Over the past weeks, as a class we have been learning about liturgies and the early church. We looked into how worship was ordered and the specific purposes and goals liturgies were meant to accomplish for the early church. Coming from a non-denominational church background, liturgies have seemed foreign and strictly related to Catholicism in my mind. Overall, I never thought of liturgies from a positive point of view, but that is largely because I knew so little about the craftmanship and care that went into their creation. Most recently, we read about the Catholic liturgical structure and I was surprised in many ways by its contents.
The thing that caught my attention and I admired the most, was the heavy focus of reading Scripture. I come from a church that, in relation to other non-denominational churches, reads a lot of Scripture. But reading about how central Scripture is in the Catholic tradition really impressed me. I find it so valuable to read Scripture allowed as a Church, and read through all parts of the Bible. Another part of the liturgical structure that I appreciated was the intentionality of the sequencing. Each act of worship was carefully put together in a way that is not as evident in churches today. The sequences between Word, Song, Prayer, Chant, and Eucharist, (not in specifically in that order) all flow one after the other in a continous thought and heart posture. I found that really beautiful. While the repetition of doing the same structure with the same elements every week can seem to get old to me, and I do not agree with all of their theology, I think there is still much to appreiciate about the Catholic liturgical structure.
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