You might remember a week or so ago when I posted that I had turned to Facebook to get some inspiration in the form of suggestions as to what to write about. One of the suggestions was “The Pelfrey family commitment to altar serving every mass ” and that got me to thinking about things.
Our family does quite a bit for our parish and community. I say this not to brag, but to assess where we are with regards to our commitments and values.
Of the three weekend masses our parish offers we attend the Saturday evening “vigil” mass. It works for us and our schedule, and I don’t feel the need to go into why at this point saving that for another post (maybe). We have been attending that mass for years, the regulars at that mass know us and our kids, and have come to expect the noises emanating from our pew (toddler screams, mostly).
At that mass Laura is a Eucharistic minister and I am a lector. We don’t always perform those duties every week, but are available as needed. Actually, I perform less recently as we have had an influx of readers and there are only two needed per mass as opposed to multiple Eucharistic ministers. Our older kids are altar servers, and they are on call almost every week, at least one of them.
“We are there anyway, we may as well serve.”
That’s our philosophy and we instill that into our kids. How? By telling them they are serving. By setting that expectation early and often. By going to mass every week. By telling them they will participate and give back. Xavier, currently in 2nd grade, knows when he is old enough he will be serving.
The struggle comes in when the following morning comes around and the early morning mass is short altar servers. We live a block away so it is easy for us to send one of the kids to go and serve, but getting them up is the problem. And they want to sleep in. There are plenty of complaints, but in the end the expectation of giving back to our community has been instilled.
Other things we do include being a Boy Scout and Cub Scout leader, which would be me, and teaching Sunday school (Laura). But that’s not all. I’m involved with Knights of Columbus as well, and Laura helps schedule altar servers.
There is probably something else I am forgetting.
Setting expectations, early, sticking to them, and leading by example. That’s the short answer. I’m sure there’s an even longer answer somewhere, if I wanted to bother.