 |
| Altar Servers Holy Innocents Catholic Church |
I was an altar server in the Anglican Church
from a very young age. I started when I
was about 8, long before I was confirmed, and I continued until the day that I completed
high school.
I would, like many other young men at my
parish did, have continued being an altar server in the parish after I
matriculated, if I had not left for another parish and another role in the Anglican
Church. It was quite normal back then
for adult men to be altar servers.
They did of course take on the more senior
altar server roles, like MC or Thurifer, but an altar server was definitely not
seen as a role that was reserved for only the young men or boys who were still at
school.
I don’t know what happens in the Anglican
Church today because I converted to Catholicism about 26 years ago.
In the Catholic Church I do however today get
the distinct impression that the altar server role is very definitely seen as
the domain of only schoolboys. Why is
this I wonder? Or maybe it is just my experience in the few Catholic parishes that I have visited? Maybe I need to widen my experience of parishes?
Anyway, I have already digressed completely
from the reason for me writing this post.
As an altar server one of the first lessons
that I had to learn, because back then one went to training for a few weeks
before one even got to think about serving at the altar, was when one had to
bow and when one had to genuflect. We
were taught that there were effectively two ways of bowing: a simple bow and a
profound bow.
A simple bow - just tilting the head forward
- was and is still used whenever one is carrying anything as an altar server,
such as the processional cross or the processional candles. One does not bow deeply or genuflect when carrying these.
However my first lesson about
when to use the simple bow had no bearing whatsoever on these situations. Not at all!
I was only taught about these other uses for the simple bow after I had
been first taught about the primary use of the simple bow.
I was taught the simple bow so that I would know, as a little 8-year-old boy, exactly
what I had to do whenever I read, said or heard the name of Jesus at anytime during Mass,
Benediction, Vespers or anywhere else for that matter.
This simple bow, we were carefully taught, was
not only for use when we were actually performing our role as an altar server. We were taught that, out of a mark of
profound respect and reverence, in all situations where we read, said or heard
the name of Jesus, we should use the simple bow.
This habit remains with me to this day. Whether it is at Mass or just reading at home
on my own, I find myself inclining my head slightly out of reverence for the
name of Jesus.
Having just come through Holy Week, where we
meditated attentively on what our Lord endured for us on Good Friday and what
he achieved for us through His resurrection, this may be a good time to again
begin, if we ever lost it, the practice of a simple bow of our heads whenever
we read, say or hear the name of Jesus.
The General Instruction of the Roman Missal
still contains these words as far as I am aware: “A bow of the head is made when the three Divine Persons are named
together and at the names of Jesus, of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of the
Saint in whose honour Mass is being celebrated.”[1]
There is of course no reason that we should use
the simple bow only during Mass in accordance with the General Instruction of
the Roman Missal. Sacred Scripture does
after all contain these well known words: “Therefore
God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every
name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on
earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.”[2]
No comments:
Post a Comment