Liturgical ministry volunteers told: ‘We are here to be holy’
Palo Archdiocesan formator Fr. Raymund Sotto urges Mass servers to pursue vocational holiness. EILEEN BALLESTEROS
TACLOBAN – A priest formator in the Archdiocese of Palo reminded volunteers of various liturgical ministries in a parish here that they are serving in the church not for superificial motives but “to be holy.”
“We are not here for show or for self-affirmation or make others know the strength of the number of volunteers of the parish,” said Fr. Raymund Sotto, now a seminary formator in the diocese.
“We are here in the church because, foremost, we want to be holy,”said the priest, eliciting an “amen” from members of the various liturgical ministries of Sto. Niño Parish in this city.
‘Total submission’
Over a hundred volunteers gathered at the newly-constructed Training Center of the City government in Kanhuraw Hill for the annual Advent recollection, a requisite for the commissioning of new members and re-commissioning of incumbent members.
Sotto said church volunteers should likewise make a “total submission” of their lives to God.
“It should not be separate lives, having a different personality outside the celebration of the Holy Mass,” he stressed.
“If that will be our attitude, the [Holy] Mass will be a ‘Maskara Festival’,” Sotto said.
Stressing that the highest form of love is service, Sotto likewise called on Mass servers to serve God “in union with one another.”
He urged all church volunteers to be a “source of unity in your group.”
Finding one’s vocation
“Our passion, our gifts, talents, and personality are for the greater glory of God,” he said.
The priest underscored that “communion, commission, consecration bring us to unity and service.”
Acknowledging that serving in the Holy Mass and other liturgical services is a vocation, Sotto also called on the volunteers to “encourage and inspire one another towards their vocation.”
“Follow your passion, your gifts, your talents, your personality and the voice of God to the place [you] where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. There is where you will find vocational holiness,” he explained.
Prior to Sotto’s talk, SNP parish priest Fr. Wilson Chu talked about the proper spiritual disposition of a liturgical minister or church volunteer. CBCPNews
