Sarah Antioho – Church Visit #1

Blog title:  Sarah Antioho – 1

Church Name:  St. Michael Catholic Church

Church address:  310 S. Wheaton Ave Wheaton IL 60187

Date attended:  3/1/14

More Liturgical 

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

The sanctuary itself was very ornate.  There were many detailed murals and paintings on the walls as well as stained glass windows on the front wall.  I picked up a bulletin on entering.  There was a large pool of water that people would touch and then cross themselves.  Members would kneel before entering their pew to sit down.  The service consisted of many hymns of which the melody but not the lyrics were familiar to me.  There were Scripture readings called “Liturgy of the Word,” portions of response sections where the congregation stood and together said aloud a prayer or part of a passage when prompted, times of prayer, but no message from the priest.  The Liturgy of the Eucharist was very ordered.  At my home church our main section of the service is the message spoken by our pastor.  We do not kneel or confess our sins together.  The Eucharist is taken only once a month and it is not as ordered or ornate. 

What did you find most interesting or appealing about the worship service?

I enjoyed the times when the whole congregation would have a communal response in prayer or the Word, prompted by what the priest would say.  I also very much appreciated our time of confession, especially since we knelt, putting ourselves into a posture of submission to God and confessed our sins.  This is something I have been thinking much about and has been a practice I have tried to adopt as I believe it turns our hearts towards our sin but then ultimately the grace of God that forgave us of that sin.  I enjoyed the amount of singing.  At my church we do not have very much singing.  I was very intrigued by the singer who led us in the collective singing passages that were not “praise songs” or “hymns” but rather Scripture readings that were sung. She would lead us and sing the verses while we just sang the one line chorus before she continued.  It was a different was to worship together and to read/hear Scripture. 

What did you find most disorienting or challenging about the service?

The structure was hard to get used to.  I didn’t know when to stand up, sit down, or kneel.  Sometimes I didn’t know what was a prayer and what was a Scripture reading.  I would look around and others would have their heads bowed and their eyes closed while I was just looking straight ahead watching the priest.  Since all of their Scripture readings and responses are the same once every three years based on the day, they were not printed in the bulletin and so I was trying to follow along in both while flipping back and forth from the songs at the front and the readings at the back. 

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

The aspect that we need to be united and of one body in Christ and in the Church was very evident to me, and it was something I really enjoyed.  Knowing that no matter what Catholic Church you went to on a given Sunday, you would be reading the same Scripture as a church across the country and the world was amazing to think about.  In this country, we are so individualistic, we like our personal space (which was true in the church as well as I did not sit by anyone), and the fact that we broke down some of those walls just by reading passages together was a wonderful feeling.  We are not meant to worship alone, rather we are meant to be in community