St. John Berchman - st-john-berchman.htm [ altar boys]

To serve Him freely there,
Where even the angels falter,
Bowed low in reverent prayer.
To touch the throne most holy,
To hand the gifis for the feast,
To see Him meekly, lowly,
Descend at the word of the priest.
To hear man's poor petition
To sound the silver bell
When He in sweet submission,
Comes down with us to dwell.
No grander mission surely
Could saints or men enjoy,-
No heart should love more purely,
Than yours, my altar boy.
God bless you, lad, forever,
And keep you in His care,
And guard you that you never
Belie the robes vou wear
For white bespeaks untainted
A heart both tried and true:
And red tells love the sainted
And holy martyrs knew
Throughout life, then, endeavor
God's graces to employ,-
And be in heart.forever
A holy altar boy

........"What, however, distinguished him most from his companions was his piety. When he was hardly seven years old, he was accustomed to rise early and serve two or three Masses with the greatest fervour. He attended religious instructions and listened to Sunday sermons with the deepest recollection, and made pilgrimages to the sanctuary of Montaigu, a few miles from Diest, reciting the rosary as he went, or absorbed in meditation. As soon as he entered the Jesuit college at Mechlin, he was enrolled in the Society of the Blessed Virgin, and made a resolution to recite her Office daily. He would, moreover, ask the director of the sodality every month to prescribe for him some special acts of devotion to Mary. On Fridays, at nightfall, he would go out barefooted and make the Stations of the Cross in the town. Such fervent, filial piety won for him the grace of a religious vocation. Towards the end of his rhetoric course, he felt a distinct call to the Society of Jesus. His family was decidedly opposed to this, and on 24 September, 1616, he was received into the novitiate at Mechlin. After two years passed in Mechlin he made his simple vows, and was sent to Antwerp to begin the study of philosophy. Remaining there only a few weeks, he set out for Rome, where he was to continue the same study. After the journeying three hundred leagues on foot, carrying a wallet on his back, he arrived at the Roman College, he studied for two years and passed on to the third year class in philosophy in the year 1621. One day early in August of that same year he was selected by the prefect of studies to take part in a philosophical disputation at the Greek College, at that time under the charge of the Dominicans. He opened the discussion with great perspicuity and erudition, but, on returning to his own college, he was seized with a violent fever of which he died, on 13 August, at the age of twenty-two years and five months......."