Lunch with: Jeremy Phillips

Enlarge Image

Fifteen-year-old Jeremy Phillips is just beginning Grade 11 at Vincent Massey in Brandon. He’s an employee at Stan’s Fine Foods, he hopes to play rugby at school this year, and he works out every day. But he doesn’t just invest time and energy in his physical self. When not focusing on the above-mentioned activities, Phillips is a regular altar server at St. Augustine’s Roman Catholic Church. (BRUCE BUMSTEAD / BRANDON SUN)

Have you always been a member of St. Augustine’s Parish?

I started at St. Hedwig’s, and then the priest passed away, so then we moved to St. Augustine’s about eight, nine years ago — maybe ten.

And you were baptized in the church and then confirmed?

Yes. I was baptized at St. Hedwig’s and then the rest at St. Augustine’s.

This interview came about because I was at your church for a funeral a few weeks ago, and I saw you doing your thing, and thought, "That’s interesting. There’s a young man who’s volunteering his time to be an altar boy through the summer months." You do volunteer, right? You don’t get paid or anything? And how often do you do it?

Yes, I volunteer. And I do it practically every Sunday. And I’m there for big masses, like funerals. Christmas masses are the bigger ones — you have to practice for those. Easter masses.

How many altar boys are at St. Augustine’s?

Eight? Ten? There’s a schedule through the year where you’re scheduled to serve on those days. But in the summer months, there’s no schedule — you can just come on Sunday or Saturday and altar serve.

The big question for me is always ‘why?’ Why do you do this? What made you want to be an altar server in the first place?

I can’t even remember why I started. I do it for Jesus Christ. I do it to help the priest out — he needs help on the altar.

What exactly are your duties as an altar server?

Carry the cross in. Set up the altar. Hold the book for the priest. If there’s Holy Water you have to give the Holy Water bucket to the priest. Prepare the incense in the back and then bring it to the priest. Hold candles if you need to for a gospel reading.

It sounds like you’re pretty involved in the whole process! What do you like about it?

Giving back to the church.

Because the church has given something to you? And what would that be?

Weekly service. A chance to come face-to-face with your God and talk to him. And just volunteering — it’s more fun than sitting in the pew. You get to do stuff. You’re more active. And it’s kind of cool standing on the altar.

Why?

Because you’re with the priest and everybody else is in the pews. It makes you feel a little special. My dad used to be an altar server, too.

Well that’s kind of cool! But I know a lot of young people who would prefer, perhaps, to be doing other things rather than being at church. Why are you different? Why do you want to do this?

Just being generous. I don’t know.

Is that part of the church’s teachings, that you’re supposed to give back?

You’re supposed to be a good person, be good to one another, and when I do this, I’m helping out other people, I guess.

Do the folks you go to school with know you do this? Do you get teased or ribbed at all?

My friends know I do this, and no — I don’t get any teasing at all.

This might be an awkward question, but the Catholic church particularly, I think, has taken a bit of a kicking because of the supposed inequality between males and females. And this may be difficult for a 15-year-old to answer, but I’m wondering if you think that the church maybe helps to keep women down? Or do you feel that the church is a fairly equal place in terms of respect and involvement of both men and women?

I would say it’s equal.

Besides being an altar server, what else do you like to do?

I used to do magic. But my biggest passion is wrestling. Do you know WWE? I watch it all the time. I even have one of the replica belts that cost $350. I have wanted one forever. I have two now!

What career might you like to pursue? Any notion of working in the church? Would you like to be a priest some day?

No. I think I’d like to be a cop — that interests me a lot. It seems like there’s lots of action and taking bad things off the streets and stuff.

When I was growing up, my family was somewhat religious but not intensely so. I went to Sunday School and my parents went to church, but I found my own path because I soon came to see that, for me, there were too many contradictions in what I was being told at Sunday School and what I was actually seeing going on around me. So my commitment sort of wavered and faded away. You’re just a young man, so I’m interested in what has allowed you to keep the faith.

It sticks with you when you’re told to go to church — it sticks with you a lot during your life, I guess, rather than Dad saying, ‘Do you want to come to church?’

I read something once — I wish I could remember who the quote was from — but it was interesting in that it suggested people of faith SHOULD have doubts or questions, because that’s what allows them to develop and retain their faith. If they examine the options and they still maintain their beliefs, that makes their faith even stronger. When you’re raised in a religious family, you grow up with those ideals and those beliefs. But do you ever question the things you’ve been taught? Do you ever wonder about your conviction or the church or God?

If you wonder, you can always go ask the priest or search on the Internet. I really don’t wonder. I don’t doubt. I just have a faith. It’s usually other people asking ME the questions, and me telling them what I believe.

And what sort of questions do they ask you?

They ask things like, ‘Do you have to go church to go to heaven?’ Well, I tell them if you don’t go to church then you’re not going to make it faster to heaven. So you kind of have to go. I mean, you HAVE to, to have a clean soul.

Often a lot of my interview subjects are tense and uptight. You seem so relaxed and comfortable. You must feel really secure in both your beliefs and in what you’re doing. Is what you do as an altar server really a labour of love?

It’s helping me get closer to heaven, I would think. You’ve got to have faith to go to heaven, and if you don’t attend church, then it’s not worshipping God.

So I can’t be at home and worship God on my own and in my own way?

That’s one question I had. But it’s recommended that you go to church. And if you can’t find a physical way to go to church, then I would think it would be OK to pray. Better to pray than not to. But if there’s a church nearby and if you can go to it, then you might as well. You should. And invite others to come, too, to follow in God’s path to heaven.

So is part of that, then, that it’s easier, or there’s a greater sense of belonging, when it’s a church community — a group of people who come together with a common goal or because of a common faith?

Well, some others in the church can have different opinions about God, so I don’t think they would all be the same standard. Like one person might believe in God more than another. So they might not be the same, but everybody’s goal is to get to heaven. If you’re a Catholic, that’s your main goal, is to get to heaven when you’re on the earth. And at church, with all the people together, there’s a sense of sharing and a journey together to go to God.

Republished from the Brandon Sun print edition September 1, 2012