Not a Worship Service

A non-catholic once visited a Catholic Church and attended Mass; not because she was interested in becoming Catholic, but because she was taking a world religions class at college and was told she needed to attend a service at a religion with which she was unfamiliar. She stayed through the entire service because she genuinely wanted to see what it was like. She even went so far as to stay afterwards to speak with the Priest.

"That is absolutely the strangest worship service I've ever seen; no praise team, no skits, no dancing, and your homily was only like 10 minutes!" She was not being rude, but was honestly speaking about her experience.

The Priest smiled and gently corrected her: "It's not a worship service", he said.

Looking quizzical, she said, "What?"

The Priest responded kindly, "It's the Mass, where the sacrifice of Christ happens."

Of course the Mass does not look like a "worship service" (or, I should qualify that: it should not look like a worship service). It is not supposed to. We can worship God anywhere; at home, in the woods, on an airplane. Only in the Mass can we experience God, through the ministry of the Priest, presenting the very sacrifice of Christ right before us in a (thankfully) unbloody manner. If we come into Mass expecting that it is a place for us to "worship" and we have the events at Calvary in the first century presented to us, then we will be thrown off. Christ's death, burial, and resurrection may not elicit happy feelings, but--if understood rightly--may elicit awe.

Just as much as we should not expect to purchase fruits and vegetables inside a bank, so also we should expect something other than a worship service inside a Catholic Church when Mass is scheduled. Of course, it is not always wrong to have a worship service, and Catholics are all about worshiping God. That is just not what the Mass is. To get this point confused is to get the heart of our faith confused.

This is what is wrong with many Catholic parishes today. They have somehow gotten off track and are trying to turn the Mass into a worship service. They get a "praise team" and sing lots of songs that people "like" (as though that should ever be the reason for choosing music in the Mass!). They seem to have forgotten that the people are not there to be entertained, they are there to be sanctified (and entertainment is not sanctifying).