If you were a priest and you could choose your servers at Mass, who would you choose?
Imagine if you were a priest and you could choose your servers at Mass.
Who would you choose? I choose a boy who plays shortstop on his baseball team.
Let me explain. It was June 26th, 1995, and we were celebrating a Solemn Mass in honor of Saint Josemaría, the founder of Opus Dei, in the beautiful Sacred Heart Church in Shadyside. It looks like a medieval cathedral, and at Communion, as I’m distributing Holy Communion, I’m holding the ciborium in my left hand, distributing the Sacred Host in my right hand, the server next to me. He’s about 7th grade, thin, agile, alert. He has the paten in his left hand, standing to my left and focused on everything I’m doing.
I’ll never forget it.
As I pulled out one of the sacred hosts to give to the communicant, another host dislodged and flew through the air, end over end. And I’m thinking, “Oh my goodness, this is going to be a disaster. The Holy Eucharist is going to fall on the floor. Maybe someone will step on it.”
Well, as the host is going through this youngster next to me, he kind of lunged and he caught it in mid-flight with a paten. It landed right there and he brought it back.
I took it off the paten and I said to him, “Nice catch.”
He said, “I play shortstop, Father.”
Those are great immediate reactions. Yes, when we’re serving at Mass, we want to be attentive, we want to be helpful. It’s a true story.
What’s the point here? We want to treat Jesus in the Holy Eucharist with maximum reverence, because that means we grow in humility. God is God. We’re not. We’re creatures. You can’t overdo it, and it’s a good thing for our soul. We really need a revival of faith and devotion to Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, in our country, in our church.
And that’s why we’re all going to show up for Jesus at the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis.
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