St. Tarcisius

Who they were

Tarcisius is known from a better source than most legends have. A fourth century inscription by Pope Damasus in the catacombs of Callixtus records that Tarcisius, carrying the sacraments of Christ, was set on by a mob demanding he expose them, and chose to be beaten to death rather than hand the holy things over to be profaned.

The developed tradition makes him a boy acolyte carrying the Eucharist to imprisoned Christians during the Valerian persecution, and that is the reading the Church's devotion has kept and the reason every generation of altar servers learns his name. Both layers are worth holding: the epigram is stone, the boy is tradition, and the witness is the same either way. What he was carrying mattered more to him than his own life. His relics rest at San Silvestro in Capite, and with St. John Berchmans he shares the servers' formal patronage.

Why people turn to St. Tarcisius

Altar servers and the people who train them. First communicants and their parents, with St. Peter Julian Eymard. And with St. Dominic Savio, the small shelf of boys the Church canonized for taking something seriously.

How to ask their intercession

At server training and at first Communion preparation, for his one grace, which is reverence that would rather bear a cost than treat the holy casually.