The ‘First Time Ever’ Altar Boy

By Fr. Paul Richardson ssc

My father was a bus driver in Boston and always worked the earliest possible shift, so he always got up early. It was his job to drive the first of the daytime busses out of the bus company garage at 6:30 in the morning. (There were two nighttime busses that drove around our town in apposite directions all night.) My father got up at 5:30 in the morning and left the house for work at 6:00 o’clock. Between the opening and closing of doors and other related noises, I was always wide awake when he left the house. And since I didn’t have to be at school until 8:15, I became very religious. The morning Mass on weekdays in our parish was 6:30 a.m. and I started going to Mass every day. The church was only ten minutes away from our house.

At that early hour, there weren’t too many people at the Mass – the celebrant, of course and one or two altar boys; a few elderly and faithful ladies; me and the back up organist called Mrs. Maguire (she was a good organist but a real screecher of a singer); and Miss Brennan, whose brother was a retired priest of the Archdiocese and who looked after the vestments and the altar. Miss Brennan also trained the altar boys.

For years, Miss Brennan had tried to get me to become an altar boy, but until the beginning of the war in 1939, we lived too far away from the Church for me to serve and Mass still get to school on time. But then, one morning in 1945, Miss Brennan got her wish. There was a Month’s Mind Mass with the ready organ notes and Mrs. Maguire’s slaughtering of the Gregorian music and the priest’s routine (and slightly) rushed rendition of the singing parts in the missal. The Mass was all over in record time. I watched the priest and the altar boy go off the altar. It was too early to go home. The church was very quite. I knelt down again and closed my eyes. A minute or so later, someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was Miss Brennan.

“Paul,” she said (everyone in the town seemed to know my name since my father was a Damn Yankee...) “Paul, she said, “our regular altar boy had to go home to wake up his two brothers for school and we have a visiting priest in the sacristy waiting to say Mass. I want you to be his altar boy.”

“But, Miss Brennan,” I objected. “I don’t know any of the Latin prayers.”

Don’t worry,” Miss Brennan answered. ‘I’ll say all of the responses for you. All you have to do is go ahead of Father when he goes to the side altar, take his biretta when he hands it to you and kneel down. When he puts his hand on the altar, go up and move the book to the other side. When he takes the veil off the chalice, bring him the wine and water and then wash his hands. Ring the bell at the consecration, bring the wine and water again after Father’s communion and that’s it.”

I was trapped.

After Mass, I preceded the priest into the sacristy. He thanked me and congratulated me. Miss Brennan had told him before and that it was the first well,” he said. “What grade are you in school?”

“The eight grade,” I said. “Miss Moran is my teacher.”

The priest smiled. “My name is Fr. Cogan,” he said. “My sister is Mary Moran’s mother. Your “Miss Moran’ is my niece.” And, he smiled again. “Why don’t you come across to the rectory and we’ll get some breakfast?”

“Father, I’m sorry,” I replied, “but I cant. I might be late for school and Miss Moran wouldn’t like that.”

The priest left the sacristy. “Where does Fr. Cogan work?” I asked Miss Brennan.

“In the Philippines,” she answered. “He was there all during the war and he’s on his way home to Ireland for vacation. He came this way in order to visit his sister and your Miss Moran. Fr. Cogan is a missionary priest.”

I smiled and said nothing. I knew many of the altar boys and I had never heard even once that one of them had been invited over to the rectory for breakfast. They always had to eat at home. “But maybe” I thought, “that’s because they’re secular priest (my father used to call them ‘circular priests’ which was true) and not missionaries...” Then and there, I decided that, if I ever became a priest, I would become a missionary and not a ‘circular’ priest. The following week a magazine came from a missionary group. I clipped out the coupon and mailed it in. After a visit from a Columban priest, I was accepted for the minor seminary at Silver Creek, New York.

But, there’s more.

Like all other missionary organizations, the Columbans in Boston, Massachusetts (U.S.A.) always have annual ‘field day’ in order to raise money for their members on the missions. That year, the field day in Boston took place one month before I was scheduled to Silver Creek, New York, and I persuaded my father to take me there. We drove in his car, and about twenty yards from the entrance to the parking lot, he stopped.

“What's wrong?” I asked. “The parking lot is up there.”

“I know,” my father answered. “But, get out of the car and come with me...”

We got out of the car and walked towards the front balcony of the estate house where the Columban priests lived. There were two or three people seated on the balcony and one of them – a gentleman – rushed down the steps and greeted my father.

“Les...! It must be years...” The man was a Mr. Moran who had been in the army with my father in 1918. We went up on the porch. My father introduced me to Mrs. Moran.

“Oh, yes,” she said, “you’re the Paul who was in Mary’s class last year. And you’re the one who served Fr. Gary’s Mass when he came through to visit us two months ago!

I smiled. Mr. Moran was Fr. Gary Cogan’s brother-in-law and Mrs. Moran was Miss Moran’s mother. It was the first time that I knew that Fr. Cogan was a Columban priest! And, of course, a missionary.