Saint Alice of Schaerbeek

St. Alice was born about 1220 AD at Schaerbeek, a village outside Brussels on the Vilvoorde road. She lived under her parents' care until she had completed her seventh year. Then she entered the Cistercian monastery of La Cambre, at the edge of the Forest of Soignes.

She was sent there to be taught and brought up. Set to her letters, she soon outstripped the other children and nuns older than herself. In her ninth year a candle went out at Compline, and she found it burning again in her hand.

With the years St. Alice took the monastic habit and grew in the observance. She walked always with her head bowed, holding herself guilty before God. At work she was strong, brisk and never idle.

Her thirteenth-century biographer calls her the consoler of them all and the refreshment of each one. She bore the weaknesses of others patiently and did not repay injuries. Keeping a night vigil before an altar, she saw a golden cross let down to her on a cord.

The Roman Martyrology records that leprosy struck St. Alice at twenty-two. Her thirteenth-century biographer wrote that it came not for the guilt of any crime, but by way of a visitation.

Because the disease was contagious, she was separated from the community. On the first night alone she gave way under the grief. Afterwards she said she would refuse her former health if the choice were hers.

For nearly four years St. Alice lodged elsewhere while a house was built for her alone. On the day she entered it the Lord appeared, standing in the room with his arms spread wide. He promised to stay with her as long as she lived in the body.

At the altar she alone was moved away from the chalice, which lepers were forbidden to approach. She complained inconsolably of being deprived of so great a gift. A voice from heaven told her that whoever tastes his Body is refreshed by his Blood also.

On June 11, 1249 AD St. Alice had herself anointed with holy oil. At midnight the Lord showed her that she would live one year more. He told her that year would bring heavier weakness than all her life before.

The disease took her right eye, which she offered for William of Holland, King of the Romans. In the week before Pentecost the left eye went, and she was wholly blind. That loss she assigned to the King of France, Saint Louis, then on crusade.

On January 23, 1250 AD St. Alice stopped halfway home from the church. She foretold there that she would never walk back to the church alive. Within days an infirmity in her right foot ended her going out.

From March 13, 1250 AD she was in torment until the last days of her life. She told her sister Ida she bore it for the dead and for sinners. No limb was left sound but her tongue, with which she sang God's praises.

On the vigil of St Barnabas St. Alice had herself anointed a second time. She told the nun sitting with her that she would pass out of this world about dawn. After Compline she said farewell to her friends and commended her soul to God.

At sunrise on June 11, 1250 AD, before Prime, she gave up her spirit. A small girl asleep in a village nearby dreamed at that hour of her soul carried to heaven. The child's mother came to the monastery and found her already buried.

In 1698 AD Godfrey Henschen printed her thirteenth-century Life in the Acta Sanctorum. He found scarcely any memory of her surviving among the nuns of La Cambre. Henschen wished that her body might be brought to light and translated with due honour.

By decree of July 1, 1702 AD Pope Clement XI gave the Feuillant monks her feast. Pope Pius X authorised it for every diocese of Belgium in 1907 AD. The Cistercian Order and the diocese of Mechelen keep her feast on June 15.