Tomorrow is Sunday and I'm trying to figure out what to do about church. I'm thinking of going to St. Peter Claver tomorrow for Mass. It's odd, but I feel like Protestant churches don't really have church anymore. Even First Baptist, the most traditional/liturgical Protestant church I've seen, doesn't seem much like church.
By myself (that is, by my own experiences) I've come to conclusions that are so far apart from most Protestants. I've thought about it, hashed it out, stayed up, agonized, and who knows what else when it comes to faith. I cannot accept the Protestant answers to Christianity. For me they are wrong. No matter what denomination I am around, all Protestants sound the same. And whether it is a Lutheran speaking, or a Baptist, or Methodist, or Presbyterian, or Pentecostal, or Episcopal, their answers all sound hollow and dull. Not at all compelling, even though I might say the same things they do.
Protestants have killed my interest in picking up Holy Scripture and reading it for myself. If the Bible says what Protestatns say it does, then I don't want the Bible. I don't want God, and I certainly don't want Jesus.
But the past few times I've been to Mass, I've enjoyed it. I've not heard about money, or a personal relationship with God. I've not heard sermons telling me to pray and read my Bible everyday in order to be a good Christian.
Instead I've heard about hope, love, grace, and forgiveness. Prayer is encouraged in a reverant sense-- a "God, our Lord and Father," not "Jesus, you are just so awesome, and like, we totally love you."
The Mass is truly a gathering of the religious community for worship. In Protestant Churches I've seen auditoriums packed with people ready for worship. And even though they are all together under one roof, they all worship by themselves. It's isolating and depressing. But in Mass, the entire congregation reads to gether, recites together, listens together, and prays together. From the beginning to the end they are all one body. It impresses me.
And then there's the Eucharist. The first Mass I went to this past year at St. Peter Claver, I knelt while the priest handled the elements of the Eucharist, I grew excited. Something inside me perked up, like a dog who hears a knock at the door. And then the bell rang--the bell that signals that the bread and wine have been transformed into the body and blood of Christ--and I grew so excited. I smiled. I actually looked forward to the Eucharist. Communion, as some call it, was not at all a solemn occasion. It called for reverence, sure. But it wasn't something to wait on or to think about very hard--or even to prepare themselves for it. You just kind of leapt at it because you knew it would be good for you whether you were prepared for it or not.
If I remember, I'll go to Mass tomorrow. If not, then I will have lost nothing by not going to a Protestant Church.
