This Easter in my Roman Catholic Parish, I participated in the 6:30PM Mass as Lector, Usher and Eucharistic Minister. I lit candles before Mass, gave both readings from the Bible and responsorial Psalm, collected the offertory and took it to the bank vault, then joined the priest in distributing communion. The priest and I worked together, the only two people on the Altar.
This year, as I’m actively serving my Church at Mass, I’ve noticed just how much that participation allows and where there is a clear line of “no more.” And I wonder why the only hindrance to doing more at Mass is something my Church tells me is nothing but dust: my female body.
Always drawn to responsibility and, admittedly, to being in charge, I started my involvement in the Mass relatively earlier than most women my age or older. Cross-bearing thurifer was my introduction to involvement on the Altar. Sometime around 1990, my Roman Catholicism and my eagerness to participate first merged. The result was my service as cross-bearing thurifer, and a growing participation at Mass that has inspired and frustrated me, and does so still today.
That first role on the Altar was born of pressures and influences in the Church that sought new roles for women during Mass, new seats at the table in an almost literal sense. Not quite ready for the Altar boys to welcome the Altar girls, at a loss for other options, Ste. Genevieve du Bois in Warson Woods, Missouri, my home parish, enlisted the young female congregants in a new operation: cross-bearing thurifering.
The role proved terrifying at first. I learned that a thurifer is someone who holds a thurible during the Gospel. A thurible, I also learned, holds burning incense. Incense that was extremely hot and often overloaded because they had entrusted me, a ten-year-old, to pack and ignite that incense behind the Altar just prior to the Gospel.
The main issue was my fear of fire. I wasn’t particularly vocal in my protest, the compliant little lady that I was. So, instead, I often tearfully thrust the Bic lighter towards the incense as I listened to the first reading. Whenever the incense finally ignited, I always whispered “THANK GOD.”
The other duty is the adjective of the title: cross bearing. Carrying a tall metal or wood cross up the Altar at the start of the processional and recessional. I considered the possible symbolism of the only role acceptable for a young girl at that time being leading everyone around.
Cross-bearing thurifering (?) was not in high demand. Most Masses don’t include incense. I aged out right around the time the Church decided being a girl was not really grounds for exclusion from compulsory Altar service, and thus the Altar boys saw Altar girls join their ranks, and collectively they became Altar servers. I figured I’d missed that boat, at the old age of fifteen.
When I moved back to St. Louis from Washington, DC in 2018, I joined the parish known as the Old Cathedral in downtown St. Louis, a lovely Church with a fairly small congregation heavy on tourists, due to its adjacency to the Arch.
I saw a note in the bulletin regarding volunteering at Mass, and I arrived for an evening appointment at the rectory prepared to present myself as a responsible volunteer Lector, single and therefore with free time available, armed with two English degrees and experience teaching, a ready public speaker.
My competitive nature need not have shown up: the parish needed me.
Arriving for my first Mass as Lector at the Old Cathedral, I learned that childhood me would have vengeance on being denied the role of Server: I was now an Altar boy. Altar girl. Server.
In addition, I became a Eucharistic Minister; the Monsignor expressed relief when I told him I was very interested in doing so, because he had so few parishioner volunteers.
And thus, my Mass participation neared its peak.
As an adult, being on the Altar was no less mesmerizing than it had been in childhood. This was the central ring of a celebration that occurred every day of my life, whether I showed up or not, in millions of locations around the world, each dedicated to a person or custom of this massive network of spiritual seeking. It was awe-inspiring to be that close to the center of the action in just one of these places.
I returned to Washington, DC in late 2022. There is a small Parish near my new home, offering a relatively late Sunday evening Mass. No music, mainly a smattering of adults in attendance, a wide variety of demographics, drawn to the conveniently later time or appreciating its quiet, efficient nature.
I quickly joined the rotation of 6:30PM Mass Lectors and Ushers. Or, as I learned at my first assigned Mass a few weeks later, Lector/Ushers, and in my case also Eucharistic Minister, distributing communion when the priest gave me the nod to assist. This new hybrid role would add another skillset to my quiver: collecting the ‘offering’ from the congregation, bringing it to the sacristy, appropriately transferring it to the Church coffers.
Walking home after the Easter Mass wherein I felt blessed to read, to usher, and to distribute communion, I reflected on all of this responsibility. I like responsibility.
And it occurred to me that now I have maxed out. There are only a few roles on the Altar remaining that I have not fulfilled, that of the priest and that of the deacon.
This frustrates me because I want to participate more. I would love to consider becoming a deacon, a role in which a person assists the priest and participates in Mass even more, offering the Gospel and blessings. But I have never considered it as a path. My entire life, this has not even been a discussion - female deacons were never discussed; female priests were dismissed from possibility.
But the Roman Catholic Church has continuously changed during my lifetime so far, which is how I can do what I can now during Mass. I’m as close as I can be to leading the celebration of Mass, but I cannot do that because my body is female.
Why is my human body the reason I cannot celebrate Mass?
Catholicism is the faith of my ancestors, my immediate family, and my childhood. It is one of the very few constants in my life. I have been to Mass in Vatican City, Italy, Norway, Ireland, Japan, Hawaii, Puerto Rico etc. There’s consistency even when I cannot communicate.
But even with consistency, the Church is also always changing. Baffling to me are people who think the Church should never change, which seems based on a wholly inaccurate belief that the Church has never changed before. Googling “Vatican II” can disprove that.
Why, then, is there still yet a way in which I cannot serve my Church, based solely upon the composition of this body that my faith has long told me is immaterial, is fleeting, will be dust in the not so distant future?
I was raised by Catholics and taught by nuns, but this on-Altar work presents a different vantage point of the situation than I have ever had before. And I truly believe it is time the Church change more, as it has before and can again, in response to modern times and in response to a real need for more priests and deacons, a role from which roughly half of Catholics are cut off.
I’ll still be here to Lector/Usher/Server/Eucharistic Minister my way through Mass, supporting this Church as I’m allowed, some unavailable to me because of this body. And praying that maybe someday it won’t be so.
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