Brian O’Connor - Church visit #2

Church name: Ascension Catholic Church

Church address: 808 S. East Avenue Oak Park, IL 60304

Date attended: 3/7/14

Church category: Significantly More Liturgical

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

The service I attended at Ascension was a Taize service. This is significantly different from the classic non-denom church to which I belong. Taize is largely a meditative service that involves short, simple prayers that are sung with basic instrumental accompaniment. The goal of the service is to pray for and foster reconciliation and peace among all people.

            You are asked to enter and exit the service in silence. After a number of songs are sung, there is a scripture reading (in multiple languages). This is followed by the congregation taking up candles. Light is passed from the front of the building to the back and a verbal blessing of the peace of Christ with it. The congregation then brings the candles to the front of the church and leaves them at the foot of the cross. There is then a time of meditative silence which is followed by several more songs.

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

I love the spiritual space that is created by the service. Instead of being told what or how to think, the members of the congregation are allowed to make these decisions for themselves. Singing songs of peace mean very different things to each individual. I believe that the space that is left invites the Holy Spirit to speak to individuals about the specifics of what they need to hear.

The congregation is given a basic framework to work from; it is a service about peace and reconciliation. There certainly is structure. However, there is no explicit teaching. Instead, there is a time of meditation. The idea is that someone can come in and work towards reconciliation with between them and God, they can pray for reconciliation in Syria, really they can do with the time what they feel is best. I find this extremely freeing.

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

            My Taize experience was somewhat unique. One of the most beautiful elements of the service is the opportunity to get lost in the sound of hundreds of voices all singing prayers to God. As a musician, this is one of my favorite elements of the service.

            Shortly after the service began, a woman came and sat behind me. It would not be an exaggeration for me to say that this woman had one of the worst voices that I have ever heard. My initial response was to get angry. I had traveled all the way to Oak Park to experience peaceful prayer and the sounds of beautiful voices and this woman was getting in the way of my agenda.

            I soon realized the hypocrisy of singing prayers for peace as I held bitterness in my heart towards this woman. I was challenged to focus the majority of my time accepting the fact that the woman with the distracting voice was just as loved by Christ as the people next to me with beautiful voices.

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

            Many of the prayers focused on the fallenness of man. This is something that we do not focus on in my regular context. We are prone to focus on songs that communicate something more like “Jesus paid it all” then say “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” or even “Kyrie eleison (Lord have mercy)”.

            Here grace is not stressed, but rather the fact that we are entirely undeserving of that grace. I found this to be oddly refreshing. In class we talked about the idea that really, God does not need to give us the opportunity to be redeemed from our sins. I think that this fact is really easy to lose sight of in American Christian culture that tends to focus more on making people feel good about themselves than thinking rightly about God.