At Home in the House of God: A Meditation for the Altar Guild

The clergy of St. Matthew's live in debt to the altar guild. Each week, the altar guild quietly, carefully, efficiently prepares the sanctuary for worship. Afterwards, they restore it to order. Indeed, every parishioner is in debt to the altar guild because much of the calm and graceful flow of our worship is the result of their painstaking preparations beforehand. Chalices are polished and placed, linens are cleaned and ironed, books are marked, hosts counted out, windows are cleaned. The beauty of our historic sanctuary is the result of this dedicated and mostly hidden ministry.

My conversion to Christianity was decades ago, when I was a freshman at a large university. It came partly in reaction to the throw-away, consumeristic, and cynical world in which I had grown up, in which very little had meaning. I had a sense, in spite of this context, that the created world was deeply sacred, that people were almost unbearably sacred, that all created things were already sacred. If only things could be held, I felt, with the right sort of reverence, their sacredness could shine out.

In the end, I found this sacredness held and honored in the cathedral-like silence of a campus church, a holiness and goodness that seem to gather itself around the vulnerable body of Jesus on the cross, offered in love. It's not surprising that the part of the liturgy I loved the most was what is called the ablutions, when the priest lovingly cleanses the chalice and paten following communion. No where else in life were common things (basically a cup, a plate, a towel) treated with such love, such reverence, thus revealed as the sacred things that they are.

The altar guild has a ministry here at St. Matthew's that draws them close to God, and is soaked in this sacredness. They often work in solitude in the holy silence of our small church — with the crimson and gold light from the windows lancing the floors. They cleanse and care for the sacred vessels that hold the offering of Jesus' body and blood. They mark and preserve the books that contain God's Word for us. Like the women who came to Jesus' tomb early on the first day of the week out of love for him, hoping to preserve his body with linen and spices, the altar guild comes to the church at unusual hours to take care of the body of Jesus now, for us.  They do all this with a selflessness and attentiveness that is the essence of prayer, and worship, and, actually, of love.

We are all blessed by them; may they and their labor be blessed by God.

The Rev. Robert Fruehwirth, Rector, St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church | Aug 2023