The Liturgical Tradition - Pt 2: Why I stayed

My decision to start attending a liturgical church was not by any means the end of my journey toward accepting the liturgical format as the best way to worship. That journey is still going on. But there was one thing that I and my friends - who were new to this whole thing - could agree on: it has something that our previous worship experiences had been lacking.

The easiest way to describe this would be to say that liturgy provides a skeleton for the flesh of the worship. If worship were dance, liturgy would be the music to which you dance.

Before, my experience with church - not to mention my 'personal worship', for lack of a better term - had always felt fairly amoebic. The church service may have had a program and order to it, but that order was inconsistent, intangible and (as far as I could tell) purposeless. The prayers, while not heretical or even banal, had a very 'inspirational' feeling to them, like you could almost hear the person offering the prayer searching for inspiration.

Maybe that's what it was: it felt like the whole point of the service was to inspire me. Many of the songs were of either the happy 'Jesus is my friend' variety, or of the 'I'm happy to be Christian' variety, and while both of those are true (more at some times than others) they are not always what should be said. They either assume I am in a mood in which I might not be, or they seem to attempt to get me into a certain mood. They came across as being patho-centric.

What I found with liturgy was a service that took nothing for granted about the state of the person entering into it. Instead, it invites you in and engages your mind, rather than your emotions. And the eventual result is that your emotions begin to follow. Lewis must have been Anglican.

Now, instead of a nebulous experience awaiting me, I have a structure waiting for me that invites me into the worship, and helps me to quiet my mind and calm my heart. Instead of a bright, 'friendly' auditorium, I enter a quiet (if I get there on time), holy place, where I am obviously not the most important person there and neither is the person at the front of the stage.

Now, instead of being invited to 'take a moment for silent reflection and repentance', I join those around me in asking God for His forgiveness, and as I repeat the words I am forced to remind myself that I am an evil person who needs repentance and forgiveness. It is a good message to hear in this age of affirmation.

Instead of sitting quietly and awarkwardly waiting for communion to start, half of the service is dedicated to reminding us what exactly communion is all about, and preparing for communion.

And when, at the end of mass, the celebrant exhorts us to "Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord," I can enthusiastically exclaim, "Thanks be to God!", knowing that my mind, heart and spirit have been nourished and refreshed, rather than feeling as though I have been watching a show for the past couple hours.