After two weeks of diligent training, our son Michael is now proud to call himself an altar server for the Lord. Honestly, I'm not sure who's more proud--him or his mother. Truly, aside from the sacraments of his Baptism and 1st Holy Communion, I don't think I've been more proud of him and hope-filled for his future. He took altar serving training with such seriousness and maturity, and now he is so eager for Mass (especially when it's his turn to be a server). Knowing my son loves the Mass means that he loves Jesus Who is truly present at Mass in the Eucharist, and that is the greatest hope and consolation for a mother whose goal is for her children to love Jesus and be with Him in Heaven someday.
Whenever one of my sons becomes an altar server, part of me wonders if serving will lead to a vocation to the priesthood. It used to be a church tradition that those who wanted to be trained as altar servers were truly training to be future priests because they felt that they had a sacred calling. Altar serving was kind of like the first step of discerning whether or not God had planted the seed of the priestly vocation in their hearts. It was a very serious undertaking...especially when Mass was in Latin and the servers had to memorize all the Latin responses to say on behalf of the congregation which didn't know Latin. Today, now that the Mass is in the English vernacular, the role of the altar server is less prominent, but still very important and grace-filled. It makes me sad that some churches don't take altar serving seriously. So many churches have female servers (which doesn't make sense to me if the original role of the server was to discern a calling to the priesthood), or they have servers that are simply irreverent (chewing gum, gazing around, chatting with one another, wearing flip-flops, etc), which leads to irreverence or casualness towards the Eucharist. In contrast, a reverent altar server can really call the congregation's attention to the holiness and AWE-someness of what is taking place during the Mass: the miracle of God uniting Himself with us through the real body and blood of His Son! We are so blessed that our church takes the role of altar serving very seriously, with much training and reverence for the Eucharist. I am so very blessed to be the mother of boys who get to serve the Lord and His Church in this special way, and I will continue to pray that if one or more of them are called to the priesthood that they would have the ears to hear His voice.
"To serve at the altar...is
next to the priesthood the highest privilege which a human can enjoy. He
represents the faithful and takes a most intimate part in the rich treasures of
the church's liturgy and ceremonial. Those sacred ceremonies should be carried
out with devotion, dignity and attention to detail." (Archbishop of Westminster, Bernard Cardinal Griffen)
Well done, Michael! May you always be such a faithful servant of the Lord!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment