Johanna Depenthal – Church Visit 1

St. Michael’s Catholic Church

310 S Wheaton Ave, Wheaton, IL 60187

Visited: 3 April 2016

Describe the worship service you attended.  How was it similar or different from your regular context?

While I have attended Mass at a number of Catholic cathedrals in Germany and Peru and sung at Catholic festivals and weddings with my choir, I realized about halfway through our visit to St. Michael’s that it was my first time attending an English-language Mass.  Probably because of this, I was surprised by how “normal” the experienced seemed.  St. Michael’s church building has a tall central section like the traditional nave of a cathedral, but then fanned out with a sloping roof like many protestant churches I have attended.  The congregation seated around me looked like average Wheaton people, and unlike in services I had attended in Europe and Peru, families, young children, and men were well represented.  

Still, multiple features of the Mass still caught me by surprise, especially when I compared them with a typical service at my majority African-American church, Second Baptist Church of Wheaton.  Aside from the massive difference in the churches building sizes, architectural styles, and racial demographics, the use of music, purpose of the sermon, and length and purpose of the service felt different.  There was very little congregational singing at St. Michael’s: a female cantor led most of the worship, with occasional sung responses on the psalms, and even the final processional hymn was limited to one stanza.  The entire service—in marked contrast to 2 hour and 15 minute services at my church—finished in a tidy 60 minutes.  Despite the fact that St. Michael’s is the hub of Wheaton’s Catholic community, not only hosting the celebration of Mass 16 times weekly but also housing a K-8^th grade parish school, I did not perceive a strong sense of community within the church.  Not many people stayed to linger to talk after the service, and no one seated around us asked us who we were or what brought us to the service.  (The exception to this was a wizened old soon-to-be 93 year old man who appeared out of the grotto while we were admiring a stained glass window to tell us about Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American saint).   

What aspects of Roman Catholic Theology did you notice expressed during the service?

I am not sure if this counts as an expression of Roman Catholic Theology—and granted, St. Michael’s is probably tied with Church of the Resurrection on this front—but there were lots of young children in the service!  More importantly, it was clear that the Eucharist, rather than the sermon, was the high point of the service.  The tone of the sermon, an exploration of Divine Mercy as God’s most amazing attribute, seemed to be meant more as a reminder, rather than a lecture, and lasted probably 6 minutes or so.  The focus on the beauty of the church, with the stained glass windows, high ceilings, images of St. Michael, the crucified Jesus, and Mary, and the stations of the cross also demonstrated a Catholic emphasis on holiness and sanctity of God and the history of the Church, over the multi-functional use of church space.    

What aspects of Scripture or theology did the worship service illuminate for you that you had not perceived as clearly in your regular context?

The focus on the Eucharist, rather than the sermon, emphasizes that it is Jesus himself, not the pastor or priest’s teaching, which feeds the congregation.  This seemed to be a healthy reduction of both the burden and the celebrity role played by a pastor in many Protestant churches that consider the quality of the sermon the most crucial element of Sunday morning worship.  In some ways, even the architecture of the building reinforced this shift of emphasis to Jesus as the host and teacher, as the natural light streaming in through the upper windows hinted at inspiration from above.  I also felt that the royal priesthood of all believers was emphasized by the fact that the priest offering up the Eucharist enjoined us to “pray that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father.”