My Catholic Liturgy Experience

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I grew up interacting with a handful of Catholic friends, so I have a decent grasp of general Catholic theology. However, I do not have very much experience with the Catholic liturgy itself. Last semester, I was in a class called Spiritual Formations in which we took a field trip where we spent the entire day with the nuns at the Sacred Heart Monastery in Yankton, South Dakota. Consequently, I had a tangible reference point off of which to base comparisons. I felt more comfortable at this cathedral than the monastery, but maybe that’s because I was with a group of people that got along with each other better. Both the monastery and the cathedral looked similar, elaborately adorned with the most architecture on both the inside and the outside. …show more content…

I noticed that, for the most part, even the children remained as silent statues. However, the space still echoed sounds as a baby’s babbles were magnified and carried through the room. I must confess, as soon as the liturgy began, I was utterly lost. I was incapable of following along with what page to read and sing along with. I eventually stopped trying to peek over at what page my neighbors were looking at and just gave up, extremely frustrated. The leader of the liturgy never really announced what we would be doing when and just assumed that everybody knew what was going on. They never explicitly said that there was going to be the Eucharist/Communion taking place and never gave us instructions on how to receive it. Instead, they wordlessly made a “show” out of preparing the Eucharist, holding it up high and ringing bells. Everybody else seemed to naturally know what to do, acting off of past traditions. In my observation, I was very curious about the fact that the person who was administering the sacrament to the people appeared to be not just a fellow laity dressed in average clothes, but also a woman. The roles of the elementary-aged boys in the service also piqued my curiousity. The first time I smelled the incense, I was alarmed because I thought that something accidentally caught on

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