Rachel Poel - Church Visit #1

Dr. Lee - Church Visit #1

Church name: St. Michael Catholic Church

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

Date attended: 19 September 2015 (vigil mass for Sunday)

Church category: Significantly more or less liturgical

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

I attended a Saturday night mass.  My friend and I bypassed the holy water with respectful confusion and grabbed bulletins. We crept into the back bench between two middle-aged women who smiled pityingly at us and turned down another kneeler for us. The church was almost full. The congregation ranged from infants to elderly couples, but every single person I saw was white. 

A soaring soprano was singing Latin choral music when we entered. If I remember correctly, she was followed by a scripture, singing, prayer, homily, creeds, more scripture, the eucharist, and a recessional hymn.  It was especially interesting to see the application of theological conflicts I'd studied in high school.  For example, the vicar presented the wafer as "the Son of God" and prayed for the soul of a recently deceased parishioner.

The aesthetic and structure of the mass felt like a deliberate opposite to my home church.  My church meets in a middle-school cafeteria with a color scheme of plum, orange, and avocado; the mass took place in a spacious sanctuary with a blue dome and wooden pews.  My church has a microphone on the drums; the mass used only an organ. My church holds communion after the sermon about once a month; the eucharist dominated the second half of the mass. The group readings did feel familiar from my home church and from my grandparents' CRC churches, but we do not dwell on them as much or as reverently. Overall, I felt like a spectator to a lovely demonstration of piety, but I missed the doctrine of my church's 45-minute expositional sermon and the enthusiasm of my church's congregation in joining the worship.

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

I savored the physicality of the worship experience.   The music was not loud, but it was deeply lovely.  The shape and height of the sanctuary reminded me of European cathedrals I saw when I lived in Germany.  The  rituals seemed to visually demonstrating the different parishioners' participation in the body of Christ.  Fathers knelt quietly at the entrances to their pews before herding a stray child in behind them.  Squirming kindergarteners knelt beside their moms and propped their elbows on the pews in front of them. Octagenarians traced their fingers through the holy water. These physical actions seemed to affirm that God created us both as physical and as spiritual. I am taking Philosophy of the Arts this semester, and I explain a lot of my love for literature in its ability to incarnate perspectives, so I relished this practical blending of beauty and faith.  

I also enjoyed the way the service left space for contemplation and the way the mystery of the ritual provoked reverence.  

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

The homily frustrated me. Perhaps 300 people sat attentively to hear God's truth preached, and the vicar spent the brief sermon speaking slowly and elegantly about the vice and virtue of ambition.  I don't remember him explicitly speaking of God or of our salvation during the whole message.  I know this emphasis on the gospel is unique not just to my reformed background but to my church's specific background, but I expected the homily to at least provide hope or purpose for our obedience based in some sort of theology. Instead, it seemed like a lecture on ethics.

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 aesthetic experience foregrounded the issues connected to prioritizating art in the church. The soaring music and the lovely architecture did help me to recognize God's grandeur.  However, I felt myself recoiling at some elements of unfamiliar spectacle.  It made me wonder again where the boundary falls between manipulating my emotions and deliberately turning my emotions to reflect my understanding of God's truth.  I also wondered how much the building and accoutrements had cost when refugees struggle a few miles away.