Rising to Heaven

Many of my most intense encounters with the Divine have occurred during the liturgy of the Mass. I have always had a very emotional connection with liturgy, and experiencing it is the primary mode in which I worship God. I guess what I mean to say is that I pray to and feel a connection with God in the liturgy when I get caught up in it. I do have a personal preference for ‘high’ liturgy: for me, it’s a way of soaring above myself while simultaneously being caught up in the smallest details. I love ornate ritual, I love the care put into every gesture. I love it when it’s so completely separate from the everyday. It makes me so happy I want to burst; I feel content, overflowing, like I am where I’m supposed to be. Like I’ve fallen into place and everything has come together.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate a simpler liturgy: I enjoy the unadorned, too, so long as it’s carried out with decorum and care. The simple is beautiful. But it isn’t who I am.

And, when it comes right down to it, it isn’t who I desire to be.

A secret: liturgy is mainly why I go to church, it is how I choose a church, and it is how I feel I belong. I am not alone in this: it is with God that I try to discern my way. God will show me the way home, and will embrace me when I have reached it.

A confession: my changed experience of the liturgy was the impetus that finally spurred me out of the Latin-rite church. I had always had beliefs at variance with the church, but I remained because I still experienced God deeply during worship.

But God with His sword pierced my heart and called me out. I was reluctant to rely on my personal understanding too much. But, gradually, the sensations of liturgical praise began to leave me, and politics began to get in the way. Slowly, I was disentangled from the rituals I had passionately loved; slowly, I began to feel a distance from God.

The day that I went to church and participated in the Mass and felt absolutely nothing was the day I knew I had to leave.

I hope and I pray fervently that when I have discovered my liturgical home God will return my feeling to me, so that I can soar again, feel again, truly worship again. Love God again.