Altar Boy

There are some churches that have dispensed with so much that is traditional. So many celebrations along the way that punctuate the year have been passed over. So much of the ritual and the liturgy that frames many traditional church services just don’t happen any longer in many churches.

On Thursday I went to a mass celebrating the Day of Ascension – that part at the end of the gospels and the beginning of the book of Acts where Jesus is taken up into heaven. I had been invited by a young friend of mine. He told me that his confirmation class would be there and he would be taking an active role in the service.

He has plans to become a priest, my young friend. The teenage girl in me cries out for him not to enter the priesthood.  He would make someone a fine husband one day. He's a lovely boy! His mind is not quite made up but nearly there.

My husband is wrestling with the idea of going to confession so that he can participate in Holy Communion. It has been a while, years, since his last confession. He fell out with the church in his teenage years, as many teenagers do. He began wearing a beret and talked of Marx and socialism which the church didn’t encourage.  Confession was more of a negotiation rather than a flat acknowledgment of sin, and penance and absolution were skillfully worded.

My friend and my husband both love the Roman Catholic Church. They are both comfortable with the ritual.  It doesn’t replace God, or become the focus of their worship.  All the elements that make up mass are like stepping stones drawing them nearer to God’s throne. Where some might see meaningless actions, they don’t.

I have to admit that there is a bit of me that’s jealous.  I grew up in a Catholic home and went to mass.  I went through all the rites of passage.  I didn’t love it though.  It was what we did, a kind of external thing without the warm beating heart. I learned only that God was remote and I was far away from Him and would never measure up.

A friend reminded me today that a lack of ritual and the empty walls of a modern, non-Roman Catholic Church, for all its charismatic leanings, can be unsatisfying too. It can be hard to engage the spirit when there is nothing that appeals to any of the senses.  It makes for a bland feasting menu when it comes to worship.  We see only the danger of turning the objects into what we worship and fail to grasp that they can lead us to the throne of God.

I loved what the priest said during the service as he talked to the confirmation class.  He commented on the evening light shining through the stained glass windows and the patches of colour on the walls. He waved his hand at statues and candles, at the altar and the vestments. He reminded us that we were not there to merely look at all that stuff but to be drawn onto a higher path. As we sing the songs and speak the litany something of God’s way of living should filter into our soul and spirit and be seen in how we walk through our daily lives serving one another.

Altar Boy

A cloud of sweet fragrance

Purifying, sanctifying

An echo of another cloud

an encounter with God on

a holy mountain

He loves the smell of incense

A steady rhythm, a slow chant

Sounds and words on his tongue

Repentance expressed

Forgiveness embraced

Promises claimed

He loves the sound of the liturgy

Busy windows

Stain walls as evening light floods in

Stories told in rainbow colours

Dust motes transfigured

Beams of soft haze

He loves the play of light

Dry on his tongue

Melting wafer that bears so much

Wet on his tongue

Crimson fullness of wine

Transforms soul and spirit

He loves the intimacy of communion

Skin thin and fragile

Ink black and paper white

Crowded words

Their words, his heart in harmony

Read and consumed

He loves the feel of the prayer book in his hands

A priest’s graceful wave

At all this ritual

This isn’t the end of the journey, he says

These things are only lights along a path that

Leads to the Saviour

And lets us lean on Him