MORE ON GIRLS AS ALTAR SERVERS

When I wrote my last blog I received a couple of comments.  One was on a point which I had painstakingly covered, the question of women as deacons.  The other was an objection I have heard often that when all the altar servers become girls then boys do not apply.   There is some truth in this but the point I made about boy altar servers going on to be priests still applies.     A priest has a responsibility to foster vocations in his parish and one of the steps he can take is to encourage young men to serve at Mass.   It is a responsibility he must take seriously.     I think many priests have lost the vision of this part of their vocation and altar servers are just like Eucharisitic Ministers, Readers, or those passing the plate around.   They are just doing a job or helping the Community.   We seem to have lost the spiritual dimension to these tasks.  We are primarily serving God and whatever we do in Church must be seen as part of our getting closer to God in our Spiritual lives.

This leaves the priest in one of his most important roles, the role of spiritual director.    Helping people in their tasks to see them as wonderful gifts from God and using their tasks to draw closer God.

Maybe it was out of sympathy I wrote my post.    Everyone now has 'something to do' except girls.  But on the other hand girls aren the most vulnerable in our society and many girls may have little to look forward to in our society which has destroyed marriage, made sex a recreation, and divorce just a normal thing.   So many will have heartache and the trials of a single mother ahead of them.    Most of them are crying out for a spiritual mother who will love them unconditionally, and when they fall in life be there to pick them up and help them carry on.   And when they are drawn to the transient pleasures which they know can never fulfil them they will want that mother beside them who is not judging but giving them the strength to resist.  They desperately need their mother Mary and there is no better way than to identify with her on the altar and atto at the foot of the Cross.

Were I the Pope I would command that all altar servers, boys and girls, become members of something called the Society of Our Lady and St John.   The girls would then have Mary as their model and the boys  the beloved disciple St john who also served Jesus from the foot of the Cross.    And not only Jesus but Mary also.  

But let us pray for our altar servers that through their generous service they may receive every grace they need to live a happy and a holy life.

  

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