The Lives of the Saints Volume 1 - St. Patrick's Basilica

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reason, shrunk like a delicate plant from the very shadow of guilt, and
was all-imbued with zeal for God's glory. Idleness, levity, vanity, and
falsehood, even in trivial matters, were censured by him as faults
severely reprehensible. And when his efforts to check sin drew upon him
the hostility of others, he was so far from losing patience, that he
therein only discovered a fresh opportunity of practising virtue.
Towards the poor he overflowed with tenderness, reserving for them the
choicest portion of his meals, and devoting to their use the
pocket-money he received.
The sanctity of his boyhood merited for him the grace of a divine call
to a state of holiness; and feeling an interior movement to quit the
world, he {513} sedulously sought counsel from the Father of lights, as
to the manner in which he should obey this inspiration. For this end he
redoubled his ordinary devotions and mortifications; performed a novena
to the Holy Ghost, and threw himself upon the tender patronage and
powerful intercession of Our Lady. God hearkened to his fervent appeal;
for his providence so disposed that at this period the renowned servant
of God, Father John da San Bernardo, a Spanish Alcantarine, came into
the country of our saint, with the view of establishing his order in the
kingdom of Naples. The mean habit and devout demeanor of this holy man
and his companions, touched and won the heart of Joseph; he desired to
imitate what he beheld, and doubted not but the desire came from God.
Wherefore he journeyed to Naples, that he might impart to the fathers of
the order his inclination; and they, having prudently considered his
vocation, admitted him to the novitiate. He manifested so much ardor,
that the superiors deemed it fitting to clothe him with the habit before
the usual time had expired. This happy consummation of his wishes took
place before he had completed his sixteenth year. He adopted the name of
John Joseph of the Cross, and on the feast of St. John the Baptist, in
the year of our Lord 1671, he completed his edifying novitiate, and took
the solemn vows of his order; whose holy founder, St. Francis of Asisi,
and St. Peter of Alcantara, he proposed to himself as models.
In obedience to the express desire of his superior, our saint submitted
to receive the dignity of the priesthood, and was appointed to hear
confessions; in which task he displayed a profound theological learning,
which he had acquired solely at the foot of the cross. But, carried
onward by an ardent love of the cross, whose treasures he more and more
discovered as he advanced in the dignity and functions of the sacred
ministry, he resolved to establish in the wood adjoining his convent a
kind of solitude, where, after the manner of the ancient Fathers of the
Desert, he might devote himself entirely to grayer and penitential
austerities, and give to the Church an illustrious and profitable
example of the sacerdotal spirit exercised in a perfect degree. There
was found in the wood a pleasant fountain, whose waters healed the sick;