Altar Serving is Meaningful, Not Menial

At the end of Sacred Triduum 2019, my altar server son received a Thank You card from the parish. Inside the envelope was also a gift card. The puzzled boy handed it over to me. I lost sleep over it. Is not such an esteemed opportunity to serve at the altar its own reward?

Here in the US, I had heard of families having a church wedding or funeral setting apart some money for the altar server. A trusty friend confessed that her son considered the monetary gesture the only incentive to be an altar server. In my mind, I explained away this custom as the goodwill of American Catholics.

What are the problems of this cultural gesture, so intimately connected with a ministry serving the Eucharistic Lord, especially if coming from the parish itself? Are there reasonable justifications and sustainable alternatives?

Roots and Reflections

Two thousand years ago, when a little boy’s mother packed five barley loaves and two salted fish so they could go to listen to the Rabbi Jesus, they perhaps intended only to provide for their own needs (John 6:1-15).

However, the little boy opening up his little lunch bag made way for Andrew to report at least a “meager possibility” to the Lord as against Philip’s “impossibility” thinking. The Lord supernaturally multiplied the little boy’s offering, setting the stage for the Bread of Life discourse and later the institution of the Holy Eucharist.

I conjecture something similar to have happened to Rufus and his brother Alexander, passersby along with their father Simon of Cyrene, when they witnessed him choicelessly stoop to co-carry Jesus’ cross.

They were no longer mere faces in a crowd of onlookers when their father Simon straightened up. What they witnessed gave them a spiritual stature, fortifying them to lay down their lives for the faith in their adulthood. Because of them, the relationship of their father Simon with Jesus is remembered throughout Christian history in the Passion readings.

I imagine the Holy Mass as a Transfiguration experience to an altar boy—a foretaste of future perfect glory. Before the spectacular occurrence of the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-8), when Jesus went up the high mountain with Peter, James and John, the three perhaps had the spiritual maturity of altar servers. Witnessing Jesus conversing with Moses and Elijah, they exclaim: “It is good that we are here.” They hear the voice from the overshadowing bright cloud saying, “This is my beloved Son…listen to Him.” Their reaction of fear, the subsequent reassurance of Jesus, and their ensuing elation are all ringside experiences that bring them to an intimate realization of Christ’s Divinity. For mission or for martyrdom, the Lord invited them into configurement with Him, making them privy to the messianic model.

I wince imagining the loaves-and-fishes lad, or Rufus and Alexander, or Peter, James, and John being remunerated for the watershed moments they were chosen to witness.

The Encounter is the Reward

I turned to a Catholic discussion group to understand whether it is usual in the United States for parishes to reward altar servers with gift cards and what would be alternatives to monetary appreciation.

There were over a hundred responses. None of the respondents had experienced their parishes handing out gift cards or cash, but almost everyone attested to families at weddings and funerals appreciating altar servers in such a manner. In fact, financial rewards topped an included poll for ways to recognize altar servers. The saving grace was a sole respondent who said that the “opportunity to serve at the altar is its own reward.”

Several were concerned that I may never use the gift card and urged me not to waste it or at least pass it on to someone who would use it.

I inquired with the concerned parish associate about the gift card my son received—was it from the parish funds? Was it someone’s Easter gift to the Triduum altar servers? The response was, “Yes, it is from the parish. I am so appreciative of the hard work by our altar servers, I wanted to reward them. Please go ahead and use it.”

Altar Service Tied to the Priestly Vocation

There is a line that gets repeated in my home every time my son helps with getting me a glass container from a higher kitchen cabinet. “Watch out. You may end up becoming a bishop!” It is based on Venerable Fulton Sheen’s boyhood narrative from his autobiography Treasure in Clay.

Here is the story: While serving Mass as an eight-year-old altar boy at Saint Mary’s Cathedral in Peoria, Illinois, Fulton dropped the wine cruet on the floor. He was afraid what the celebrant, the great Bishop John L. Spaulding, would say after Mass. The good bishop, however, struck a conversation with Fulton about his future, prophesying to him, “Someday, you will be just as I am.”

Indeed, year after year, CARA’s annual report on priestly ordinands in the US has shown the high correlation between being an altar boy and being called to the priesthood. The fact is a veritable no-brainer: 73% of the 2020 ordinands were once altar boys.

A parishioner once intercepted me in the narthex of my church with a “Hi” to appreciate that my son serves at the altar. I had not met her before and thanked her with a smile. “But why does he have to be up there all the time?” she added. Not recognizing her sarcasm, I replied, “Because he loves to.” She then said her daughter too “loves to serve but she does not have the need to be up there all the time.”

The purpose of my essay is not to decry female altar service. Often, they do their jobs most excellently, but I believe that in the Catholic scheme of things, it may be counter-intuitive to have girls at the altar. Both men and women who appreciate Sacred Liturgy would vouch for it. Although permitted by the Church, it is not obligatory for a parish to have female altar servers.

The biggest motivation for my teenager to consider the priesthood is the possibility of raising the Blessed Sacrament in the monstrance. At my parish, the opening up of weekday Masses to altar servers along with Friday Adoration led to his inevitable falling in love with the Eucharistic Lord before Whom he would swing the thurible during weekly Benediction. The pastor trained the only altar server to show up.

Anthony Esolen’s quote used in Dan Millette’s telling article on the less-noticed assault on the altar boy by the feminization of the altar is eloquent:

What attracts woman to the person of Jesus is not exactly the same as what attracts the boy. The woman wants from Jesus forgiveness and consolation. The boy wants — even if he does not know it—severity—severity and commandments. The woman wants Jesus of infinite patience and mercy. The boy wants Jesus eager with a baptism that will set the world on fire. The woman wants peace. The boy wants war. They are both quite right to want what they want, and I do not say that the woman will never want Jesus the fighter or that the boy will never want consolation. […] The boy does not want a domestic Jesus. He wants the Lord of the universe. He does not want to hold hands at the altar with a priest and an altar-girl. He wants to swing the thurible as if it were a sword (Defending Boyhood, 82-83).

Foundational Fracture

The title of altar server has been used in the Church for over a thousand years (Synod of Mainz, 9^th Century) although its responsibilities, as part of minor orders, have been performed from the earliest times of Church. At all times, young souls were oriented towards the Sacraments and therefore the priesthood.

The liturgical zeitgeist of modern trends such as “Google it”, DIY or “anyone-can-cook” is content with lay ministers following “how-to” handouts about liturgical things, neglectful of the catechetical foundations and the rich traditions of their roles. Often the parish relates with them transactionally, enabled by a “ministry scheduler”.

Parishes, on the other hand, can gear ministries serving the Mass to help sanctify the lay volunteer through their service to the Church.

Rewards and tangible appreciation are short-term methods of retaining human resources even in the secular workplace. Matthew 6:33 could be a basic guiding principle:

Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides.

In the Christian context, this quixotic-sounding fundamental helps view the littlest of parishioners as a whole person, a soul and a saint. Practices that treat them as replaceable resources or reducing them into time, talent and treasure are likely to yield few positive long-term results.

How Parishes Can Foster Altar Servers

Although Tradition got diluted along the way, there are great lessons to be learned from the past and sustainable ideas worth revisiting. The Knights of Columbus do well to organize parish appreciation events for altar servers. I also found one that organizes an annual retreat.

The online Catholic group I first checked with about the gift card shared ideas their parishes implement. However, none of them were well thought out.

All Saints parish in Guilford, Indiana has gotten right the timeless Catholic genius of Altar Service being livewired to the Catholic Priesthood and other important aspects of holistic individual and parish Sacramental health.

“Altar Boyz”, their program for altar servers not only supports and promotes service at the altar but is designed to seamlessly operate as a Father-and-Son ministry. In doing so, it associates altar service with the priesthood while keeping Catholic masculinity in balance with the Catholic family.

The altar servers’ program does not preclude altar girls. Beginning in the third grade, any number of boys and girls are welcomed to be trained as altar servers. There is no scheduling whatsoever. Whoever arrives conveniently ahead of Mass gets to serve. Each of the five weekend Masses (pre-COVID) are served by six to twenty altar servers.

From eighth grade onwards, boys continue in altar service while the girls stop serving. Girls have their own group to grow into. Altar Boyz have their monthly small groups, Holy Hour, Confession, and Vianney Nights (an initiative of the archdiocese’s Sons of Vianney vocation program). The culture fostered in the parish makes way for parishioners to instinctively understand this natural gender distinction.

Clothes Maketh a Man

The younger altar servers wear albs. The older boys wear cassock and surplice. The Altar Boyz are actually cool. The parish commissions Altar Boyz merchandise with a mission to build identity as Catholic men through “Reverence—Honor—Responsibility.”

Asked if fundraisers pay for these, pastor Father Jonathan Meyer responds, “Nope, it all comes from the Sunday collection. People applaud and support the program and are happy to pay for it.”

Father Meyer is clear that the apparel line for Altar Boyz “is not in exchange” for their altar service. Rather, it is a means “to create belonging, unity and identity” and “help them evagelize at public school.”

Restore the Connection

All Saints altar servers sometimes receive from families a ten-dollar honorarium for serving at weddings and funerals, which they are seen placing into the Candle Box because they “love the Lord.”

Father Meyer says one of the things he has learned in his years of priesthood is to “encourage fraternity among young men in order to develop them into leaders.” This is Catholic tradition that cries to be rediscovered by countless parishes in the country. At the All Saints parish, it is cultivated “organically”.

Pope Paul VI noted that “Mass serves as the first seminary” to the altar boy. This connection needs to be restored.