249 BIRTH ANNIVERSARY OF FATHER JOHN BONAL
Fr. John Bonal is, above all, a great apostle of charity, beggar of God for the most underprivileged of the society of his time, tireless missionary through the most diverse places of the Spanish geography, in a radical and heroic surrender.
He was born in Terradas (Girona) the 24th of August of 1769, in a family of deep christian roots. He has a good intellectual formation, in spite of the time he lived, towards priesthood, despite his condition of heir, as the firstborn of the family, according to the customs of the country.
He started his studies of Philosophy in the Sertoriana University of Huesca, and of Theology in Barcelona and in Zaragoza. He went to Reus (Tarragona) to the examination convoked by the Municipality to teach Grammar and he was approved as teacher. He will live there for seven years, the last five ordained as a priest. It is there where that vocation of charity and surrender to the marginalized of his time, towards the needs that he touched every day around him, is born. Together with teaching, he carries out an intense charitable and apostolic activity: he visits the sick and those who are in prison; he attends children and young people who are abandoned.
Charity with the poorest and most helpless of his time will attract him in such a way, that he will renounce to teach in order to devote himself fully to the service of the sick in the Holy Cross Hospital of Barcelona first, and in Our Lady of Grace Hospital later on, where he will arrive in 1804 to establish there a Fraternity of Charity, with vocation of religious life and dedication to the sick and the helpless, being the Chaplain of the Hospital and Director of the fraternity.
The tragic events of the Sieges of Zaragoza made of that Hospital a heap of ruins and for many years, the misery presided the life of the Hospital and of those who lived there. In order to alleviate it, Fr. John will devote the rest of his life to beg from village to village, through a big part of the Spanish geography, riding a bad horse, during endless and hard days, as beggar of the Hospital of Zaragoza.
Beggar of God for the poor, he went everywhere doing good, preaching to the simple people of the rural world, encouraging their faith and charity, devoting long hours to confess, giving pardon and peace to those who, moved by his ardent word, went to him.
There were much the tiredness and the inclemency of the paths, many the difficulties he found in his ungrateful mission of beggar. But nothing will make him stop of a service who demanded heroic humility, charity and patience, in which he placed endless illusion and constancy, with total surrender and self-forgetfulness. Mission which will be prolonged for the rest of his life, till his death, in Our Lady of Salz Shrine, in Zuera (Zaragoza), where he used to retire in order to prepare his journeys (veredas). There he passed his last journey accompanied by two Sisters of Charity of that Sisterhood founded by him, with which he always was in communion of ideals and affection, of a doctor sent by the Hospital, which owed him so many benefits, and of several priest. Fully lucid and with peace, he received the sacraments from a priest of Zuera, ordered to celebrate a mass to St. Joseph and the Lord met him the 19th of August of 1829, being almost 60 years old.