Feast day: November 26

St. John Berchmans

Religious, Student · 1599–1621

Patron of Altar servers, students

A cheerful Flemish Jesuit student, the son of a shoemaker, who sought holiness not in great deeds but in doing the smallest daily duties perfectly, and died at twenty-two.

John Berchmans was a young Jesuit, born in 1599 at Diest, in what is now Belgium, the son of a shoemaker. From early childhood he was marked by an intense and cheerful piety — as a small boy he loved to serve Mass, rising early to assist at two or three each morning — and a deep desire to give himself to God, which family poverty and his father's needs at first delayed.

After working for a time in the household of a priest to continue his studies, he entered the newly opened Jesuit college and then, in 1616, the Society of Jesus itself. He was later sent to Rome to complete his studies for the priesthood.

His holiness was of a particular and instructive kind: he did nothing extraordinary, founded nothing, wrote nothing famous, and died before ordination. His sanctity lay entirely in doing the ordinary things of religious life — his studies, his prayers, the rules of his order, his duties to others — with perfect fidelity, great care, and unfailing cheerfulness. His motto was to pay the greatest attention to the smallest things.

He fell ill and died in Rome in 1621, only twenty-two years old. His evident holiness was recognized at once, and he was canonized in 1888. The boy who loved to serve at the altar became the patron of altar servers and, with his Jesuit brothers Aloysius and Stanislaus, of Christian youth and students.

His motto was to make much of little things; the patron of altar servers, he is said to have died holding his rosary, crucifix, and rule book — the things he most loved.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/08450a.htm