Jon Tsen - Church visit #2

Church Name: St. Francis of Assisi Parish
Church Address: 1501 W. Boughton Rd. Bolingbrook, IL 60490
Date Attended: September 21, 2014
Church Category: "Significantly more liturgical"

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

Ten minutes into the service we had already managed to sit, potentially kneel, cross ourselves, and stand. It could have been yoga if the father had asked us to focus on our breathing while doing all these movements. Catholic services are similar to my home church contexts in that the service is structured and predictable, but only if you're an experienced member. There is a great comfort and ease I get when I go to services that are ordered in a similar fashion to my home church: worship through music, prayer, greetings, potentially another worship through music, sermon, worship through music again, and a benediction. But the ordering of this mass included hand movements, unfamiliar unscripted hymns, and smells. Everyone else seemed like they knew what they were doing, I did not. I felt lost.

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

Finally, when we were all seated for a longer duration a vocalist lead us in music. The hymnals guided our song reading, but it was the vocalist who really did the leading. I had forgotten how Western church traditions highly value the classical arts. I'm so used to the four chord progression built by the guitars, keys, drums, and bass. In addition to the precision of the vocalist and his art, I also enjoyed how each hymn I knew had a very long history. I can't be very sure if our worship songs at my home church have much history before the 1990's, but with these hymns I know that they have passed generations before they have reached my lips. It was as if I was worshiping with the church present and church past.

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

But once again, after we sang a few hymns and after the father spoke the congregation magically knew when to cross themselves and recant the same twenty words together, I was reminded that I was a foreigner to a closed family. There was no church bulletin to follow--which is something my home church has--but even if we did I think I would still feel a bit disoriented. I wish this wasn't so. I wish that the order and structure that helped the service flow naturally felt like an unnatural experience for me. Because if this was disorienting to me, I have to wonder what about my home church that is planned and ordered and not announced feels unwelcoming and uncomfortable to others.

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

In the middle of the service the father prepared us for communion. My home church context shares communion only about once a month, and sometimes I feel like the practice is done is passing without feelings of depth. But at St. Francis of Assisi, communion was central to the service. Communion also was central in the early church, and perhaps this mass was a way to remind myself of that. 1 Corinthians 10:16-17 (ESV) says "The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of the Christ? The bread that we break, is it not the participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread." This church reminded me of our participation with the body of Christ. Even though I was unable to share communion at this mass, I am reminded from this of the participation in the body of Christ through communion.