I sometimes serve as a Eucharistic minister at St. Katharine Drexel. That means I help distribute the Holy Eucharist at Mass.
What a change from when I was a kid at St. Anthony’s in Oconto Falls. I was an altar boy for about nine years, starting in third grade. I studied those Latin prayers until I could say them in my sleep and finally convinced Sister David John that I was ready.
Altar servers have been a part of church history since the earliest times, with those male parishioners who were deemed worthy assisting the priest at the altar while he said the Holy Mass. And it was only males, because women had no place near the altar.
All that has changed. After Vatican II when the language of the Mass was changed from Latin to English (or whatever language) and the altar was turned around so the priest faced the congregation, many more people—even women!—were allowed to participate in the Eucharist.
But we still have altar servers (can’t talk about altar boys anymore), and they still have some important duties to perform. But if they think altar serving today is a chore, let me tell you about how things were in the not-too-distant past, the 1940s and ’50s.
Once we had made our First Communion, we were eligible to start training to be altar boys. We had to memorize all the Latin responses to the Latin prayers the priest was offering. The quicker you learned the prayers, the sooner you could actually start to “work.”
The altar boy hopefuls had to practice the many complex duties the altar boy had to perform: how to stand with hands folded; how to lift the priest’s chasuble at the consecration; how to change the missal from the Epistle (first reading) side to the Gospel side of the altar; how to prepare the incense and the proper way to swing the thuriber (incense burner) so that the sweet smoke came out in clouds at benediction or during solemn Masses; how to properly hold the cruets of water and wine and to pour the water over the fingers of the priest; and—always—how to bow properly after performing their tasks.
Once we were accepted into the ranks, new altar boys were given a cassock (long black garment like a priest wears, but with no collar) and a starched, crisp, white surplice to wear over it. Each guy had a place to hang them and was expected to take them home frequently to be laundered and starched by his parents. God help you if Father Francart saw you in a sloppy, dirty cassock or surplice!
Before Mass the altar boys had to prepare the altar: light the six high candles at the main altar, remove the altar cover, place the cruets and chalice, and then help the priest get dressed in all his religious garb. Then one of us would hand the priest his biretta, the little black hat that he wore to the altar.
I started this column by talking about communion and how that has changed. When I was a kid, there was a communion rail, a decorative railing separating the altar from the rest of the church. Attached to the inside of the railing was a communion cloth, which the altar boys would use to cover the railing at communion time. Then the communicants would place their hands under the cloth when they knelt to receive the host on their tongues.
When the priest went down to distribute communion, one of the altar boys would go along and hold a paten under the chins of the communicants, ostensibly to catch any host that might be dropped. It was always kind of cool to nudge the Adam’s apple of one of your buddies as he knelt there solemnly to receive!
Then, of course, there were the duties of adoration. There always had to be two altar boys to kneel before the Blessed Sacrament from Holy Thursday after Mass until midnight, and then all day Good Friday and Holy Saturday. No excuses! Father assigned you an hour, and you were expected to be there, to kneel, pray (we called it “adorating”) and “keep Jesus company” during those holy days.
For every wedding or funeral, at least two altar boys were there, even if they had to miss school! Imagine that! Being an altar boy was like being in the Army—each duty had to be performed smoothly, on time, gracefully and with full reverence to God.
But serving was fun, and not just work. We enjoyed being altar boys. It was a sign of pride to endure the training, learn the strange words in Latin and to serve God.
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