By Michel Chambon
While the Church is never more united, holy, catholic, and apostolic than when it embraces what God offers her, there are both individual and collective efforts, spiritual and structural available to help us respond more effectively to our vocation. Before we delve deeper into prayer in an upcoming mini-series, we must first explore a mini-series on structural and communal responses: the distribution of tasks and responsibilities within the Church.
In the Catholic world, this organized and lasting distribution of roles is known as ministries. Ministries are essential and legitimized services, conferred for life to individuals who have been carefully trained and selected. These ministries are considered fundamental to the proper functioning of the Church, they cover her three core functions: sanctifying, teaching, and leading. Yet in practice, they are often dangerously neglected.
In the Latin Catholic Church, there are six formal and permanent ministries: three are ordained ministries, which initiate men into a new order and a new state of life. These are the ministries of bishops, priests, and deacons. In addition to these three ordained ministries, there are three instituted ministries, which welcome both men and women into a specific life of service within the ecclesial community. These are the ministries of acolytes, lectors, and catechists.
Outside of these six formally recognized, carefully selected, and lifelong ministries that cover the three core functions of the Church, there exists a wide range of other ways to serve the Church and our neighbors. For example, there are solemn vows within religious orders to embody specific charisms through communal life. Thousands of religious communities exist under the authority of a bishop or Rome.
There are also countless ways to serve professionally or as a volunteer to advance the Kingdom and follow Christ’s example. But let us be clear: there is a real difference in both degree and legitimacy between the six official ministries of the Church and all other forms of service.
The Church gives the six ministries as a whole; they are a lifelong mission, independent of one’s energy levels or financial compensation. Ministries are more than spontaneous, friendly help; they are not a contract for services. Being a priest, for instance, is not simply offering a helping hand temporarily or being hired for a task. In the Church, ministries are something profound and foundational.
And yet, judging by the way we treat the six of them, one might be shocked or even outraged. Of course, everyone is familiar with bishops, priests, and deacons, and most have a general understanding of their roles. But how many Catholics have even heard of the three other instituted ministries? And that is a real problem.
In the Catholic world, there is an unhealthy tendency to focus solely on the priesthood, a tendency that the First and Second Vatican Councils sought to correct. Sixty years after Vatican II, the ways we pray for vocations (meaning, typically, priestly vocations) suggest that we still have a long way to go in living out what we teach.
In this first commentary, I would like to focus on one of the instituted ministries that I have personally received: that of acolyte. The acolyte is a person formally responsible for overseeing the way in which the Church worships God. Acolytes are called to help the ecclesial community pray fully and deeply. They stand on the side of sanctification. That role extends far beyond organizing devotions or serving at Mass.
Instituted for life, acolytes are there to sustain the conditions that help us worship in spirit and truth the one living God. Often, people imagine that an acolyte is just a kind of glorified sacristan, someone who maintains the altar linens, replaces the candles, and sets up for Mass. However, fostering the conditions for a genuine life of worship is far more than that. For me, it begins with a life of personal prayer and contemplation not just the mechanical repetition of texts and rituals, but the active cultivation of prayer methods and traditions that help us remain awake and attentive to the One who is always present, the Living God.
In my own life, being an acolyte also means serving the entire community by helping us grow in our ways of praying, so that we remain attentive and worship as we ought. And that goes far beyond organizing an adoration night! I try to live this out by offering formation on spirituality and the Liturgy of the Hours. But it also involves finding ways to challenge my community about its prayer habits. There are countless ways to cultivate our collective prayer life.
Unfortunately, this essential ministry is often reserved solely for seminarians preparing for the priesthood, as though there is no need for lay people to be devoted to this fundamental service of sanctification. The absence of acolytes in our ecclesial communities explains part of the collective unease that plagues us.
Despite everything we say and proclaim, despite all the goodwill, we reject true acolytes and trample on the importance of a collective spiritual and liturgical life. Out of fear of questioning the idealization of the priest’s role and the Mass, we refuse to institute properly trained acolytes and to structurally reform our approach to spiritual life and worship. Collectively, we sin against the Spirit.
Unconsciously, we are quite content with just the Mass and our habits. Why bother giving someone a lifelong mission to stimulate, enrich, serve, and continually awaken us in the act of worshiping the Living God? In practice, the Church does not institute acolytes. They are exceedingly rare and almost always in preparation for the priesthood.
When an acolyte does show up, Catholic communities have no idea what to do with him. “We already have volunteers and paid staff we can dismiss anytime,” leaders think so why bother with a ministry instituted by the whole Church?
Since I became an acolyte in May 2008, I have never encountered a Catholic community that takes this ministry seriously or welcomes it. And I have never met an instituted acolyte who was explicitly active in the life of the Church. Even though I’ve lived in several places across the United States, Europe, and Asia, the response has always been the same: denial and awkward silence. The all-powerful priest and a few well-meaning volunteers are considered enough.
Apart from the multipurpose priest, who is seen as the solution to all our problems, we paradoxically refuse to institute ministers with the necessary legitimacy and formation to nourish a more authentic ecclesial life of prayer and worship.
This systemic absence reveals how little we collectively value the importance of communal worship and spiritual life. It also underscores how, in matters of ministry and worship, Vatican II has yet to be fully implemented. – UCA News
This is the first part of a three-part series on Catholic ministers.
*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.
