A group of roughly 80 young men from Red Deer have formed a group devoted to altar serving and building a culture that promotes a love for Jesus in the sacrifice of the Mass.
“It was love for the liturgy that prompted me to start the group,” said Zachariah Bustamante, who co-founded the Fraternity of St. Lorenzo Ruiz in 2019, while he was in Grade 12, with his friends Calvin Culi and Jonas Marcelo.
“I wanted the Mass to be seen as something that people felt they could centre their life around,” Bustamante said. “If the Mass is not celebrated with the solemnity that it deserves then people might not feel the need to go. They might ask, ‘Why should I centre my life around this? I don’t see the beauty in it!’ So I wanted people to see the beauty of the Mass. That was really my whole entire vision.”
Bustamante was inspired to start the group to support the pastor of Sacred Heart parish, through beautiful liturgies and ensuring consistency and excellence in altar serving across all parish Masses.
The Fraternity of St. Lorenzo Ruiz is named for the patron saint of altar servers and the first Filipino to be canonised. The feast day for St. Lorenzo is celebrated on September 28.
The young men of the Fraternity train as altar servers and support one another through communal prayer and formation. When a new Fraternity member has completed training as an altar server, they are honoured with an investiture ceremony.
A white cord is given to those who have exemplified exceptional commitment to the ministry of altar serving and have passed an examination assessing their proficiency in serving the Mass and their knowledge of other elements of Catholic teaching.
“They enrich the liturgy, the liturgy is beautiful. They prepare everything for Mass. They know what to do. They pray the Rosary together,” said Father Jan Sobkowicz., who is pastor for Sacred Heart Catholic Church and an enthusiastic supporter of the Fraternity. Father Sobkowicz serves as the group’s unofficial spiritual director and leads retreats for their formation.
“They do their own training, but they are well-trained,” Father Sobkowicz added. “If I ever see something in their training that needs to change, I just ask them to do it a different way and they take care of that. I know they are doing a good job, because sometimes I come and listen, just for a moment, when they are training or praying together and they like that.”
The fraternity has three goals that direct its work. The first of these goals is to pursue the realization of beautiful liturgies in honor of the Eucharist, in their home parish of Sacred Heart in Red Deer, and across the Archdiocese.
“As much as we are able, [our goal is] to serve the Mass as beautifully and reverently as possible,” said Bustamante.
“We aim to coordinate ourselves in a way that pursues the beauty of liturgy because when the liturgy is beautiful and it is celebrated as it should be, it leads people to the Lord.”
On September 14, the Archdiocese of Edmonton launched its new pastoral priorities, the first of which is “Eucharistic Formation.” The Fraternity is particularly excited about supporting this priority, Bustamante said.
“The liturgy is always an opportunity of Eucharistic formation, and we are here to help the faithful to understand the reality of the Eucharist by serving Mass in the most perfect and beautiful way that we are capable of. This is the service which we believe Jesus deserves!”
The launch of the pastoral priorities, which emphasize formation in the Eucharist, evangelization, and service to marriage and families, was received with excitement by the Fraternity.
“We were overjoyed to hear about them! We are very excited and willing to do what we can to assist in this endeavour, especially within the demographic of Catholic youth.”
Bustamante explains that he sees altar serving as a way to draw not only the altar servers themselves to worship Christ, but also any and all people who are in the congregation.
“When the altar serving is beautiful, when it’s done properly, when it’s done in a way that’s not distracting, it really does help to draw people back to Christ,” Bustamante said.
“It helps to draw their mind to what is happening in the Mass and to lift up their hearts. Especially in our parish, there are a lot of people who comment on how the altar serving here has helped them to be more reverent.”
Bustamante says that the long-term goal of the group is to be able to deploy groups of altar servers throughout the Archdiocese to serve at any Masses where servers are needed.
“Wherever we’re needed to serve, we serve,” said Bustamante.
At present, the group is focused on serving Masses within Red Deer, but their capacity to serve across the Archdiocese has continued to grow. One of the Archdiocesan events that they support is the Skaro Pilgrimage.
“[The Fraternity] group showed up at the pilgrimage in 2021 and I had never heard of them, or seen them before,” said Fr. Carlos Nunez, pastor of Our Lady of Good Counsel Catholic Church and the lead pastor for the Skaro Pilgrimage.
“Ten or 12 young men dressed like altar servers approached me and they’re like ‘Hey, Father, can we serve? We’re ready!” I said, ‘Of course, the more the merrier!”
“Now they come every year. I really appreciate what they do. They’ve been a real blessing, especially when we don’t always have enough people available to serve. I don’t know of any priest who wouldn’t want them to come and serve; especially for larger celebrations like the pilgrimage, it’s nice to have so many servers.”
The second goal of the Fraternity, Bustamnte said, is to “bring the youth back to Christ.”
Most of the young men who are members of the Fraternity either previously attended or are attending the Catholic elementary or high schools in Red Deer. The Fraternity members range in ages 7-22.
Although they are not officially affiliated with the Catholic schools, the Fraternity has members at many Catholic schools across Red Deer including Fr. Henri Voisin Elementary, Ecole Camille J. Lerouge, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Patrick’s, St. Lorenzo Ruiz, Ecole Notre Dame and St. Joseph High School.
Each school community has an assigned student-leader, who corresponds with the religious coordinator of the school on behalf of the Fraternity, and vice-versa. He is also in charge of overseeing the recruitment of students from his school, assisting new recruits in the training process and gathering the members for daily prayer. Several other members attend public schools or are part of the homeschooling community.
At each school where the Fraternity is present, many of the members gather over lunch hour to pray to the Angelus together. Over time, this tradition of praying together over lunch has attracted many more young men to join the group through the witness of members at their local school.
Bustamante said: “In high school especially, there is so much depression, so many unhealthy coping mechanisms and we need to bring these youth back to where they can find the real answers to their questions and that is here at church, in the Holy Mass. Christ has the answers that they need.”
For Bustamante, his own reconversion to the Catholic Church has fueled his passion for serving the Mass and training other young men to serve the Mass with excellence.
“I was always close to the Faith as a child, but then I came [to Canada from the Philippines] and I grew away from my faith because my life was not centred around the Mass anymore.”
“But when I was in high school, I came into my faith again, when I discovered the truth about the Holy Eucharist, with such a strong sense. It shocked me, you know! I thought, ‘how come, if the Eucharist is truly God, truly Jesus, then why aren’t we expressing this with more reverence in the Mass?’ The truth of the Eucharist is expressed in the Mass of course, but I don’t think the kids are getting it. When I came back to the faith in high school, I was really discouraged about the situation regarding the youth, and the Catholic Church, and kids not coming to Mass anymore. And I wanted to do something about it. I didn’t want the church to die of old age, so to speak.”
“As a child, I loved the Mass, and the beauty of the Mass was evident in how I experienced the beautiful liturgies in the Philippines, and so I have wanted to give that to the kids here in Canada. So because that is what I know, I hope to bring children back to the Church through the beauty of the Mass.”
Father Sobkowicz. explains that along with the power of the Mass, the work of offering young men a sense of belonging to a group is a significant way that the Fraternity draws young men to the Church.
“The [young men] are drawn to like company. They want to belong to the group and they found this is a good group to be a part of,” said Father Sobkowicz.
Bustamante believes that altar serving has a unique way of engaging young men who otherwise may struggle with the Mass.
“A lot of it has to do with the fact that when young men come to church, they feel bored, and they feel like they’re not needed. They are very ‘hands-on.’ And so I think that altar serving can bring a lot of men back to the Church, because they feel more like they’re participating in the liturgy, they feel more attentive, because they know that they need to be paying attention to what they’re doing next.”
The final goal of the Fraternity, as articulated by Bustamante, is to “promote a culture of vocations.”
While altar serving has an obvious connection to the priesthood, Bustamante said the group hopes to nurture openness to all vocations. Bustamante is passionate that altar serving is not just a logistical part of the Mass, it serves to inspire a love of doing the will of God in those who do it.
“Altar serving isn’t merely utilitarian. It’s not just about helping the priest wash his hands or to get the chalice from a side table. A priest, a grown man, can do that himself. So “[one of the main points of altar serving]” is for vocation. Men have a distinct spirituality that can [lead to the priesthood] and altar serving is about nurturing an openness to the vocation of priesthood.”
However, serving at the altar is not only to nurture openness to the priesthood in young men.
“Some people have the misconception that ‘vocation’ for men is only about the priesthood, but it’s also about marriage. Our goal as a group is to nurture openness to whatever vocation someone is called to through the beauty of the liturgy,” said Bustamante.
Father Nunez reiterates the connection between altar serving and vocational openness.
“There are many things that contribute to young men being open to the priesthood, including serving at Mass. Receiving a personal invitation from a pastor or other people to consider a vocation is still the number one way to foster vocations. . . [as well as having] supporting families, who encourage their children to serve. So yes, for vocations in our diocese, [altar serving] is an actually necessary and crucial aspect of what is needed. . . especially for young men, to get them involved in the Church, and as a group, is helpful too, which is what the [St. Lorenzo] group is doing.”
The Fraternity of St. Lorenzo is not only impacting the young people of his parish, says Fr. Sobkowicz. It is impacting everyone.
“So many of my parishioners are very happy with them. They almost cry when they say that these boys really make a difference. It reminds people of years ago, when the Church was full of young people and it reminds them of how they used to serve at Mass too. When I asked parishioners last year to raise some money to support these young men, we raised so much money for them, so that shows that they really like them, and how it means that we have a church full of young people!”
At the beginning of 2023, the Fraternity numbered 24 altar servers. They are now at 79 members, as of September 2024.
“The plan to grow the Fraternity will always be the same too,” says Bustamante.
“That plan is to reach out to kids in the Catholic school system, inviting them to dive deeper into their faith by participating in the Liturgy. Since the group is led by volunteer youth and not the parish itself, the Fraternity is sustained largely by the commitment and passion of its members. In the end, this group is sustained by God’s grace and benevolence.”
Fr. Sobkowicz is proud of the initiative and devotion that the Fraternity exemplifies within this parish and the Archdiocese at large.
“This group is a good example. They are enthusiastic about the Church. They want to improve. They want to learn many things. They are respectful. They answer very well, when they are asked about the Faith. They pray every evening together; they pray the Rosary. They pray for Pope Francis. They pray for the intentions of the Church. We have to love people and draw people to Jesus through love, and that’s what they try to do. Young men are drawn by attraction to join this group and what they are doing is a good way, a great way to draw people to the Church.”
Jenny Connelly – Archdiocese of Edmonton
If you want to learn more about the Fraternity of St. Lorenzo or you know a young man who would like to join, send the Fraternity a message on Instagram.
To learn more about our Archdiocesan pastoral priorities, see here.
To subscribe to the Window, our Archdiocesan newsletter, see here.