Nate Heeren - Church Visit #1

Church name: St. Michael Catholic Church

Church address: 310 S Wheaton Ave, Wheaton, IL 60187

Date attended: 4/12/2016

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

I attended the Tuesday weekday mass. It was very early, being at 6:30 AM, and very short, lasting no more than a half hour. It is safe to say that it is more different than similar to the services I attend in my regular context. It was predominantly, perhaps exclusively, liturgical. There was no sermon--not even a short homily. I was uncomfortable in this situation of rote recitation, to be quite honest, because everyone seemed to know what to say except for me, and I could not shake the feeling that I was somehow being remiss.

I think the emphasis was on the Eucharist, but even that component was relatively short given the small number of attendees, no more than forty by my estimation. Most of them were senior citizens, and I found myself wondering at how some of these people had probably attended mass every day for most of their lives.

What aspects of Roman Catholic theology did you notice expressed in the service?

As I mentioned, the Eucharist seemed to be the most important part of the service, and this would be in keeping with Catholicism's attaching greater prominence to practicing it with regularity than we Protestants tend to do. In terms of theology, I think most Protestant sects would affirm the crucial importance of Communion, but they would generally emphasize it less.

The favoring of liturgy in the service is yet another expression of their theology, for they see great value in the repetition of specific truths, exhortations, and the like. Personally, I don't see how this is possible for me to adopt due to how such repetition never fails to become reduced to the platitudinous, but I'm trying to curb my bias against it that I may perceive more of its value. It still lies hidden from me, but it is a helpful approach to temporarily assume another perspective.

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

To touch once more upon the subject of communion, as I sat and watched the rest of the attendees assemble to take it, I thought about the Catholics' great appreciation for this sacrament as life-giving, a feeding which needs to be frequent in order to avoid a type of spiritual starvation, and I compared it to the relative indifference with which we Protestants treat it de facto. My church back home usually won't spare more than one Sunday a month for communion, but to Catholics it is so essential that it can hardly be taken enough. I think there is more of a problem here with my regular context than Catholicism's. I still believe that, in practice, the latter emphasizes the Eucharist at the expense of some other key areas, but in Protestantism we are in danger of depicting it as an optional occasional ritual rather than a necessary nourishing for the Christian life.