Jean-Joseph Allemand

Upon reaching the age of ten, he was admitted as a day student to the Oratory college then established in Marseille; it was there that he prepared to make his first communion holily. It was then that the resolution he had long since taken to give himself entirely to God and His service was strengthened within him. Although his intellectual means were nothing extraordinary, it was not without honors that he pursued his studies. Prayer was his only recreation; he practiced it in his room, at the foot of a cross and a statue of the most holy Virgin. His shyness, his appearance not favored by nature, his habits of prayer and solitude, and his devotions had earned him the nickname of 'the abbot' from his parents, who had sometimes even pushed their contempt and harshness to the point of brutality. Here is an example.

One day, during the prize-giving at the college, the child returned home laden with a glorious burden of books and crowns. Many people who knew of his deprivations and moral tortures at his parents' home, and who would have liked to bring some relief to them, said to themselves that at least on that day Jean-Joseph could only be well received by his family. A neighbor entered his parents' home, and while she was congratulating the child on his happy successes, the mother had only harsh words for him: 'Put that laurel crown in the kitchen,' she said to him in a dry tone, 'and go up to your room at once.' The child obeyed and went to throw himself at the foot of his crucifix; but the indignant neighbor burst into reproaches against the mother's unjust behavior: 'Moreover,' she added, 'know well, Madame, that this child whom you despise and mistreat in this way will be the support and consolation of your old age.' This prediction was verified.

During the course of his studies at the Oratory college, the young schoolboy had known and frequented the Youth Work opened to children in the seminary of the priests of the Good Shepherd. The attraction that drew séminaire des prêtres du Bon-Pasteur Seminary and community of priests in Marseille. him there became stronger and more irresistible day by day; it was there that he felt called. Finally, after finishing his rhetoric, he came there to study philosophy. He was then eighteen years old. The revolutionary storm interrupte d his studies, and desp tempête révolutionnaire Period during which the saint's relics were hidden and lost. ite the gravity of the circumstances, he did not fear making known to his father, who was dominated by the ideas of the time, the plan he had formed to embrace the ecclesiastical state. To tell of all the mistreatment to which his confession exposed him would be almost impossible. With superhuman courage he endured everything, left his father's house, and found himself without shelter. Divine Providence had its designs: the one it protected was learning through the needs of his own youth to sympathize with those of others of the same age. In this extremity, three venerable priests belonging to the house of the Good Shepherd served successively as protectors and guides to this voluntary orphan and became his teachers and masters.

Abbé Morin, L'abbé Morin Theology professor of Jean-Joseph Allemand. one of Jean-Joseph Allemand's protectors, became his theology professor and inspired in him more and more that spirit of fierce and inexhaustible charity with which the founder of the Youth Work always showed himself to be animated. We do not know what blessed hand guided the pious student in his first steps into the sanctuary. Once enlisted in the holy militia, the young levite had to take all sorts of precautions to hide his clerical attire from the eyes of men. During these difficult times, he practiced a hidden apostolate, all the more meritorious as it was more arduous and dangerous. While the slightest sign of faith and religion was a capital crime, Abbé Allemand did not fear to evangelize the pious faithful who had not bowed the knee before Baal. In these assemblies, which so well recalled the Church of the Catacombs, he distributed the bread of the divine word, revived the faith of the faithful, encouraged perseverance, and even led them toward perfection.

After the fall of Robespierre, Abbé Allemand was able to gather his little flock every Sunday, but always in secret. In the morning, they recited prayers and read the ordinary of the Mass, which the misfortunes of the time did not allow them to hear; in the evening, they recited Vespers, which were followed by an instruction. Several times, he nearly was discovered and delivered into the hands of the revolutionary tribunal; but God watched over him and preserved him for the work to which he was destined. He escaped, so to speak, miraculously from the pursuits of the famous Gobet, so well known in Marseille. Obliged to lead a wandering life, lodging now in one house and now in another, he nevertheless did not abandon the little flock that had been entrusted to him.

These labors, full of dangers and truly apostolic, were for Abbé Allemand a worthy preparation for the grace of the priesthood. Through trials of all kinds, he had learned the science of sacrifice, and although the storm was still rumbling, he did not hesitate to contract the holy engagements of the subdiaconate and soon after those of the priesthood at the hands of Mgr de Brunières, Bishop of Grasse. The virtues he proposed to practice above all were humility, gentleness, and self-denial; he wanted the priesthood to be viewed only as a state of the cross and arduous labors. "You others," he said one day to his young audience, in a sermon on the choice of a state of life, "you others who have the mania of wanting to become ecclesiastics, without understanding anything about this holy state, do you really know what it takes to be a good priest? You must be ready to receive blows from a stick and to die of hunger on a street corner."

On May 16, 1799, a priest, poor, without human support, devoid of almost all the gifts and qualities that men admire, having for him only a profound humility and an unlimited trust in God, laid the foundations of a work that he was to direct for thirty-seven years and which still reaps the fruit of his virtues today. He gathered four young men in a modest room and offered them to God as the first chosen ones and the elders of this holy family that he was going to form for the Lord. These obscure beginnings were worthy of the modest place that received them; a simple altar, a few candles, and the roses of the season were the only ornaments of this celebration. Abbé Allemand received these four children every day who, after the exercises of piety, chatted, laughed, and played with all the ardor and joy of innocent youth. He said with Saint Philip Neri that "one must support and endure everything from children and young people, as long as they do not offend the good God." The religious exercise consisted of a few vocal prayers followed by a short reading to which the man of God added some familiar reflections. This is how the Youth Work was founded in Marseille.

It was then that Abbé Allemand established in his house the uniform and regular order o Œuvre de la Jeunesse Institution founded by Jean-Joseph Allemand for the education of young people. f exercises, as well as the devotions and practices special to certain Saints or to certain times of the year, particularly the six Sundays in honor of Saint Aloysius Gonzaga and the annual retreat in the month of August. With indefatigable zeal, he sought by all me ans to make his first c saint Louis de Gonzague Jesuit saint, a model for the youth of the Work. hildren into young apostles for the good of his Work and the growth of his little flock. God blessed his efforts and rewarded the virtue of his faithful servant.

However, the labors, hardships, and privations of all kinds had impaired the health of the devoted Father of the youth. A malignant fever threw him into a continuous delirium. He spoke incoherently about the young men, recounted their lapses, and mentioned their faults. Suddenly, in a fit, he sat up and exclaimed: "Mr. ***, when he came to see me to confess..." Scarcely had he uttered these words when, as if coming to his senses, he stopped short; and falling back onto his bed like a man beaten and exhausted with fatigue, he apostrophized himself in these terms: "Wretch! what were you about to do? You only know this young man through confession! You were about to reveal the secret of the confessional! What a crime! Ah! hell would open beneath your feet!" Then he remained calm; one would have said he was conscious of what had just happened. All those present, seized with astonishment, admired with what care Providence watches so that the seal of the confessional is not violated even by a priest in delirium.

As soon as he was recovered, he showed even more devotion and zeal. He gathered his most fervent disciples and said to them: "I am entirely for the salvation of young people and forever; it is a settled matter. Do you also wish to devote yourselves to their salvation? I want in the Union only men devoted to the sanctification of youth and disposed to suffer everything and to sacrifice themselves to procure it... To me, men of devotion and sacrifice; away with the lukewarm and the cowardly..." It was a general surge, and the Work reaped the happiest fruits from it.

The Society had only meager resources; but Providence came to its aid. An émigré priest, possessor of a rich patrimony, bought for the Youth Work a comfortable and spacious house which he inhabited himself and where he had a chapel built. Abbé Allemand showed himself grateful toward this generous benefactor; but his just gratitude did not go so far as to sacrifice a single point of his inflexible rule. This sentiment of exclusive government and entire independence was constant in the soul of the founder. One felt in his community a firm arm that maintained everything. "The council is me," he said with energy. "I alone command here... When I no longer command, I will put the keys under the door and I will leave..." In his council, indeed, they deliberated wisely, but it was to submit with even greater wisdom.

A solemn moment arrived for the Work, that in which several of its children were preparing for Confirmation; Mgr Champion de Cicé, Archbishop of Aix, came to administer to them the sacrament that makes perfect Christians. Critic s had not been lacki Mgr Champion de Cicé Archbishop of Aix who supported the Work. ng for either the founder or his Work; but the eminent prelate did him justice and showered him with thanks and praise. "If I had had to appoint a director of the Youth Work," he often said subsequently, "I would not have appointed Abbé Allemand, and yet he is the only man who should have been appointed." To these praises he added another mark of affection: he gave the servant of God the credentials of a vicar and wished him to receive the small salary of that office without fulfilling its functions. It was the first pecuniary resource that came to Abbé Allemand; he accepted it with gratitude; but he wished to share it with the poor.

Soon an imperial decree pronounced the suppression of every religious house, and although in the Work they were occupied exclusively with playing and praying, as the Father of Youth naively said, an order was given to close the house immediately. Abbé Allemand was then appointed curate at the parish of Saint-Laurent, in Marseille, at the request of Abbé Bonnafoux, his venerable parish priest. He had a great repugnance for parish ministry, because of the frequent contact one has with persons of the opposite sex, which was for him a kind of martyrdom, as he testified on several occasions, before and after his elevation to the priesthood.

However, the servant of God, during all the time he directed the Work, showed himself accessible and affable towards all the mothers whom the care of their children brought to him, welcoming them with a smiling face, yet never raising his eyes to them and turning to the side opposite to where they were. The finest eulogy of his virtues and his holiness came from the mouths and hearts of the women on the day of his funeral. "Let us go see," they said to each other, "let us go see the holy priest who did not want to see women." He fulfilled his duties as curate with exemplary piety and zeal; the hour fixed for the office always found him standing at the foot of the altar.

Three members of the Work had opened their own homes to their brothers, without worrying about the suspicions of the imperial government: this state lasted six years. This time was not lost for anyone; the disciples of the child Jesus learned to trust in the goodness of God who visibly served as their Father, and Abbé Allemand, practicing what he was to teach others, prepared for his word the authority of a more extensive knowledge and an experience so necessary to his Work. It was in 1816 that he publicly resumed its direction.

The house of the Work opened on workdays at five o'clock in the evening. Children leaving school and young men leaving their workshops would go there as soon as they were free and would begin with a few minutes of adoration in the chapel. After which, everyone would engage in amusements and games according to their inclination and age. "In the Work, a young man who plays well usually perseveres," said Abbé Allemand. He added: "I do not trust a young man who does not play and who stays for whole hours in the chapel. When you play, do not be afraid that the devil will come and pull at your coat." For those who wanted to read, there was a varied library: they could thus spend a few hours in a useful way, either for the body or for the mind. The end of the games is announced by the sound of a bell, then comes the religious exercise, which begins with the recitation of the rosary and ends with an address by Father Allemand: this exercise lasts half an hour. Everyone then returns to their parents' homes in small groups of five or six children from the same neighborhood, led by a leader.

The Work has three practices that it has always faithfully observed: the first, to pray for the established temporal power, according to the recommendation of the Apostles themselves; the second, to announce the feasts of the Saints and the fast days of the week; the third, to warn the children on solemn feasts to go and attend high mass, each in their respective parish or at the cathedral. One of the most praiseworthy practices of the Work, and which it inspires from the earliest age in all its children, is to know how to steal a few minutes from their amusements, and up to a quarter of an hour, depending on the age or inclination of each, to go into the chapel to converse heart to heart with the good Master, present in His tabernacle, and to offer Him the final homage of their day.

Independently of these ordinary means of sanctification, offered each day to the young people in the Work that occupies us, the zeal of the founder also provided them with the extraordinary means of retreats. He established three of them: one, monthly, is set for the first Sunday of each month, and the other two precede the solemn feasts of Pentecost and the Assumption. Special devotions, capable of producing the most salutary fruits, are also established in the Work. In the first rank is the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and that to the most holy and immaculate Heart of Mary. After these two special devotions, the Work then makes a very express profession of respect and love towards Saint Joseph, the holy Guardian Angels, and Saint Aloysius Gonzaga.

Abbé Allemand applied himself all his life to inspiring and forming in young people the taste and habit of three fundamental virtues which are like the hallmark of his spirit and that of his Work. "The spirit of the Youth Work," he said, "is a spirit of penance, humility, and sacrifice." From a young age, the opportunity was never lacking for the future founder to practice what he never ceased to recommend to his students; through perfect fidelity to grace, he tasted these truths and made them so much his own and natural, that he transmitted them in the same integrity to his spiritual posterity, happy to see himself live again in children worthy of him.

He often repeated and meditated upon the words of Holy Scripture or the Imitation that give us low sentiments of ourselves. "Pride has never produced anything but demons," he would say; "consequently, I must always have the idea of my nothingness present." To the sufferings and humiliations that the establishment and maintenance of his Work cost him, God added for His servant physical sufferings and continual temptations, especially against the holy virtue of purity, temptations that did not give him a moment of respite. God and men gave the humble priest enough to satisfy the thirst for contempt and opprobrium that devoured him.

We have said above how the Father of Youth understood authority regarding the government of his house; as always, he showed the example, and what he taught others he had practiced himself. His great spirit of faith made him see Jesus Christ in the person of all his ecclesiastical superiors, and especially the Pope and his bishop. "In coming to the Work of Youth," he said, "one must leave one's will at the door." And his children understood it so well that they had for him a blind obedience, even to following the very presumed intention of this beloved Father. Rarely did he have to repress acts contrary to this virtue; his firm will, his heart full of kindness and tenderness facilitated his task; but for no reason would he have yielded before an independent or argumentative young man.

Trust in God is the daughter of humility and obedience. Abbé Allemand did not even have a coin when he founded his Work, and everyone was against him; good people and the clergy thought that his natural and external defects would be an invincible obstacle to the success of the enterprise. And yet he never despaired of the fortune of his house, even in his greatest trials. His ordinary motto was: "I, I trust in God."

Without a mortified and penitent life, it is impossible to preserve the purity of the soul; thus he recommended to his children to make penance a continuous practice, to preserve in them the life of innocence or to recover it if they had had the misfortune of losing it. God, who had destined him to be the Father and guide of youth, had not asked of him those great bodily austerities that would have frightened if not discouraged the young people by putting them in the impossibility of imitating him; but he was a model of penance and interior mortification, and of patience in infirmities. That in which he excelled, what he practiced to a heroic degree, is the guarding and mortification of the senses. Following the example of the holy man Job, he had made a pact with his eyes, never to look at a person of the opposite sex. All those who lived for a long time in his intimacy have assured that he never granted his senses, and especially his sight, the slightest satisfaction, however innocent it might be. He had constituted himself the prisoner of his young people; for every day of the year he was at their disposal. To those who urged him to take a few moments of relaxation, he replied: "My rest is in work." It is thus that he practiced and made his young people practice the spirit of penance and inspired in them the love of work. Carrying everywhere upon himself the mortification of Jesus, he maintained and nourished in their hearts the spirit of composition and tears, sequestered them interiorly from the world and taught them to purify themselves and to lead an angelic life.

To the mortification of the spirit and that of the body he added the sacrifice of himself; it is a collective virtue that contains everything that God requires of man in His service. Poor in his clothing, in his meager furniture, almost without pecuniary resources, he still found the means to give large alms, for he loved the poor tenderly, greeted them with respect, assisted them according to his means, sometimes at the expense of the necessary, avoiding drawing upon himself a part of the gratitude which, he said, is due to God alone. — He left entirely in his own hand a writing on the Conduct that an ecclesiastic who dedicates himself to the sanctification of young people must hold. It is a striking testimony of his zeal, of his devotion for childhood and of the conduct he himself held in the direction of his Work. He believed he was only tracing a rule for his successors, he depicted himself and made, without his knowledge, his most beautiful eulogy. Here is the summary: 1st The priest who destines himself to the sanctification of young people must be a man of prayer, counting more on his prayers than on his words; 2nd he must have patience to any test: patience to endure the character of young people; patience for the pains attached to his type of occupation; 3rd he must show much friendship to all young people, without having with them the slightest familiarity that is even slightly misplaced; 4th a Father of Youth must distinguish himself by the spirit of disinterestedness: he must, so to speak, have nothing of his own; 5th he must be very simple in his clothing; 6th he must be a man of retreat and privation; 7th the surveillance of young people is what is most important in the Work: one must therefore be continually on sentry; 8th above all things, one must avoid any particular friendship; 9th one must profit from the confidence that young people show you, to make them advance in virtue; 10th one will suffer everything from a young man, when his defects will not turn to the detriment of the Work; but when one notices that a young man is spoiled, and that at the first warnings he will not change, then one will get rid of him immediately: patience, in such a case, becomes a vice, because it contributes to the loss of several; 11th when a young man lets glimpse dispositions for the ecclesiastical state, one will support them in everything; 12th when one finds young people whom God will call in a particular way to make great progress in the path of virtue, one will engage them to come see us, outside the hours of common exercises, in order to support the designs of God upon them; 13th one must not forget, in general, and especially in the private conversations that we have with young people, to recommend to them the practice of zeal.

The exactitude, the vigilance, the zeal that he had shown as vicar of Saint-Laurent only increased with the years. To save a young man, nothing cost him; he spared neither pains, nor prayer, nor any sacrifice whatsoever. "To make young people avoid mortal sin," was the unique and salutary thought of his Work. He had set himself up as a vigilant guardian of his little flock, so that evil could not enter it. To make his labors bear more fruit and increase his action on souls, he created for his Work a hearth of ardent and always new zeal in the person of some devoted young people; he inculcated in them more particularly his spirit, identified them so to speak with himself and sent them as his angels to carry everywhere the ardent flame of his charity. "Zeal must drink your blood," he repeated to them in his private talks. Thus all the ardor with which he was devoured for the house of God passed into the soul of his pious disciples.

It is especially by direction and confession that he exercised his salutary influence on youth; he spoke little and prayed much, always subordinating his action to the action of grace and his direction to the direction of the Holy Spirit. A prudent and enlightened judge, favored by heaven with a gift of discernment almost infallible, he rarely made mistakes, especially regarding the choice of a state of life so essential for salvation. His reputation for holiness made him sought after by all that was most remarkable in the city and in the clergy. Sad people never left him without having received true consolation: this is what he attached much importance to; for he feared sadness and its fatal attacks, especially for young people. As for scrupulosity, he could not suffer it in young people; thus he pursued it to the extreme in his speeches and in his direction. He regarded this sickness of the soul as very fatal, and he said that it ordinarily ended either in the loss of reason, or in the loss of virtue, and even of faith.

The reputation of the humble priest had spread far and wide, constantly attracting numerous visitors eager to know him, and who were all the better received the less they paid him compliments. However, the July Revolution (1830) had forced the man of God to leave his dear house; he soon returned to it and found it, so to speak, purified: those who frequented it without having its spirit had dispersed; the tares were separated from the wheat. God had drawn good from evil, and the Work prospered all the more for it. Fr. Allemand, who had taken the initiative for its establishment alone and later had a collaborator, found himself alone again at the end of his career, and despite his already advanced age, despite his fatigue and poor health, he was heard several times expressing satisfaction with this situation; he did not want to owe to another hand the final cultivation he would give to his Work. Moreover, his spirit, full of vigor, still retained some remnants of that fire which had shone so brightly at a less advanced stage of his life. He took a singular pleasure in admiring how creatures, even those that seem the vilest to us, contribute to the praise of God and to the concert of homage that all of nature renders to Him as its sovereign Lord. Abbé Allemand then lost his mother, whom he had taken in when she was elderly and infirm; his attachment to his spiritual family only became closer. He was to follow closely the one who had given him birth. On Good Friday (March 29, 1836), he felt ill while reading the Passion, and it was necessary to fetch a priest from the parish to continue the office; however, he managed, albeit with great difficulty, to finish the office. This was the last act of his public life: he went to bed never to rise again. His physical sufferings, requiring a very painful treatment, caused him even greater moral distress. He would then complain of his pains, but soon he would return to his habitual state of orison and prayer. Hiccups having set in, he said to the doctor: "Hiccups are a sad omen, this is my end." On Quasimodo Sunday, he received the Holy Viaticum and Extreme Unction, asking God for forgiveness for the faults he had committed through each of his senses. Then he made a public profession of his faith and his obedience to the Church. He condemned above all the errors of Lamennais. "I killed myself," he said, "so that these errors would not penetrate this house, although Lamennais Author whose errors were condemned by the German on his deathbed. I knew that the young people were exposed to catching them outside... Now, I ask forgiveness for all the bad examples and all the scandals I have given... I do not have the strength to say more." The young men could not hold back their tears. He said a few more words to them, then blessed them. After reciting the Te Deum aloud, he fell into a great state of exhaustion. Finally, on April 10, 1836, he rendered his soul to God.

Tuesday, April 12, was the day of the funeral, one could say of the triumph that the servant of God had earned. The coadjutor of the Bishop of Marseille presided over the ceremony. He addressed the grieving family of the pious deceased with a truly paternal allocution in which these words were noted: "The memory of him whom we mourn cannot perish; you are, gentlemen, the living and immortal pages of such a beautiful life." The body was placed provisionally in a vault, and transferred, shortly after, to the monument that the members of the Work erected to their venerated Founder. Three months later, the heart, enclosed in a lead box, was placed in the urn that dominates the monument erected in his honor in the chapel of the Youth Work.

We have extracted this biography from the Life of the Servant of God Jean-Joseph Allemand, by W. Brunelle, priest, director of the Work.