On September 18 the Church honors St. John Macías (1585-1645), the Spanish-born Dominican lay brother who served as porter of the Priory of St. Mary Magdalene in Lima for over twenty years and who, with St. Martin de Porres and St. Rose of Lima, is one of the three Dominican saints of Lima whose relics rest in the same Basilica of Santo Domingo.
Born Juan de Arcas y Sánchez on March 2, 1585, in Ribera del Fresno, Extremadura, Spain, he was orphaned at four and raised by an uncle whose surname, Macías, he took as his own. He worked as a shepherd, praying the Rosary in the long hours alone with the flock. In 1619, at the age of twenty-five, he set out for the Americas, arriving in Lima in 1620. He entered the Dominican Priory of St. Mary Magdalene as a lay brother on January 23, 1622, and took his final vows on January 25, 1623. He served as the priory's porter — the doorkeeper who received every visitor, from beggars to merchants — for more than two decades.
He was known for two things in his life: his devotion to the Rosary, which he had prayed as a child shepherd in Extremadura, and his generosity to the poor, some two hundred of whom he fed every day. He sent a donkey through the streets of Lima with a sign asking for alms; the donkey, knowing its route, would stop at houses and bray until the occupants came out to give. He died on September 16, 1645. He was beatified alongside Martin de Porres by Gregory XVI in 1837 and canonized by Paul VI on September 28, 1975.
His relics rest in the Basilica of Santo Domingo at Lima, beside those of his friends Martin de Porres and Rose of Lima — three Dominican saints who lived in the same city, in the same convent, and whose memory the Church keeps in the same basilica. An annual procession in Lima on the third Sunday of November carries the images of Macías and Martin de Porres through the streets together.
