Honoring Our Altar Servers and the Beauty of Tradition

by Fr. John Granato  |  01/18/2026  |  Words from Fr. John

My Dear Friends,

Today I want to focus on our altar servers. The young men and women and young boys and girls do a fantastic job helping the priest and the deacon at the altar. For centuries, the roles that these servers provide were performed by adult men, who wore the black cassock with a white surplice. The black cassock is a clerical garment. In the traditional Mass, clerics were divided into seven orders; porter, exorcist, lector, acolyte, subdeacon, deacon and priest. After the Second Vatican Council, Pope St. Paul VI suppressed the four minor orders and the subdiaconate and made the ministry of lector and acolyte as an instituted ministry.

But the cassock has always been understood to be a clerical garment, and when the young boys of a parish fulfilled the roles of lector and acolyte at Mass, they wore the black cassock and white surplice. The word cassock means house, and the color black, with the white tab collar, means that the priest is to be dead to the world and the white symbolizes the purity necessary for the priest in his vocation. The traditional cassock has 33 buttons, one for each year of our Lord's life. The white surplice is a garment used by the priest as he assists at Mass or the Divine Office or when he celebrates sacraments.

It is a physical reminder for priest and faithful of the connection between the sacraments and the life of heaven where the saints are clothed in white. Altar boys, in reflecting this symbolism of the garments of the priest, wore these same garments as they served at Mass. The garments of the altar boys as well as the deacon and priest are a physical reminder for all of us that the liturgy is an encounter with the holy and not simply a human gathering. They are outward signs for an interior reverence as well as highlighting the timeless beauty, reverence and dignity of Mass.

We have plenty of white albs, but many of them are worn and in poor condition. Many of my brother priests have replaced their albs with cassocks and surplices. It is my desire to replace these albs for the servers with cassocks and surplices. Since the black cassock is for males, I am replacing the albs for the girls with a white cassock, so that they also have a traditional garment. I am asking for donations for those who would like to purchase these garments for our wonderful servers in honor of a loved one. We will probably need about twenty-five total for both churches in a variety of sizes. The average cost will be about 130 dollars per cassock/surplice.

If you are interested, please either call the office or leave the money in an envelope in the weekly collection.

God bless!