him again.

On his return from Guayaquil, Martin learned that his

mother was living as a servant in the home of a rich Spanish

woman. She had not much time to give him. Either she or

Don Juan obtained a room for him in the home of Senora

Ventura de Luna. There is no definite information about

this; but it seems that for two years at least, between the ages

of ten and twelve, Martin was thrown more or less on his

own resources for a living.

Had it not been for the good Dominican and Franciscan

missionaries who had followed the armies of Pizzaro into

Peru, Martin could not possibly have risen above his en-

vironment, would not even have dreamed of making him-

self a saint.

The non-Catholic historian, Prescott, in his story of the

'‘Conquest of Peru,” gives credit to these missionaries.

“The effort to Christianize the heathen,” he says, “is an

honorable characteristic of the Spanish conquest. The Puri-



BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES 11

tan, with equal religious zeal, did comparatively little for

the conversion of the Indian, being content, it would seem,

with having secured to himself the inestimable privilege of

worshipping God in his own way. Other adventurers who

have occupied the New World have often had too little re-

gard for religion themselves to be very solicitous about spread-

ing it among the savages.

“But the Spanish missionary, from first to last, has shown

a keen interest in the spiritual welfare of the natives. Under

his auspices, churches on a magnificent scale have been

erected, schools for elementary instruction founded, and

every rational means taken to spread the knowledge of re-

ligious truth, while he has carried his solitary mission into

remote and almost inaccessible regions, or gathered his

Indian disciples into communities. . . .

“In reviewing the blood-stained records of Spanish col-

onial history, it is but fair ... to reflect that the nation which

sent forth the hard-hearted conqueror . . . sent forth the

missionary to do the work of beneficence, and to spread the

light of Christian civilization over the farthest regions of the

New World.”

The lonely boy often visited the magnificent churches.

They were cool and peaceful. There was a great silence in

them, and a great beauty. And sometimes one heard mission-

aries preaching there.

It was in one of these churches that Martin de Porres

found out that God loved him—loved him as much as He
did the great ones of the earth. It was in one of these

churches that he learned Christ had died for him, would

have died for him alone, had there been no other fruit of

His suffering and death; and that He had established the

Church for him, and all the Sacraments.



12 BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES

It was a little hard to grasp at first, and more than a little

hard to believe. Yet it was true, he knew. God loved the

Indian, the Negro, and the white man with the same divine

love. He loved the rich and the poor, the wise man and the

dunce, the governor and the dirtiest beggar. And He wanted

them all to go to heaven.

It was stupendous to realize that God loved the despised

outcast child, Martin de Porres, as much as He loved the

viceroy, or the saintly archbishop.

It was marvelous to know that God would never abandon

him, as Don Juan had done. And it was most wonderful to

discover that God’s mother was also the mother of all men,

even such an unwanted little half-breed as himself, and that

she loved her children more tenderly than any other mother

ever had, or ever would.

He didn’t know it at the time, but he had entered the

school of Mary Immaculate, the school of many saints; and

he was learning, slowly, all that the Mother of Love could

teach him. One knelt before her statue or her picture, in a

church, in some wayside shrine, dr in the darkness of the

room provided by Senora de Luna, and communed with

her in silence. And one learned. It was so simple.

She was Our Lady of Silence. She was the Woman

Wrapped in Silence. She was the woman who “kept all

these things in her heart,” pondering them, tasting them,

giving her pupils a taste of them, a love of them, a growing

appreciation of them. She didn’t need to talk. Martin un-

derstood, perhaps because Martin listened so avidly in the

silence.

One entering her silence, entered her Immaculate Heart.

And in that chamber he met Christ, Infinite Love!

Martin read books when he could get them, spiritual books,



BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES 13

books about Mary, books about Christ, books about the Holy

Ghost, books about the saints. He pored over them at night,

in the light of the stump of a candle. He meditated on them.

He studied them thoroughly. The more one loves Jesus and

Mary, the more one needs to know about Them. The more

one knows about Them, the more one loves Them.

One night Senora de Luna, wondering why Martin burned

so many candles, and why he was always begging her to

save the stumps for him, peeked through the large keyhole

into his room. She saw him on his knees, looking at a crucifix

he held in his right hand, and weeping bitter tears.

The crucifix was Martin’s best book, even as it was the

best book in the library of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Not enough attention has been paid by Martin’s biogra-

phers to these years he spent in silent nightly study. He

worked hard during the day, especially after he became as-

sociated with Marcelo de Rivero, the barber. But no matter

how hard he worked, nor how many hours, he found time

for study and for meditation in the quiet of the nights.

It must have been in these silent hours, in the silence of

Our Lady, that Martin laid the foundation for that love of

God that overflowed into love not only for all men, but even

for animals, and such insignificant and.pestilential creatures

as mice and mosquitoes.

It must have been in these serene evenings that he learned

there was no limit to the progress a man could make in

sanctity. It must have been then he gained his astonishing

insight into the mystery of the Crucifixion; and first de-

sired to share in it through penance, and mortifications, and

sufferings of all kinds. It must have been at this time he ob-

tained his profound knowledge of the Mystical Body of

Christ.



14 BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES

It must have been then that he determined to show God

how much he loved Him. He realized he could do this only

by showing Him how much he loved his neighbors. He re-

membered Christ had said that even the pagans love their

friends, and do good to those they like; but that a true

Christian must love even his worst enemies. He would love

and serve all people, the good and the bad, those who liked

him and those who abhorred and ridiculed him, those who

needed him and those who wanted merely to use him.

Is it any wonder that Christ Crucified, seeing Martin’s

love for Him, should show Himself through the boy, or

that He should work such astounding miracles through

him?



3

od began working through Martin when the boy was

twelve or thirteen—about the same age as Christ was
when He told His Mother He must be about His Father’s

business.

After he had served a number of Masses, every morning

except Sunday, Martin hurried to the shop of Marcelo de

Rivero, swept it clean, put all the jars of herbs and powders

and pastes in order, and greeted those waiting to be barbered

or doctored. There was more to barbering in those days than

just cutting hair or shaving jowls or trimming mustaches.

One set bones, tended wounds, dosed fevers, bled patients,

and compounded various herbs for various diseases.

Martin found all this easy to learn. He found it easy be-

cause he was in love, and doctoring bodies was a way of

showing his love. He added a special medicine to the barber-

surgeon’s too scanty supply—the medicine of unselfish love.
Martin was a true realist. He knew that love could cure,

sometimes, when all other remedies had failed.

Lima began to take more and more notice of the boy. He

was a most peculiar boy. He went around in rags, but he

wore them with as much distinction as the showiest war-

riors wore their armor and their plumes. He seemed to be

content with a piece of dry bread and a little water, yet he

always happened to have some bit of food to give a hungry

man, or woman, or child—a great luscious orange, perhaps,



16 BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES

a double handful of meaty nuts, a delicious warm loaf of

bread, or maybe a flagon of good wine.

Where did he get all these things ? And how did he man-

age to carry them around without their showing? Nobody

knew.

He was always smiling, as though he had fallen in love

for the first time and was unable to think of anything but his

love; yet he noticed things sharper eyes didn’t see. And he had

a touch that made one feel good, that evicted a pain or an

ache, or made a wound quit throbbing and begin to heal.

Strange things happened. A man with a raging fever
sipped a little water Martin handed him, and was cured

within the hour. Another, stabbed in a dozen places, saw

the boy sprinkle a little powder on him. He watched his

wounds close. He walked away, wondering. An old woman

came to Martin with a migraine. She went skipping home

with a basket of food on her arm. Babies looked at him and

smiled, and even the most desperately sick among them re-

sponded quickly to his caress on their foreheads.

Many people tried to give him money. Most of them he

refused. They might give Marcelo de Rivero his just fees.

They could give Martin only the few coppers he needed for

his landlady.

When the shop was closed, Martin sallied forth to find

the patients who had been unable to come to him. He visited

the houses of the poor, the dark alleys of the slums where

drunken men might be found—or men who had been robbed
and beaten, or brawlers who had been shot or stabbed

—

and even the homes of the rich. Rich men suffered illnesses

too, and broken bones, and terrible gaping wounds.

The good Samaritan was never too tired to help.



BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES 17

Martin de Porres, in the latter years of the Sixteenth Cen-

tury, became the first lay social worker in the new world, the

first lay apostle of Catholic Action in this part of the globe.

He was a layman and he wanted to remain a layman,

feeling too unworthy ever to become a religious. But it oc-

curred to him that he would bring more glory to Jesus and

Mary if he wore Their livery, than he did now in his ordinary

clothes. Some foolish people were attributing cures to him,

not to the power of God.

If he were dressed as a Third Order Dominican, people

would realize it was the Master who healed, not the servant.

The force of the word “servant” is lost to us today. When

it was used by St. Paul, for instance, it meant not someone

hired for a certain task, but a slave. It also meant a slave to

most Catholics of Martin’s day. And Martin considered

himself as the slave of Mary and Jesus. He made himself a

slave because Christ had first annihilated Himself, as St.

Paul puts it, to make Himself our Ransom and our Slave.

Martin knew he could never abase himself to such an infinite

degree as Christ had done. But, he thought, he could try.

He believed himself unworthy of wearing the habit of St.

Dominic, of being a son of that great saint, a layman son, a

tertiary; but he realized that the Third Order was a way of

sanctification for him. As a tertiary, he would share in all

the merits of the Dominican priests, lay brothers, nuns, and

other tertiaries throughout the world. He would become a

member of a holy family.

Somehow the news of Martin’s intention of joining the

Third Order travelled all the way to Panama. Juan de Porres

heard it, and was enraged. A de Porres make himself the
slave of the slaves of the Dominicans? God forbid! Where

was the boy’s pride? If Martin had expressed a desire to be



18 BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES

a priest, that would be understandable. Once he was a priest

he could soon become a bishop. And then— But a common,
ordinary, lay tertiary! Not even as high up in the social

order as the lowest lay brother in the convent! Was Martin

mad?

There was some trouble about the matter, but Martin was

permitted to don the habit Our Lady had chosen for the

sons of St. Dominic, to be nothing but a tertiary, to live hi

the convent of the Most Holy Rosary, and to make himself

the least servant of all the servants of God.

His earthly father didn’t like it; but apparently his Heav-

enly Father approved most heartily, for He multiplied the

miracles He performed through the child of the Black race

and the White, the layman in the black and white robes

of His Mother, His Daughter, and His Spouse, and of His

beloved Son.

One of the first of these miracles centered about a patient

in the convent, Brother Francisco Velasco, who, according to

Dr. Cineto, was dying of dropsy. He had been placed in an

isolated room in the novitiate and somebody had locked and

bolted the doors at the hour stipulated in the rules. He was

alone. He was in pain. He was burning with thirst, for the

doctor had given orders he was not to have any water. It

was wretchedly cold. The novitiate was not heated, and the

night was bitter.

Then suddenly he was not alone. Martin was there, look-

ing down at him with a friendly smile. His arms were laden

with linen and sweet-smelling rosemary, and in his right

hand he held a pan full of red-hot coals.

Immediately Brother Francisco began to feel warm and

good. He no longer felt any pain. He no longer felt any

thirst. Martin put down the brazier of coals, and the linen,



BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES 19

and the herbs. He took the novice into his arms, sat him

on a bench, undressed and sponged him, put a clean linen

tunic on him, changed the sheets on his bed and sprinkled

them with the rosemary leaves. Then he put the patient back

into bed and told him to go to sleep.

“You are not going to die,” he reassured the young man.

“You will be much better when you wake.”

The novice could not help asking questions.

“How did you know I needed you so? How do you know

I am not going to die? Do you know more than the doctor?

And how did you get in here? The doors are locked and

bolted. Have you a key?”

Martin answered only with a smile. The boy turned his

head for a moment, and when he turned back to ask another

question, Martin was not there. He had disappeared as mys-

teriously as he had come.

The novice tried to figure it out, but he fell asleep. Perhaps

it was nothing but a dream, he thought in the morning. He

stretched his arms and started to get up. He recollected him-

self. He was a dying man. Then he realized he was no such

thing. He was more alive than he had been before. He was

so full of life he wanted to jump out of bed and hurry to the

chapel to thank God! But, he remembered, the doors were

locked. He must wait.

Dr. Cineto came early that morning, with the novice

master. He didn’t believe what he saw. The patient was en-

tirely cured. There was not the least sign of dropsy in him.

What is more, he was absurdly healthy and ravenously

hungry, and bothered about only one thing—how did that
tertiary get into this room last night?

Father Andres de Lizon, the novice master, asserted again

and again that both the first and second doors had been se-



20 BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES

curely locked. He had the keys in his possession. Nobody

else had had them, even for a fraction of a second, during

that night.

He was not as surprised as the others, however, to learn

that .Martin had apparently gone through the walls, with

his vessel of burning coals as though he were a spirit, and

the glowing embers and the linens and the herbs were spirits

too. He had witnessed this phenomenon several times be-

fore. Many other rooms had been locked and bolted; but

Martin had appeared in them suddenly, smiling, eager to

help, and laden with all the things he needed—just as Christ
had appeared to the apostles when they were together after

the Resurrection.

Father de Lizon could have told the doctor and the novice

many other tales of Martin; but he did not. He kept them to

himself until the right time came, when he was called before

the ecclesiastical court to testify in the process of Martin’s

beatification.

Juan Vasquez Parra, one of many of Martin’s proteges,

could also tell incredible true stories about the saintly servant

of servants. Juan was one of the sick men Martin had found

and brought to the convent. He made himself Martin’s com-

panion and servant; and though he probably knew more

about Martin than any other man on earth, he said less about

his wonders than almost any other man.

Juan’s first acquaintance with the supernatural in Martin

almost frightened him into insanity. He went tearing

through the corridors of the convent crying with what

breath he had for the porter, Brother Fernando de Aragones,

to come to Martin’s help. For a moment or two he had the

porter in a state of panic. He was trying to tell the good

brother something terrible about Martin, but all he could



BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES 21

do was stammer, tear at his hair, roll his eyes, and pull the

religious with him back toward Martin’s cell.

‘•He’s kneeling before his crucifix,” he managed to say

after a time, “but he’s kneeling in the air. He’s kneeling up-

right, Brother, and with his arms stretched out. But he’s

three feet off the floor—or more!” x
The good porter sighed with relief. Then he reproved

Juan for scaring him that way.

“You’ll see many a queer thing, being so close to that

one,” he cautioned him. “Keep it to yourself hereafter, and

don’t go frightening the wits out of everyone.”

The intensity of his love for Jesus in the Blessed Sacra-

ment often shone through Martin’s clothing, or put such a

fire, or such a blinding light about his head, that Juan was

kept in a state of constant agitation. And Martin’s love and

sorrow for Jesus crucified often lifted him high that he might

embrace and kiss some crucifix nailed on a wall, and wet it

with a rain of tears. Juan saw this again and again; but he

never quite got used to it.



4

M hen Martin had been a tertiary for nine years orso, the Dominican provincial, Fr. Juan de Lor-
enzana, and the prior, Fr. Francisco Vego, decided he must

become a lay brother.

In this year, 1603, Martin was twenty-four years old, and

more than ever convinced of his unworthiness to become a

religious. He, at first, begged them not to press this honor

on him. He was more deserving of a crown of thorns. But,

after he had listened to the silence of his Lady, he repeated

her fiat to his superiors: “Be it done to me according to Thy

word.”

His love had already bound him with a golden chain to

Mary and the Triune God. He already lived in poverty,

chastity, and obedience. He could, of course, decide to marry,

set himself up as a doctor, make a fortune, and become his

own boss. He could do that and save his soul. He could do

all that and even become a saint. But he realized it was bet-

ter to give up all possibility, all thought, of such a worldly

career, and to bind himself more tightly than he was already

bound to Love Incarnate, and to Love’s mother.

With the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, Martin

became more than a slave to Love, and less than a slave

—

since he had, through obedience, given up even his will to

be a slave. He was no longer a layman wearing a religious

habit, an individual doing certain chores for the sake of

love. He was simply a Dominican lay brother, one of a



BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES 23

group, one of a family, doing certain chores not only for

the sake of love, but also for the sake of obedience. He was

a self-less, will-less, desire-less part of a whole.

And immediately his duties were increased, even as were

his graces. He had to sweep the cloister. He had to tend to

all the laundry. He was made the infirmarian in charge of

all the sick. He was given the tasks of ringing the bell, feed-

ing the crowds of poor who came to the convent, cutting the

hair of all the friars and postulants and novices and guests,

cleaning the washrooms, and doing a hundred or more er-

rands “in his spare time.”

The provincial appointed him the official infirmarian of

the convent, and Father
J. C. Kearns, O.P., tells us in his

biography, “this was no small obligation.”

There were at this time, Father Kearns says, “. .

.

close to

300 religious, tertiaries, and retainers of one sort or another,

in the large convent. . . . Moreover, it was the custom to

bring the ill from the neighboring Dominican convent ded-

icated to St. Mary Magdalen to Brother Martin for treat-

ment. Besides, in an adjoining wing, the slaves and servants

who worked the land at the hacienda belonging to the

Fathers were given over to Blessed Martin’s medical super-

vision He took complete charge, not merely prescribing

the needed remedies after diagnosing the causes of ailments,

but also serving the sick with his own hands, ever manifest-

ing such solicitude and sympathy that observers marveled.”

Observers also marveled at the humility Brother Martin

displayed. This virtue, the beautiful daughter of obedience

and charity, accompanied him throughout his life, and is

more talked about even than the miracles wrought through

him by Love.

Monasteries and convents are different, in some ways,



24 BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES

than other places inhabited by men or women. The principal

difference is that people enter them to become saints, but

some have only the faintest ideas of sanctity. There were

religious in Martin’s time, just as there are today in various

parts of the world, who were as cranky and crusty and hate-

ful as people in the world. And they drew as strict a color

line as some religious, and most of the laity, do today.

There were several of these in the infirmary when Martin

was first put in charge. They resented him bitterly.

“What are you doing here, Half-Breed?” one demanded.

“You don’t belong in a convent. You belong in a jail! What

idiot let you into my room? I’d sooner be touched by a snake

than have you put a finger on me.”

The poor priest’s words had an amazing effect on Martin.

As though they constituted the greatest compliment any

one could pay him, he fell on his knees close to the patient’s

feet, and smiled at him.

“O Father, what keen eyes God has given you!” he said.

“You have seen my sinfulness at a glance! I marvel at your

patience with such as me. You speak truly, Father. But for

the mercy of God I should indeed be in a penitentiary now.”

The priest didn’t like that. He thought Martin was being

sarcastic. He made such an uproar that several other priests

rushed in to see what had happened. They found Martin

still on his knees, still smiling.

“It is all right,” Martin told them. “My patient has dis-

covered I am not worthy to kiss his hands. I therefore kiss

his feet to show that I agree with him.”

There were other patients who treated him with abuse

and scorn. He tended these more tenderly and more prompt-

ly, and with more genuine love, than any of the others. He

anticipated their wants, pulling mangoes out of his wide



BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES 25

sleeves when they wanted that sort of fruit, or bringing a

salad of capers to one and a dish of berries to another, as

though he had read their thoughts and knew how much

they wanted those particular foods.

Despite the many duties given him to perform, and despite

the attention needed by his numerous patients, Brother Mar-

tin found opportunities to go out into the city of Lima, beg-

ging, feeding the poor, running errands for poor men and

women, and looking for people in any kind of need. Fre-

quently, from these trips, he brought new patients into the

convent, keeping them in his own cell as long as he could.

It happened that after he had brought in an old man cov-

ered with running sores, placed him in bed, and bathed and

healed him, a crotchety lay brother came along. He arrived

in time to see the old man go away cured. He peered idly in

at Martin’s bed. Suddenly he noticed that it was covered

with blood and dirt and pus. It had an evil smell. It frightened

and angered the lay brother.

“What do you think you’re doing, you stinking yellow

Mulatto,” he cried, “bringing a contagious patient like that

into the cloister! You want to kill us all? I don’t trust any

of you breeds.”

This time Martin did not smile. He shook his head sadly.

“Don’t mind the stains on the linen,” he said, “nor fear con-

tagion. Dirty linen can be washed clean, and contagion can

be halted. But hatred of a neighbor can be washed out of a

man’s heart only by tears and penance.”

The lay brother was not the only one in the convent who

objected to Martin’s “unorganized” charity. They made

numerous complaints to the provincial, and the latter made

a final ruling.

“This is a cloister, Brother Martin,” he said. “It is intended



26 BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES

only for religious, not at all for the laity. You must not bring

anybody in here for treatment again. Surely there must be

somewhere else you can take the patients you find outside/"

Martin bowed in instant obedience.

“I shall take them, hereafter, to the home of my sister,” he

said.

“Good,” the provincial said. “That will save us a lot of

trouble. The ones who complained about you have a point.

You could bring infection into the cloister, or troubles of

many kinds.”

Yet just a few days later Martin found an Inca bleeding

to death in the street. He did what he could to staunch the

flow of blood, then picked the man up and deliberately

brought him into his cell in the cloister.

There he cured the man, as though by a miracle.

But the provincial was not impressed by this. Martin had

deliberately disobeyed. That was a grave fault. Indeed it

might be a most heinous mortal sin, since the brother had

taken a vow of obedience.

There was no punishment great enough to expiate the

enormity of such a sin. Lucifer, the brightest angel in God’s

heaven, and the first creature ever to sin against obedience,

was cast immediately into hell, with all those who joined in

his sin. And Adam and Eve, who were induced to disobey

by Lucifer in the guise of a serpent, brought death and suffer-

ing and endless toil to themselves and all their children. Dis-

obedience was born of the devil!

The provincial sternly reprimanded Brother Martin, there-

fore* and gave him the severest penance he could think of.

Martin listened humbly to his superior’s condemnation, say-

ing no word in his own defense, and performed his penance

with joy—because it was unmerited.



BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES 27

Sometime later he explained to his superior that it was

a question of one man’s life or another man’s rule.

“Maybe I was wrong,” he said, “but I knew the Indian

would die before I could get him to my sister’s home, where-

as he might live if I could take him to my cell, which was so

much closer. I thought that, in this case, obedience should

yield to mercy, to charity. Was I wrong, Father?”

The provincial restrained a desire to hug the lay brother,

to beg his forgiveness for the penance inflicted on him, and

the harsh words he had said when he inflicted it.

“You acted in good faith, my son,” he said gently. “And

perhaps you did well. At any rate, in the future, be guided

by your own common sense—and your charity.”



5

s soon as it became known to the people of Lima that

Brother Martin had been given charge of the convent in-

firmary, the sick who could walk, or hobble, or crawl, or get

somebody to carry them, came to the convent doors. The

infirmary became not only a clinic but a first-aid hospital—

and occasionally something more. It also became a dispensary

for medicines, clothing, and food. There were many among

the patients who were suffering only from malnutrition, or

hunger—and some whose bodies had been afflicted through
exposure because they lacked the clothing that would have

protected them against the inclement nights.

Now and then Martin was sent by his superiors to the

farm at Limatambo. It seems these superiors thought Mar-

tin needed “the rest,” the tranquility and the pure fresh air

of the country.

The place was not too far away. Every step of the distance

was traversed eagerly by Brother Martin. He was going to

see ndt only his brethren at St. Mary Magdalen’s, but also

the servants and the slaves, the poor of the countryside, and

the tired and sick work animals of the farm. Most thrilling

of all, he was going to see his dear friend, Brother John

Massias.

People who really love God are as rare as four-leaf clovers.

And, like four-leaf clovers, they stand out clearly from their

brothers and sisters in the patch, so that keen eyes cannot

fail to see them. Also, where you find one you may find two

or three, half dozen, or a score or more.



BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES 29

There were in Lima at this time, among the children of St.

Dominic and St. Francis of Assisi, quite a few of these four-

leaf clovers. Among them were St. Rose, St. Francis Solano,

Blessed Sebastian Aparicio, Brother Juan Gomez, a very

holy Franciscan lay brother who may someday be raised,

like his comrades, to the altars of the Church, Blessed Martin

de Porres, and Blessed John Massias. The latter two were

beatified on the same day by Pope Gregory XVI.

Brother John, a sprig of the Spanish nobility, was a few

years younger than Martin. St. John, the beloved apostle,

appeared to him one day, he told Brother Martin, and bade

him go to Peru. He had often talked to St. John and to other

saints. He was glad to have Martin to talk to, and Martin

was glad to have him. Blessed John was like Martin in many

respects. He too fed the poor, took care of the sick and the

unfortunate, and begged alms. He had trained a donkey to

go around begging for him, loading itself with various kinds

of merchandise and bringing it to the convent. The donkey

trained himself to take care of all the goods placed by Blessed

John’s friends in his saddle bags. No thief ever tried twice to

rob that clever beast.

Sometimes the two brother friars, the white man and the

Mulatto, would talk for hours about the saints, about the

loveliness of Our Lady, about the mercy and the love of God

for sinners like themselves, and about the necessity of

doing something for the love of God. Sometimes they

would enjoy long hours of silence together, each know-

ing the other’s thoughts. Sometimes they would take

turns scourging each other with whips or chains or

faggots full of thorns so that each in turn might experience

something of the agony the Saviour felt when He was

scourged for the sins of men.



30 BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES

Always, before he went anywhere near his bed on the

farm at Limatambo, Martin would visit the servants and

the slaves, help them in whatever tasks they might be doing,

and then go into the barns and sheds to see what he could

do for the animals.

“But you must rest, Brother Martin,” someone was always

sure to say*

Martin would laugh at the sheer absurdity of that. Why,

he would assert, he had done very little that day. In fact, in

the eyes of the Lord, he had done nothing. Nothing at all.

And that was terrible. For the devil could take advantage of

that. It was surprising what the devil could do with nothing!

Once in awhile, when there were no patients in the in-

firmary, or none that needed special attention, Brother

Martin would ask permission to visit Limatambo. He knew

when his patients were going to die, and when they were

going to live. He revealed this to a grouchy priest who com-

plained he was being neglected. “Be glad if I seem to neglect

you, holy Father,” Martin said. “It means you are going to

recover. When you see me giving someone more than the

usual attention, pray for him. Death is near.”

Frequently Martin would visit the bakeshop at Limatambo

and fill the wide sleeves of his tunic with freshly-baked and

fragrant loaves of bread. At such times, the wise ones knew,

he was getting ready for a journey. They could only specu-

late as to the direction he would take, and the spot where he

would land. One thing only they knew for certain. Those

loaves were not for himself. They would be given to hungry

people in China, Manila, Tripoli, Mexico City, Marseilles,

or some other far-off place.

That seemed impossible, of course. But what was impos-

sible to one so beloved of God as Martin ?



BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES 31

Out of his love for God he had bewailed his indolence, his

laziness, his inability to do any work at all. True, he swept

the corridors until they shone. He cleaned the washrooms

and lavatories. He collected the laundry, sorted it into piles,

washed and ironed every piece, and distributed it to the

various priests and brothers and novices and others. He cut

hair for all the convent. He prepared meals for the sick and

tended their needs. He operated. He sewed up wounds. He

dosed fevers. He fed long lines of poor. He went into the

city collecting alms. He did a hundred errands, and went

out of his way to do a hundred favors.»He rang the dawn

bell. He rang the Angelus. He worked around the sacristy.

He served a few Masses.

He usually had no sleep and only a bit or two of food, be-

cause he was so far behind in his work. Why was he only

one man, capable of working only to a limited extent, and

only for twenty-four hours a day? Why couldn’t God multi-

ply him, so that he wouldn’t be such an unprofitable servant?

If he could be in two or three places at the same time, or four

or five or six, then perhaps he needn’t feel so ashamed of his

idleness.

“Lord, give me five or six bodies, instead of just this one

ugly and shiftless set of bones and muscles; let me be a real

slave to You, not just a pretense of a slave. There are so many

people who need You, so very many all over the world. I

could be helping them to find You, Lord, if I weren’t such

a poor specimen of manhood, so bound to my own lazy self.

How am I going to save my worthless soul, Lord, unless I

really work for You? If I weren’t such a miserable creature

I might do as much work for You as other men manage to

do. But I need to be a half dozen men or more to equal any

one of them!”



32 BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES

Such was the gist of his prayer. And, incredible as it seems,

the testimony of many witnesses points to the conclusion

that God granted that prayer in full

Strangers coming into Lima from many foreign lands

would spy Martin walking down some street. There would

always be a crowd around him—a crowd of laughing chil-
dren, or a crowd of needy and crippled and crying men and

women. So there would always be witnesses to the stranger’s

meeting with Brother Martin.

Always, according to these witnesses, the stranger showed

amazement at the sight of the Dominican friar. “Brother

Martin! But what are you doing here?” They would speak

in Spanish, in French, in Italian, in some tongue nobody

knew. The surprise in their faces made their words intel-

ligible.

Frequently the stranger hugged Brother Martin in a

mighty grip, and wept tears of joy all over his much-patched

habit. And sometimes he would take notice of the children,

or the adults grouped around the lay brother, and would

say something to this effect: “Brother Martin comforted me

many times when I was a slave of the Moslems.” “Brother

Martin is the one responsible for keeping us from starving

in China.” “Brother Martin did so much for the school in

Manila.” “The last time I saw Brother Martin I was dying.

That was in Mexico City. I called for him, and he came. The

door was locked, but he came in anyway. And he cured me.”

Always Brother Martin tried to hush up such a man.

Never did he succeed. Once Martin himself let slip the fact

that he had attended a certain operation in a hospital in

Bayonne. He was explaining to someone how he had learned

a certain technique. It probably never occurred to him that

he had revealed a secret.



BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES 33

Most of Martin’s intimates knew something of his gift of

bilocation; especially after they learned how the prior of

the Convent of the Most Holy Rosary, needing Brother

Martin, had sent five novices out to look for him. Each went

to a different section of Lima. Each saw Martin. Each re-

ported the fact. And, as they were talking, there was Martin

in the midst of them.

So, when the brothers at Limatambo saw Martin stocking

up on bread, they knew he would soon “take off” to feed the

hungry in some corner of the earth they would never see

—

yet, at the same time, he would remain at Limatambo,

though the bread would disappear.

They knew another strange thing too. No matter how

much bread Martin took with him on these journeys that

were and were not journeys, the baker never missed a loaf;

nor did anybody else.

Which is easier to believe—that a saintly lay brother
could make himself a cargo-carrier and, in a moment or two,

transport himself from Peru to Europe or Asia, or anyplace

else where there might be serious need of him—or that the
same lay brother, with the mere touch of his hand, could

cure a patient whom the doctors had advised to make his

will?

The Most Reverend Feliciano de Vega, Archbishop-elect

of Mexico City, visited Lima, in 1639, en route to his new

see, and was stricken with a grave illness. The best surgeons

in Peru were called to attend him. They gave him up, ad-

vised him to put his temporal and spiritual house in order

and prepare to die. His nephew, the Rev. Cypriano Medina,

(who later became a bishop, thus making good one of

Martin’s prophecies) then suggested that His Excellency call

in Brother Martin.



34 BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES

“When he comes,” he said, “command him to place his

hand over those parts of your body where you suffer the

most pain.”
,

The prior at the convent sent for Martin, but no one could

find him. Then someone remembered Martin had been at

Communion that morning and, as usual, had gone some-

where to be alone with Love.

“Command him to come here immediately, under obe-

dience,” Father Medina suggested. The prior gave the com-

mand, and immediately Martin appeared. Father Medina

took him then to the room where the archbishop lay dying.

Many people were in the room—weeping relatives and
friends. They saw Martin place his hand on the patient as

he was bidden; and saw the look of pain leave the face of

the prelate. Within a few days the archbishop was well

enough to go to the Dominican convent and beg that Brother

Martin be permitted to come with him to Mexico.

Some of the brethren teased Brother Martin about the

archbishop’s esteem for him. One suggested the prelate

might make a priest of the humble lay brother. Martin as-

sured him that could never be. Another said Martin might

take life easy in the Bishop’s palace. To him Martin gave

the classical answer that he would rather spend his life clean-

ing the lavatory in the convent in Lima than endure the

luxury and idleness he might expect in Mexico. He meant

no disrespect to the purple, nor to the gracious man who

wore it; he meant only to say that he preferred his humble

duties to all the honors that might be heaped on his shoulders.



8

M HXCH is the easiest to believe, that through the in-finite power and love of God a man can be in many
places at once, that he can cross half the earth in the twink-

ling of an eye, that he can heal mortal illnesses by the laying

on of hands, or that he can bring dead animals or dead men

back to life?

One of the best attested miracles attributed to Blessed

Martin was the resurrection of a dog—a worthless, blind,
diseased, offensive-smelling animal that had been thrown

out on the street by the procurator of the convent many

times. The silly creature had come back again and again to

its master. Finally the procurator had given orders that it

be taken far away and killed.

When Martin heard about this tragedy, he went to the

procurator and rebuked him with as stern language as he

could command; and it is strange how stern the saintliest of

men can be. Or is it strange? Christ Himself, when He was

angry, said harsher things then had ever been heard before.

Martin brought the body of the faithful old dog into his

cell, prayed over it, and saw it return to vigorous life. His

brethren saw him take it out of his cell the next morning,

and heard him talking while he fed it.

“You must remember one thing,” they heard Martin say.

“That is—and remember it well—never go back to your un-



36 BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES

grateful master’s service. He does not appreciate your af-

fectionate devotion.”

The dog lived for many years, the witnesses swore, and

followed Martin everywhere. But whenever he caught sight

of the procurator he fled.

There is no denying that Martin had some of the same

love for God’s lesser creatures that characterized the seraphic

St. Francis. He never chased a mosquito or a gnat or a fly,

even when the insect was feasting on his blood. It was made

by God, he would explain; therefore, it had a right to live.

If his blood sustained the wee beast’s life, so much the better.

Perhaps God had directed the little pest to light just there,

knowing it was hungry. “And see,” he would exclaim,

“with what exquisite beauty God has endowed it!” He con-

versed with mules, and gentled the stubbornest of them. He

pacified a mad bull on a rampage through one of the city

streets, and tamed him in a second. He even made pets of

fierce birds of prey.

Perhaps the best known stories about Blessed Martin

have to do with his care for mice. There are so many stories

of this type that some people fear they will obscure Martin’s

holiness. St. George, these maintain, is lost in the shadow

of his dragon; and St. Bernard is hidden behind one of his

big dogs. They -do not want Martin overshadowed by a

mouse.

It is true that Martin’s dog, cat, and mouse, all ate amicably

out of the same plate. It is true, according to the testimony

of reliable witnesses, that Martin once freed a mouse from a

trap, and ordered it to tell all its relatives and friends to leave

the convent at once; and that the mouse obeyed, leading

hundreds of others out to a shed where Martin fed them

daily.



BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES 37

There are men and women all over the world who de-

clare, on their honor, that whenever they ask a favor of

Blessed Martin, and he decides to grant it, he lets them see

a mouse. The humble little creature acts merely as a mes-

senger, they claim. These, however, are people who do not

mind mice. People who have a horror of mice are never

bothered by this particular attention of Blessed Martin. If

they see a mouse, it is not one of his messengers.

A man I know slightly was taken to the general hospital
in Pembroke, Ontario, on the morning of Feb. 29, 1948. The

doctor in charge of the hospital looked at his heart through

various sorts of instruments, and didn’t think much of it. It

might stop in twenty minutes, he said. It might keep beat-

ing for twenty years.

The man’s wife, sitting by his bedside the next morning,

heard a mimic commotion in a wastebasket, one of those tall

types made of tin and painted a poisonous blue. She looked

into the receptacle and saw a tiny mouse battling furiously

with some papers. He was trying to get himself into a posi-

tion where he could jump over the walls. But even if there

had been no papers to impede him, he would have found it

as difficult to get out of his prison as it would be for a man

to jump over a tall pine tree.

Obviously he could not have jumped into the basket from

the floor. And the basket was so placed that he could not

have dropped into it from any desk, table, shelf, cornice,

molding, bed post, or chair.

She tilted the basket on its side. Blessed Martin’s mouse

scampered under the radiator and disappeared. But the

woman didn’t care. She knew that her husband had more

than twenty minutes left to live. The nuns and nurses, and

the doctors too, told her it was impossible for any rodent to



38 BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES

get into the hospital. She didn’t care about that either. She

saw what she saw, and heard what she heard.

And she felt that even if her husband died, Blessed Martin

might come and treat him as he treated his friend, Brother

Thomas, in the convent of the Most Holy Rosary, when

Martin was alive.

The story of this miracle was related, under oath, by

Father Fernando de Aragones, O.P., who had been a lay

brother in, the convent, and served as a porter. He became a

priest, as Martin predicted he would, after he had spent four-

teen years as a lay brother.

“In a room of the infirmary,” Father de Aragones testi-

fied, “there was a sick lay brother being treated with mer-

cury unctions. He was elderly, had worked hard in religion,

and was of an exemplary and virtuous character. Moved by

his virtue . . . the Servant of God, Brother Martin, in his

great charity, visited him often and saw that he was made

comfortable. He gave a young Spanish boy a bed within his

cell in order that he might assist the sick brother day and

night.

“One morning, about nine or ten o’clock, the boy lit some

candles under a brazier in order to warm up a bowl of maize

and egg-yolks which was the brother’s daily food. Having

given it to him to eat, the boy extinguished the candles and

bade the brother good-bye until one o’clock. When he re-

turned to the cell he found the man dead.

“Seeing him lifeless he ran out to report the fact to Brother

Martin who happened to be with me in the clothes

room. We ran and found him dead and cold. On seeing

this, the Servant of God bade the assistant infirmarian to

sound the clappers and call the community. The brethren

came and began to recite the Psalter.



BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES 39

"Brother Martin locked the door, straightened the body,

uncovered it in order to prepare it for burial, and took up a

habit to clothe him. Before putting this on him, however, he

prayed in front of the crucifix which the dead man had kept

over his pillow. While he prayed I stepped back and stood

leaning against a table.

"Having finished his prayer, the Servant of God bent over

the ear of the dead man and cried out, ‘Brother Thomas!’

After this first call the sick man made a noise such as one

would make in regurgitation. Brother Martin said to me;

‘Is he alive, Brother Fernando?’ I said, ‘Not so far as I can

see.’

“Brother Martin called his name again, and the man on

the bed breathed as one in his last agony, and moved his

tongue and lips a little. Then the Servant of God called him

a third time, and he took a strong breath.

“Brother Martin said to me, ‘Don’t you see that he is alive?’

Then he covered the body and went to the door and un-

locked it and said to the community, ‘You may go. He has

recovered.’

“All I could say was, ‘Powerful is God who can give back

life to the dead!’

“Brother Martin sent me out for the boiled yolks of three

fresh eggs. When I brought them, I noticed that the only

sign of life in the sick man was a movement of the lips and

the eyes. Otherwise he was immobile and insensible, appar-

ently not seeing anything, nor hearing anything, nor under-

standing anything. I gave him the egg yolks. He had much

trouble in swallowing them. The Servant of God remained,

assisting him continuously, until he had regained complete

consciousness and health!

“I kept all this quiet at the time because of the excitement



40 BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES

it might arouse. God permitted me to keep it a secret then,

in order that I might tell it now.”

The good priest had many another story to tell before he

was finished. He related a story about the death of Fr.

Lorenzo de Pareja “as further proof’ of Martin’s miraculous

powers.

The priest was not in bed. He was walking about the

grounds of the convent, but he complained of pain, and

Brother Martin remarked to Brother Fernando that he

would die “very quickly.”

The next day the priest called a doctor. The latter, after

his examination, advised that the patient be given the last

Sacraments. But Brother Fernando didn’t pay much atten-

tion to that, since Father de Pareja got out of bed as soon as

the doctor had left, put on his clothes, and sat down in a

chair. He looked well, to the porter’s eyes. It seemed foolish

to think he was anywhere near death.

“Then the Servant of God, Brother Martin de Porres,” he

testified, “came to me, and taking out of my hands what I

was working on, said, ‘Get everything ready for the last Sac-

raments.’ All was done in a very short time, but before we,

who accompanied the priest bringing the Lord in viaticum,

had passed the last arch of the infirmary, Father Lorenzo de

Pareja had died.”



7( f Martin had any special delight in any of his many
tasks it was in taking care of the novices and postulants.

He was one of the first to serve them. He cut their hair, ‘'mon-

astic style,” as soon as they arrived, found out what he could

do for them, cheered them when they felt homesick, saw

that they had little extras—bunches of grapes, for instance, or
sweets, or tarts just out of the oven—told them many things
about themselves they didn’t know, and sometimes told

them of things that would happen to them. Sometimes he

even helped them in their studies.

It is recorded that he once happened to hear a rather ex-

cited discussion on a point in theology. One of the young

students jokingly asked Martin for his opinion. Martin gave

it, and added, “You’ll find that in the Summa of St. Thomas.”

He gave the youth the page and paragraph.

Some of the postulants and novices were full of zeal.

Others became bored with community life, the monastic

spirit, the discipline, the food, or the constant talk of obed-

ience and of conformity to the will of God.



42 BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES

Two of these reluctant religious decided to leave the con-

vent, but they did not want to be bothered by having to ex-

plain their reasons to the proper authorities. They procured

street clothes and sneaked away, like prisoners escaping

from a reformatory.

The master of novices looked for them until he met Brother

Martin.

“Oh,” Martin said, “don’t worry about them, Father.

They’re safe, and sound asleep this minute.”

Perhaps Martin was filled with the knowledge sometimes

given chosen souls by the Holy Ghost. He did know where

the fugitives were. The novice master assumed they were

in Martin’s room, and went away satisfied. But the boys

were in a private dwelling several miles away. They were,

however, indeed sound asleep and safe.

A few minutes after he had spoken to the novice master
Brother Martin appeared in the boys’ temporary bedroom

and awakened them gently. They were astonished to see him,

since they had locked the door; and they were alarmed, too.

But Martin calmed them, and began to talk about the

beauty of the priesthood, the beauty they were deliberately

discarding from their lives. He told them how dear to Our

Lady and her Son are all the priests ordained according to

the Order of Melchisedec. He told them of the power that

dwelt in these “other Christs,” not only the power of con-

ferring tremendous sacraments, but that of exorcising devils,

and—if they had sufficient devotion and faith—that of wrest-
ing the world and all its people from the possession of the

devil

It is true a priest must put up with much, since he is another

Christ. He must carry a cross—a heavy cross. He must carry
it up a steep and narrow path. He must suffer pain, and loss,



BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES 43

and agony of heart, and loneliness akin to despair. And what

awaits him at Calvary, the end of the blood-stained path?

Only the Alleluia of the crucifixion!

Yet even the brightest angel in heaven would eagerly

trade places with a priest!

The boys were weeping long before Martin had finished

talking of the beauty and the power they had rejected. They

were eager to go back, they told him. But, of course, it was

too late now. The doors would be locked against them. They

could not sneak in. And if they aroused anyone the whole

convent would know. They would be dismissed in terrible

disgrace.

Martin smiled at them, told them all was well so long as

their hearts were well. And—it is recorded—he brought
them back with him, into his room, without making any dis-

turbances, without waking anybody, without unlocking any

doors.

The story of this strange adventure was nbt made known

until after Brother Martin’s death, at which time the run-

aways had become priests. But nobody would have doubted

it if it had been told at the time of the adventure; for there

were at least thirty other novices who had had a somewhat

similar experience in Martin’s company.

These novices had been allowed to have a picnic in a wood

about half a league from the convent. Brother Martin was

appointed to go with them. The novice master knew he was

a good influence for the boys. He would not only keep them

happy, he would see that they got back to the cloister at a

certain hour.

Just what happened was never made clear, but the picnic

did not end when it should have. Someone suddenly looked

up at the sun and noted with horror that it was fast sinking



44 BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES

behind the western horizon. They would be late. Therefore

they would be punished.

Martin bade them not to worry, but to pray, and to follow

him. “Instantly,” one of the blessed half-breed’s biographers

states, “without having taken a single step,” the thirty boys

found themselves at the convent doors. Another biographer

is more cautious. He declares the boys walked only far

enough to say a few Credos. At any rate they all traversed

that half a league—say a mile and a half—more swiftly than
any others did after them.

Martin could also be tough with the novices, as many wit-

nesses averred. Once a boy stole a coin Martin had put aside

—with a pile of others—for his beloved poor. The lay brother
was not there when the theft occurred, and there were a

number of boys in the room. But he missed the coin as soon

as he came in, and he accused the right boy of having picked

it up. The latter denied this vehemently.

“Take it out of your shoe,” Martin commanded, “and give

it to me.”

The boy obeyed.

Another boy pretended he was sick when he wasn’t. His

idea was to get out of the convent. He told the prior he

needed special medical attention and he could get it only

at his home. The superior gave him permission to go.

But Brother Martin knew the young man had lied, and

knew also that he had no intention of coming back. He told

him so and begged him to stay. The boy didn’t like this,

especially as it came from an humble colored lay brother.

He hardened his heart He became abusive.

“Poor boy,” Brother Martin said. “God will punish you.

May He forgive you also for giving up your vocation.”

The young man died at his home.



BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES 45

Eventually newcomers to the convent learned immediately

about Brother Martin’s mysterious powers; a number of

them spent most of their spare time in his company. They

saw him, they declared in later years, sometimes rushing

through the corridors as though he were in flames. They

saw him, at other times, accompanied by four “most beauti-

ful young men”—whom they took to be angels—each of
them carrying a lighted candle. Sometimes they saw these

strange acolytes around him when he went to ring the dawn

bell in honor of Mary, his mother, his queen, and his great

love; or when he put flowers near one of her statues.

Long after these novices had become priests and Brother

Martin had gone to the joy his love had prepared for him,

they told the ecclesiastical courts many things about his holi-

ness. They assured the courts that they had always been sure

Brother Martin was a saint.

Sometimes Martin had to deal with boys even younger

than the novices; and these all held him in awe, though

they too regarded him as a saint.

One boy of eleven or twelve volunteered to take a letter

from Brother Martin to his friend Brother John Massias.

When he got on the street, safe from any prying eyes, he

opened the folded paper and read it. He put the paper back

into its proper shape and carried it to its destination.

Even before Brother John took the letter into his hands he

said to the boy^ “Son, don’t you know it is wrong to read a

letter entrusted to you? Curiosity can lead one into serious
•_ »

sin.

The boy was too frightened to utter any denial. He had

not yet recovered his composure when Brother John gave

him an answer to Brother Martin’s letter, forgave him, pre-

sented him with a peach, and sent him happily on his way.



46 BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES

Halfway to the convent of the Most Holy Rosary, the boy

wondered if Brother John had written anything about him

to Brother Martin. It would be natural if he did. Surely he

would want Brother Martin to know the boy had done

wrong. Surely he would. Oh, most surely.

He couldn’t resist it. He unfolded Brother John’s letter,

refolded it, and went whistling swiftly onward. Brother John

hadn’t mentioned anything about him.

But Brother Martin didn’t have to be told anything by

anybody.

“So,” he said, “once wasn’t enough! You had to repeat the

offense. Child, what’s going to happen to you if you keep

repeating faults?”

That particular boy never committed that particular fault

again. He never came near Martin again either. He never

quite dared to. The brother knew too much. No one could

fool him. But the lesson remained with him all his life. He

told the courts about it some years after Martin had died.

He thought they’d like to know.

Another boy who lived in awe of Martin was the one who

assisted him in planting medicinal herbs and fruit trees

—

plants that grew magically, it seemed to the boy. They were

ripe almost before they were put in the ground, the boy de-

clared.

They were far away from the convent one afternoon, and

it was getting late.

“Hadn’t we better go?” the boy asked. “It will be dark

soon.”

Martin looked at the lowering sun. Without a word he

picked up a stout piece of wood and beat himself on the

shoulders and legs, and the soles of each foot.

The boy almost wept in his terror. He didn’t understand



BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES 47

that Martin was giving himself a penance which would

help him, somehow, to perform the miracle he had in mind.

This miracle was to waft himself and the boy from the field

to the convent gate.

They traveled, the boy declared, without traveling at all.

In less time than it takes to flick an eyelash they had gone

from one place to the other. They did not walk. They did

not run. They did not ride. They did not fly. They just went

from one place to the other.

How? The boy never knew. Nor did anybody else.



8

ddly enough it was not miracles people thought of when

they mentioned Brother Martin. It was his charity they

remembered, his going through the streets of Lima day and

night, and about the outskirts of the city, feeding all the

hungry from a basket that never seemed to be emptied, and

stopping now and then to minister to some sick or injured

person or bird or animal.

And they remembered that he was a most excellent beg-

gar. It is estimated that he collected at least $2,000 a week

in the currency of his day—which would be equivalent to
$20,000 and more today. Some witnesses said he had a clothes- v

closet, or a niche, or a cupboard filled with gold and silver

pieces. All these coins, of course, were given to the poor, or

spent for their benefit.

He had a system in the expenditure of the moneys he col-

lected—even as he had a system in his collection. He placed
his various needy families (some estimate the figure at 160)

on budgets ample to care for their every need. He did not

forget anybody in his charity. He walked miles out of his

way to feed some poor and forgotten soldiers. He helped

uncounted poor priests and seminarians. He helped some of



BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES 49

the rich and mighty when they were beggared by bad invest-

ments or royal command or other accidents. He provided

dowries for many girls who, otherwise, would never have

found husbands.

And he built the first school for orphans in the western

hemisphere!

For this school he could have raised a lot of volunteer

teachers and supervisors. But he chose to select the best

teachers available, and to pay them much better salaries

than any other school would pay. Boys and girls of all kinds

were welcomed—Indians, Negroes, or Spanish—the children
of slaves or freedmen. He insisted that the boys be taught

trades that would assure them a decent living.

The girls, he felt, should be taught not only to read and

write, add and subtract, but they should also be taught how

to sew, how to cook a tasty meal, how to conduct a household,

and how to raise the children marriage would someday

bring to their homes. He made a provision that each girl

would be given a dowry.

Blessed Martin’s devotees seldom think of him as a ball of

fire whizzing down the corridor to assist some dying priest

or novice, nor as one suspended before a crucifix or a picture

of Our Lady, nor as a man busied about laundry, cleaning

lavatories, ringing bells, or preparing meals for the sick.

They think of him as a smiling old man in a well-worn

black and white habit, a rosary around his neck and another

hanging from his belt, a pair of shoes held together only by

a miracle, and the most disreputable hat in all the world hang-

ing to the back of his neck by a knotted string. They think

of him as a “man about town,” one who stopped and talked

to everybody—not as politicians do before election, nor yet
as a census taker or an income tax investigator—but as one



50 BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES

in love with people and eager to help each and every one of

them in any possible way he could. They think of him as one

of the most human of all the great lovers of God.

This little girl, he decided, needed sweets as well as milk

and eggs and yams. This one ought to have a new doll, see-

ing how ragged and soiled the old one had become. This boy

needed not only a new pair of sandals and a warm cloak, he

also needed the brightest ball in the costliest store in the city.

And this one needed a violin and a bow. The poor need lux-

uries more than the rich. How few people know that.

There was nothing about people and their needs that

didn’t touch Martin’s charity. Even a young woman’s van-

ity—if you want to call it that—could find a sympathetic re-
sponse in him.

There was his niece, Catalina—the daughter of his sister
Juana—going to a party, and without a decent wrap. She
didn’t tell her uncle how she felt. She didn’t tell anybody,

except maybe the Infant Jesus and His mother. Possibly it

was They who let Martin know.

Now whether it is vanity for a girl to want to look her

best at such an affair, or whether it is just common-sense

—

for every girl knows she is entitled to look her best when she

is young and it is Spring and marriageable boys will look at

her—Martin didn’t hesitate. Perhaps he asked a friend for
money. Perhaps he didn’t. The records are vague about this

part of it. But what we know for certain is that Martin

stepped into a store, picked out several wraps and sent them

to Catalina’s home so she could take her pick of them.

Did Cinderella’s fairy godmother do more for her than

that?

Thousands and thousands of other girls have made their

wants known to Blessed Martin in the years that have gone



BLESSED MARTIN DE TORRES 51

since that unforgotten day. They have asked not only for

wraps, but for decent shoes, warm overcoats, good silk stock*

ings, a raise in pay, a better room, a chance to meet a nice

boy, a miracle of healing for someone dear to them, a little

rest from toil and worry, enough money to fix up dad’s old

car, or to put down on a new one, good marks in the next

examination, and a million other things—frivolous, impor-
tant, or essential.

Brother Martin wore next to his skin a heavy rough serge

tunic and a horsehair shirt. He fasted so much that a num-

ber of biographers swear he seldom ate anything. He went

without sleep many nights, or slept on boards, on a catafalque,

or on a cold stone floor. He lashed himself every day and

every night with a double rawhide, or with a mesh of spike*

studded chains, or with a mass of knotted cords, until every-

thing around him was spattered with blood. And sometimes

he rubbed salt and vinegar into his wounds. He beat him-

self so severely and so often, that most of the time, his gar-

ments stuck to his flesh, as Christ’s seamless robe adhered to

His blood-covered body during the march to Calvary!

But he didn’t want anybody else to live like that.

He wanted all to be happy. If they were not happy they

would not be inclined to love God; and if they did not love

God, they could not possibly be happy.

The Rev. Norbert Georges, head of the Blessed Martin

Guild, 141 East 65th St., New York, N. Y., in an article de-
scribing Blessed Martin as a patron of social justice, called

attention to the lay brother’s love for people—especially the
unfortunate and the poor—and his delight in serving them.

“For this work [of social justice] God chose a man from
the underprivileged,” he wrote . . . “God chose this poor cast-
off child as His instrument for good in order to show His



52 BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES

power. To us it would seem much easier to inspire a rich

man to use his wealth and influence for the good of the poor

than to lift up a man at whom society looked askance, to the

point where he could command the sympathy and the purse

of that very society which had disowned him.

“To us it seems natural for the well-born to become saints,

but we are surprised to find a boy of the streets became a

friend of God, a worker of miracles, and a man of eminent

holiness. To us it seems easier to inspire a rich man to give

up his riches than to persuade a poor man to give up even

a desire for the riches he sees other men enjoy. But it is just

this complete detachment from even the desire of riches that

was and is an essential characteristic of a patron of social

justice. . . .

“No one called on him in vain. Rich and poor, learned

and ignorant, the convict and the citizen, Red; Black; and

White men, all were alike to him when they were in need.

It was not always necessary to be in Lima to get his help; it

was not always necessary to send word to him to have him

come to you. There is testimony under oath that he came in

response to calls that were not even uttered, to calls from per-

sons as far away from Lima as Mexico City, and Algiers in

Northern Africa.

“As far as it was possible for one person to do so, Blessed

Martin, a colored man and a lowly lay brother, reestablished

in Lima, Peru, that order planned by God, instituted by Jesus

Christ, and so strenuously preached by St. Paul; that order

in which all men are united in one spiritual body, each

member of which is obliged to love and care for the other;

the employer paying a living wage and the laborer giving

an honest day’s work; the rich dispensing their superfluities

generously to the poor and the poor giving in return the



BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES 53

spiritual benefits they possess from poverty borne patiently

for the love of Christ; the healthy devoting some of their

time to the sick and receiving in return something of the

merit gained by one who suffers cheerfully in union with

the cross of Christ; the privileged granting not patronage

but that fraternity due to the underprivileged as brothers

in Christ, and that opportunity for economic and social de-

velopment that will enable the latter to rise to their true dig-

nity as brothers of Christ.

“When Blessed Martin died he was mourned as a father

by all alike. . . . What blessed Martin accomplished three

hundred years ago he can accomplish now, provided he be-

comes a living reality to the men and women of our day/’



9

to have a last word with him. Among them were the Arch-

bishop of Mexico, and the Viceroy o£ Peru.

Martin was told that distinguished guests waited to

see him. He did not speak. He seemed to be transported out

of himself with some celestial vision; but he managed to im-

press upon the prior, Father Gaspar Saldana, that the “big

shots” must wait. They waited for fifteen or twenty minutes,

perhaps, chatting with the prior, and then Martin signaled

they might come in.

It wasn’t much of a room. It was a narrow cell with a

wooden cross on one wall, a picture of the Blessed Mother,

a picture of St. Dominic, and, high up on another wall, the

picture of the Holy Face as imprinted on the veil of Veronica.

There were no chairs for the celebrated visitors. There

were but a few planks on the bed with a light covering over

thEm, a stone pillow under Martin’s head, and, close to his

hand, an old skull—almost as good a book to some of God’s
friends as the crucifix itself.

The visitors went down on their knees and kissed the dy-

ing Negro’s hands, then asked his prayers.

When he had escorted the guests to the convent gates, and

had properly apologized for having made them wait, the prior

came to Martin’s cell and rebuked him for his outrageous

conduct toward these representatives of the Church of God

and the king of Spain.



BLESSED MARTIN DE FORRES 55

Martin said nothing until he was told to explain. Then he

said that he had been entertaining guests of his own.

“Our Lady was here,” he said. “St. Dominic was with her.

And St. Vincent Ferrer. And St. Joseph, of course. Wherever

Our Lady is, St. Joseph is there too, whether you see him or

not. There were many other saints. And many angels. I didn’t

think it wrong to keep earthly visitors out while the Queen

and her court were paying me such honor.”

Martin’s devotion to the founder of the Order was demon-

strated during the earthquake of 1630, as was St. Dominic’s

devotion to his humblest son.

It was a little before noon. Martin was in the convent

chapel. Near him knelt Fr. Pedro de Mendoza. When the

earth began to shake, and the structure started to rock,

Father Pedro got up off his knees and started to run outside.

But he saw Martin, kneeling high up in the air before the

statue of St. Dominic. Martin’s face was serene, even shining.

But there was something even stranger to be seen. The face

of St. Dominic’s statue seemed to have come alive, and it

had turned from its normal position so that it looked toward

the tabernacle of the main altar!

“Brother Martin,” one of the other friars said later, “had

evidently asked St. Dominic to join him in begging God

to soften His anger and temper it with mercy for the poor

sinful people of the city.”

Martin kept the secret of the turned statue for many years.

He revealed it to Fr. Saldana shortly before his death

—

when he pleaded that the old statue be not discarded in

favor of a new one sculptured by Father Gabriel de Zarate,

the provincial of the Dominicans in Peru. The statue, he said

then, had really seemed to come to life, and to pray with him

for the mercy of God on the people.



10

n spite of his rigid fasts, sleepless nights, incredible labors,

^ austere penances and continual scourgings, Blessed Mar-
tin lived a long life. He was nearing his sixtieth birth-

day when he became aware that he was soon going to meet

that other outcast, the One who had been put to death on

the cross.

Father Juan de Barbaran saw him in a brand new habit,

and stopped to comment upon it. The sight was so unusual

the good priest’s curiosity might be excused. Martin in any-

thing but the most tattered clothes was like a stranger.

“Why the finery?” he asked—much as one of the apostles
asked why Christ had let that foolish woman pour so much

rich ointment on His feet.

“It is for my burial,” Martin explained.

Shortly after he had selected this shroud he was attacked

by a fever. At first he kept working as usual. But the day

came when he was unable to arise from the boards that con-

stituted his mattress.

He rejoiced now, for he was really ill. All his conscious

life, ever since he had first fallen in love with God, he had

suffered joyfully. But he had brought most of his sufferings

on himself. This fever was a gift from God Himself, a proof

of the divine love.

Now Martin could lie on the naked wood, as his Master

had done, and feel a little of the tortures of the crucifixion.

The crown of fire, he could understand now, must have

sent sparks cascading down from the forehead of the Son of



BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES 57

God onto the furrows the heavy cross had plowed in His

shoulders.

And thence the embers of pain had jumped into the wrists

and the palms of the hands, to set them blazing with intoler-

able flames; then down through all His body into the crossed

spiked feet. How the fire must have danced in those holy

feet!

Thanks to the fever, Brother Martin could also experience

something of the thirst Christ suffered on the cross, the un-

slakable thirst in His dustlined throat, His burning mouth,

His dried and heated tongue, His dried and aching bones

and muscles, and in His heart.

The doctor was there, bleeding the patient skillfully. Was

it like that with Jesus? Did He see His rich blood spattering

the bent red-gold head of Mary Magdalen, spattering the

soldiers dicing for His seamless robe, spattering the mock-

ing, jeering, hating rabble? Did He notice that John was

blind with tears? Did He see what agony shone through

His mother’s eyes, and what submission to the holy will of

the Father?

They took Brother Martin out of his tiny cell and placed

him gently in a soft bed, not realizing that one accustomed

to the honest and stable friendship of hard wood would suf-

fer through such comfort.

Martin smiled at the physician, Dr. Francisco Navarro,

and told him that his was a useless task, for the day and the

hour of death was fast approaching, and nothing could pro-

long it for a second.

“Kill some hens,” the doctor bade a lay brother, “and we’ll

make a poultice from their blood.”

“No,” Brother Martin protested. “You’d kill the chickens

needlessly. They wouldn’t help me in any way. They would



58 BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES

not alleviate the pain in the slightest. Let the poor hens live.”

Sometimes the pain was so terrible that Martin didn’t feel

it any more. Then he would wake as from a coma, and find

himself once more stretched out on the cross. And the soldiers

were taking their time with hammers, talking to each other

about this and that, not looking at the spikes particularly, so

that the hammers fell sometimes on the iron and sometimes

on the flesh. Soon now they would stop hammering. Soon

they would raise him up and let him drop into the hole pre-

pared for the foot of the cross.

And the voices of people! Did Christ suffer those noises

too, when He was raised high above the multitude, with

His hands nailed so that He could not stop up His ears?

The strident voices of angry men, of jeering priests and

cursing soldiers, of gossipers and slanderers, and of those in-

terested only in business, politics, sciences and themselves.

How they must have tortured the ears attuned to the praises

of angelic choirs, the lullabies Joseph sang Him when He

was a child, and the music-voice of His mother, Mary! Of

course He must have heard those voices, the voices of the

world.

And perhaps He still hears them.

At times severe chills invaded the realm of the fever-

chills that shook the wasted body, as the raising and drop-

ping of the cross may have shaken the body of the Lord.

But the fever always came back, with its dancing hot coals

of pain. And its dryness. And its thirst.

The devil came to taunt the dying lay brother. Or so it

seemed to the watchers.

“Don’t argue with him,” a priest warned.

Martin smiled faintly. “Oh, Father, Lucifer is too proud to

argue with such a poor ignorant soul as mine.”



BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES 59

Brother Martin had no terror of the devil. He had routed

him a number of times in his long life. He had met the in-

fernal spirit, the first time, on a winding staircase in the con-

vent. Martin had a pan of hot coals in one hand, a hamper

of medical supplies in the other. The black angel tried to

stop him. Martin put down his brazier and his hamper, took

off his belt, and beat the devil out of his way. There was a

Rosary attached to the belt The devil was afraid of it.

Martin picked up a glowing coal and burned a cross into

the wall. The devil fled.

Sometimes, after that incident, the fiend came to annoy

Martin in his cell. Brother Fulano de Mirando told the ec-

clesiastic courts that on one occasion he and Brother Martin

were both attacked by demons. They were beaten and

thrown around, he said, and then suddenly Martin’s little

room was full of fire and smoke. Brother Fulano confessed

that he would have run away had not Martin assured him

that it was only a diabolical conflagration, and they were in

no danger.

Sergeant de la Torre also swore that he had witnessed one

of Brother Martin’s encounters with the master of hell.

“I was sleeping in an alcove of his room,” he said, “on a

pile of infirmary mattresses. I heard the brother talking

angrily to somebody, and that wasn’t like him. So I got up

and went to see who was making trouble. I didn’t see the

devil. I just saw Brother Martin being rolled around, and

thrown this way and that, and I could hear somebody strik-

ing him many blows. Then I saw that someone or something

had set fire to a pile of clothes Brother Martin had heaped up

for poor people. There was plenty of smoke too. I helped

Brother Martin beat out the flames. I went back to bed, but

I was so frightened I couldn’t sleep. When Brother Martin



60 BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES

got up, about 3 o'clock, to ring the dawn bell in honor of Our

Lady, the dawn of Christianity, he lit a candle so I could see,

and so I would quit shaking with fright. There wasn't the

least sign of fire in the cell, no charred wood or clothes, no

ashes, no smell of burnt materials. That frightened me more

than the fire itself."

Toward the end of his long ordeal Martin was asked if he

wanted the community summoned, that they might speed his

soul to heaven with their tears and their prayers. Martin, sud-

denly looking rested and at peace, nodded his consent and

began to kiss the crucifix he held. A priest kneeling near his

bed told him there was another man dying in the infirmary,

and asked Martin’s prayers fpr him.

Hearing this, Martin tried to get up, but he could not.

He reproached himself severely.

“Brother Martin,” he said, “where is your charity? A dy-
ing man needs you, and you lie here on your soft clean bed!

Ah, where is your charity?”

The chamber into which the dying lay brother had been

moved soon filled up with visitors, secular and religious. An

old friend wiped the cold sweat off Martin’s face with his

handkerchief, which afterwards he kept as a relic. The per-

spiration, he said, had an aroma better than the most delicate

perfumes.

Martin joined in the prayers for the dying. When they

came to the words, “and was made man,” his soul left his

body.

Christ Crucified and His crucified disciple were together.



II

“(21 T HIS obsequies,” Father Cypriano de Medina testi-

fied, “I saw the following: after his death in the early

part of the night his remains were immediately placed ... in

the church. ... At about 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning, accom-

panied by the other religious who were watching over the

body, I approached the bier, and on touching the corpse I

found it so hard and stiff that I said ... in the presence of all

and in a loud voice . . . ‘How is it, brother of mine, that you

are so stiff and rigid at this time when the day is at hand and

the whole city is getting ready to come and see you and

glorify God in you? Beg Him to make this body flexible.’ . .

.

Strange to say, hardly a quarter of an hour passed when we

noticed it was more supple and docile than when he was

alive. . . . When the people entered the church they noticed

not only this fact, but that it gave forth a fragrance that en-

veloped all those who came near.

“The people cut pieces from his habit, forcing us to re-

clothe him many times, and to beg a special guard for the

body. It was decided to bury him that evening to avoid diffi-

culties. A great crowd assisted at the burial, proclaiming him
a saint. He was carried on the shoulders of the Archbishop

of Mexico, of Don Pedro de Ortega Sotomayor, then a dig-

nitary of the Cathedral and now Bishop of Cuzco, of Don

Juan de Pennafiel and other gentlemen of high station. They

did not wish to let down the stretcher from the time they

left the church to the chapterhall, which is quite a distance.”

The body was placed in a new vault, in a section originally

reserved for priests; and even before the vault was sealed, all

Lima was discussing the miracles God was granting through



62 BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES

the intercession o£ the dead lay brother. Within a few years

not only the people of Lima, but those of many other coun-

tries, were praying to the holy brother. Crowds came to

Lima as pilgrims from many parts of the world. Martin’s

cell became a shrine.

Twenty-five years or so after Martin’s death, the Domini-

can fathers decided to remove the body to a more suitable

place. As soon as the vault was opened, those present smelled

the sweet odor that had filled the church during the hours

Martin’s body had remained there.

When the body was examined by the appointed witnesses,

they found most of it in an incorrupt state, and the flesh

looked as if it had not known death. One of the witnesses

swore that it bled when a surgeon thrust a knife into it.

The witnesses thought they were working in secret. Noth-

ing had been told the people in the city. Yet within a few

minutes after the tomb had been opened, great crowds

started fighting their way into the Church of the Most Holy

Rosary; and the overflow—those who could not possibly get
into the church—fought to stay as close as possible to the
door—to stay there and breathe!
During the removal of the body, its dismemberment, and

its re-burial, it is recorded that a young religious, thinking

himself unobserved, stole a portion of one of the bones and

hid it beneath his habit. It burned him so badly that he al-

most cried out. But that would be tantamount to confessing

his strange crime. He hurried to his cell and hid the relic

there. But it threw out such tremendous heat that he was

forced to reveal what he had done.

He wanted to give back the bone and keep it too. He broke

off a tiny piece of it, and gave the rest to the prior. Brother

Martin wouldn’t permit that either. The fragment the young



BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES 63

man kept was even hotter than the rest of the bone. He was

forced, the second time, to confess his sin and give back what

he had pilfered.

Hundreds and hundreds of miracles continued to remind

the world of the power of God, which He continues to ex-

hibit through Brother Martin. Only two were selected by

the Sacred Congregation of Rites and given official approba-

tion for the beatification.

Senora Elvira Mariano of Lima, who had accidentally cut

out her eyeball with a sliver of glass from a broken vase, ap-

plied a relic of Brother Martin to the wound. The pain van-

ished immediately. And, wonder of wonders, overnight a

new eye formed in the empty eye socket!

There were many witnesses to attest the truth of this mir-

aculous happening, including the doctor, “a celebrated sur-

geon named Don Pedro de Urdanibia,” according to the

biographers.

The second miracle was concerned with the fall of a two-

year-old child, Melchior Varanda, from a window of his

mother’s home in Lima. His skull was crushed, according to

witnesses including the same celebrated surgeon who had

attended Senora Mariano. He told the mother that the only

doctor who could help the boy was Brother Martin de

Porres. A neighbor drew a rude portrait of Martin, and
pressed it against the child’s bleeding head with a prayer.

In less than three hours, say the witnesses, the boy was run-

ning around the house in his usual fashion—without any
sign of injury and with no visible symptom of shock—ready,
perhaps, to fall out the same window again, twenty or thirty

feet onto the same stone pavement.

But the Church never hurries in its routine, no matter how

many miracles its holy children work from above to show



64 BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES

they are in heaven. It was not until April 29, 1763, that Pope

^Clement XIII issued an Apostolic Decree proclaiming the

heroic character of Brother Martin’s virtues. It was not until

July 31, 1836, that Pope Gregory XVI published the

decree of approval. And it was not until Septem-

ber 10 of the following year, that Brother Martin became

known officially as Blessed Martin.

He died on the 3rd of November. Ordinarily this would

have been his feast day in the calendar of the Divine Office.

But another Dominican lay brother, Blessed Simon Alla-

cchi, had been given that day. So the 5th of November was

given Blessed Martin.

Millions of people, all over the world, are praying now for

the canonization of Blessed Martin. They want the full hon-

ors of the Church for him.

He’s willing to wait centuries more to win his degree of

sanctity from the hands of the Holy Father, if it be the Will

of God. Meantime he keeps working as he did on earth,

without ceasing, without sleeping, and in many places at

once.

Blessed Martin is a shortcut to the Immaculate Heart of

Mary—and Mary is the mediatrix of all graces, the gateway to
Christ, Who is the Way. How can you lose, asking help of

Martin?

Madonna House

March 25, 1953





GUILD FAMILY READERS

GUILD FAMILY READERS bring you the works of famous

Catholic authors in compact, inexpensive booklet form.

GFR 126. THE PASSION
by Msgr. Ronald A. Knox

GFR 127. THE FIFTEEN MYSTERIES OF THE ROSARY
by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen

GFR 128. FOLLOW THE MASS
by the Rev. Gerald Ellard, SJ.

GFR 129. THE CHRISTMAS STORY
by Fulton Oursler

GFR 130. BLUEPRINT FOR ENSLAVEMENT
by Father James A. McCormick, M.M.

GFR 131. THE RISEN SOLDIER
by Francis Cardinal Spellman

GFR 132. MARY TALKS TO US
by Don Sharkey

GFR 134. HOW YOU CAN SHARE YOUR FAITH
by the Rev. John A. O'Brien, Ph.D.

GFR 135. CRISIS IN HISTORY

by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen

GFR 136. YOU CAN CHANGE THE WORLD
by James Keller

GRF 137. MEDITATIONS FOR THE FAMILY ROSARY
by Joseph A. Breig

GFR 138. THE ANSWER TO COMMUNISM
by Douglas Hyde

GFR 139. BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES
by Eddie Doherty

GUILD FAMILY READERS are available on

your parish pamphlet rack, through your

Catholic book dealer, or on direct order from

CATECHETICAL GUILD

EDUCATIONAL SOCIETY
147 East Fifth St., St. Paul 1, Minnesota