A Letter From Fr. Brian

Dearest Server & Family,

Warmest greetings of this holy Christmas season!

I would like to thank you for all your contributions you have made over these years in helping enhance the liturgical worship of our parish community. Your dedication to serving at the sanctuary has constantly made me of thank God for what Fr Gerard had initiated and has developed over the years through the dedication and contribution of the older servers.

As we move forward into a new year and in the midst the Year of Faith, I would like to take this opportunity to share with you the direction I hope to lead the society in the coming year. Just as you have all been committed to your faithful service in the sanctuary, I would like to now invite all of you to be committed to deepening the spiritual dimension of the Altar Servers Society. In order to do this, I would like to introduce several new aspects of spiritual formation.

I would like to shift the focus of the Altar Servers Society from being solely ministry oriented to being more community oriented. Through my own experience as an altar server in my younger days and now as a spiritual director of many ministries, I have come to believe strongly that merely being a functional ministry does not help many young servers to be good disciples of Jesus Christ which is the Church’s essential mission. 

Moving from a ministry-driven society to a faith based community, would help servers appreciate that their service at the altar is fundamentally a call from the Lord. Just as God continues to call everyone into His presence, God has called each server through their parents to not only serve Him but to know Him intimately.

It is my hope that when the each server is grounded in the fundamentals of Christian spiritual life, servers will begin to see the need to develop a deeper relationship with the Lord rather than merely fulfilling a duty that is required. The desire to serve the Lord faithfully and accompanying their brother servers in faith will thus flow from their growing intimacy with the Lord. 

Developing such a faith-based community will require servers to gather regularly to pray, serve and share. Thus, some little changes will have to be made in the months to come (these changes have already been mentioned to servers at announcements). These little changes include the following:

1. All servers will gather 30 minutes before every mass to recite the rosary
2. All servers in secondary education and above will gather on Fridays nights for breaking of the Word of God. (8.30pm to 10pm)

Besides these two changes, all servers must fulfil their basic duty of a weekday mass (two weekday masses when school terms end), a weekend mass and to attend servers' gatherings and meetings. Servers who have not been fulfilling their duties will be given a reminder letter.

To parents of servers, I hope you can help ensure that your son participates in these little changes and fulfils his duties. There may not be dramatic or visible fruits at the initial stages of these changes but I believe that in due time, through greater intimacy with God and walking with others, the servers will grow into young men following the heart of Jesus Christ. 

I thank you for reading and I pray that you will have a blessed Christmas ahead.

Yours in Christ,

Fr Brian D' Souza