New Altar Servers Inducted in St. Lawrence Church, Moodubelle

By Dr. Eugene DSouza
Bellevision Media Network

Udupi/M’Belle, 02 Jul 2023: New Altar Servers were inducted as members of the Altar Servers Sodality in St. Lawrence Church, Moodubelle during the morning Mass on Sunday, 2 July 2023. Bishop Salvadore Lobo, a native of Moodubelle who is Bishop Emeritus of Baruipur Diocese and former Apostolic Administrator of Asansole in West Bengal administered the oath to the Altar Servers during the Mass offered by him along with Fr. Pradeep Cardoza, Assistant parish Priest and Spiritual Director of the Altar Servers Sodality. Pritish D’Sa, Vice President of the Parish Pastoral Council assisted the induction of the Altar Servers by distributing the candles and Handbooks to the Altar Servers.

 

 

The Patron Saint of the Altar Servers is Saint John Berchmans (March 13, 1599 – August 13, 1621) who was a Jesuit seminarian and is a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. He is the patron saint of altar servers. Often depicted with hands clasped, holding his crucifix, his book of rules, but he surpassed them all by his intense love for the rules of his order. The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus lead those who observe them exactly to the highest degree of sanctity. The attainment of that ideal was what John aspired to himself. "If I do not become a saint when I am young", he used to say "I shall never become one". That is why he displayed such wisdom in conforming his will to that of his superiors and to the rules. He would have preferred death to the violation of the least of the rules of his order. "My penance", he would say, "is to live the common life... I will pay the greatest attention to the least inspiration of God."

 

 

John Berchmans was born in the city of Diestnature. He was kind, gentle, and affectionate towards his parents and a favorite with his playmates during his childhood. He was brave and open, attractive in manner, and with a bright, joyful disposition. Still, when John was seven years of age, M. Emmerick, his parish priest, already remarked that the Lord would work wonders in the soul of the child. What distinguished John Berchmans the most from his companions was his piety. When he was barely seven years old, he already had the habit of rising early and serve two or three Masses with the greatest fervor. On Fridays, at nightfall; he would go out barefoot and make the Way of the Cross in the town. Such fervent piety won him the grace of a religious vocation.

 

Towards the end of his rhetoric course, John felt a distinct call to the Society of Jesus. His family was decidedly opposed to this, but on 24 September 1616, John Berchmans was received into the novitiate at Mechelen. After two years in Mechelen he made his first vows, and was sent to Antwerp to begin the study of philosophy.John opened the discussion with great clarity and profoundness, but on returning to his own college he was seized with a violent fever, he died on August 13, 1621 at the age of twenty-two years and five months in Rome, Italy .When he died, a large crowd gathered for several days to see him before his burial in Sant’Ignazio, and to invoke his intercession.

 

The same year, Phillip, Duke of Aarschot, had a petition presented to Pope Gregory XV to gather information with a view to the beatification of John Berchmans. John Berchmans was declared Blessed in 1865, and was canonized in 1888.