A Sacristan's Sanctifying Work

This year I have been privileged to serve as a sacristan at the seminary. As a sacristan, we are entrusted with preparing the chapel for each of our daily liturgies. This is a job that has a variety of ‘behind the scenes’ aspects to it. There are many things that take place in the sacristy that, to the person in the pew, can go entirely unnoticed. The job of the sacristan includes much more than what first meets the eye.

One of the immediate ‘behind the scenes’ details that I noticed was the fact that you have to arrive at the chapel 15-20 minutes before each liturgy to set up and stay a few minutes after each liturgy to clean up. In the morning, this means waking up 20 minutes earlier than normal. This sounds very minuscule, but once homework and papers start to pile up, those extra 15 or 20 minutes of sleep that are given up can be a little more sacrificial than on a normal day. In the evening, after adoration and before dinner, those extra couple of minutes mean that I might have to give up playing that quick game of ping-pong before dinner. These little sacrifices, when offered to the Lord with love, make our work fruitful.

As I said earlier, as a sacristan, you are able to see a lot of the ‘behind the scenes’ of what goes into the celebration of Mass and adoration. You start to learn all the proper names for everything that is used in the liturgies. You learn why the colors of the linens on the altar change over certain days. One of my personal favorite things I have learned in this respect is how we can use different things in the liturgy to celebrate a feast or solemnity of higher importance by using different vessels, candles, vestments, and altar linens. Using more beautiful vestments or vessels, helps us to think liturgically and to enter into the celebration of each liturgy in a deeper way than before. This has certainly been the case for me!

Along with the small sacrifices that we make based purely on the time it takes to perform this duty, there are many other ways in which being a sacristan influences my spiritual life. Our job as Sacristans can be likened to those women who prepared the body of Christ to be buried. When preparing the sacred vessels and linens for the sacrifice of the mass, we are ensuring that the same body and blood of Christ crucified on Calvary is held with highest reverence. When we put the hosts in the ciborium and the celebrant host on the paten, we are working with the very bread that is going to become the body, blood, soul, and divinity of our Lord. How privileged we are! Then, after the Mass is said, we get to clean up the vessels and other things used in the Mass. When taking care of the used purificators, it brings me to Easter Morning and the empty tomb. These purificators are just like the linens that covered our Lord in the tomb. They served the noble purpose of absorbing the Precious Blood of our Lord so that not a single drop of His Blood would fall to the ground to be trampled underfoot.

All of these aspects of being a sacristan have been of great importance to me personally. Being a sacristan has piqued my interest in the Liturgy much more, especially the Liturgy of the Eucharist. It has certainly made me more knowledgeable of how intentional the church is with regard to each decision that She makes concerning the Liturgy. Most importantly, it has helped me enter into the reality of what is really happening on the altar during Mass: the re-presentation of the Crucified Christ on Calvary. By becoming more aware of this reality, I have fallen in love all the more with the One who died for my sins. The same person who has chosen me to be at this seminary now to discern whether He is calling me to be His priest. Needless to say, being a sacristan has helped me become aware of the great humility and love required on the part of the man who has been given the gift of being called to the priesthood of Jesus Christ.

Mr. Richter is a College IV seminarian for the Diocese of Bismark.