A Few Thoughts on Catholic Worship.

What many evangelicals do not understand about Catholics is that it is the Sacraments, the Liturgy, and Institution one is drawn to, not to men or leaders.
The Priest is the Celebrant and the representative of Christ in Sacrament. He is merely the instrument God uses in the Sacrament. HE is NOT the sacrament.
A typical Catholic service is one hour (maybe a little over). The sermon is no more than fifteen minutes, and the communion service is simple, quick, and to the point. The music is not “testifying to each other”, it is true praise music giving worship to almighty God. Even if there are contemporary instruments, there is no “performance”, I am involved in the singing. It is worship with my whole body with all of my senses. It is certainly not worship for the lazy.

1.
How did the early church understand worship?
The word worship in scripture means to “prostrate” oneself, to kneel or to bow.
Worship for 2000 years was always liturgical.
The word ‘liturgy’ comes from two Greek words meaning ‘people’ and ‘work’. In its root meaning, liturgy means an act performed for the good of a community. In its restricted meaning, it refers to the public rites and ceremonies officially authorized by the Church.
It is literally the ‘work of the people’ in their common life of prayer and worship. It is used in several places in the New Testament, particularly in Acts 13:1. It is a word “transliterated” into the English language.
A liturgy disciplines our prayers, making them fit for expression, unselfish in content, and comprehensive in scope. It instructs us in the totality of the Christian faith and in the whole range of worship: confession, praise, intercession and self-offering.
The order of a liturgy in its structural framework must be unaltered. Without a fixed order, a liturgy is like a body without a skeleton, a game without rules. A fixed order is necessary if worship is to be corporate. A fixed order keeps the fact of redemption before men’s thoughts continually with fixed
words, expressions and symbolism.
It is simply the “form” of worship, nothing more or less. Liturgy is neither alive nor dead, it simply is.
The Jewish synagogues passed on to Christianity the forms of corporate worship. The reading of scripture, a confession of faith, prayers and the singing of Psalms all have its roots in Jewish worship.
From the Temple and Synagogue worship, the Apostles already knew the rites and the ceremonies that God ordained to worship Him. Only now those rites and ceremonies took on new meaning in Christ and were transferred to the worship rites of primitive Church.
The early Church had a high view of God. Things were not done in a haphazard way. They were done with precision. Worshippers knew something important was happening here. They just did not stumble in and sit for an hour.
They came to worship God. So there are certain things they will do
that they have done before. One of the chief values of a liturgy is that it teaches us both how to pray and what things we should pray for.
There is a certain ceremony and process that the worshipper is bound to, external actions, gestures, movements that are part of the public exercise of divine worship. Worshippers come to worship with their whole bodies, using all the senses. Seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling are all involved in the worship experience.
Worship involves the WHOLE BODY, not just the brain or emotions.

2.
When matched with the Power of the Holy Spirit, liturgy finds it’s most powerful expression. Words, prayers, creeds, and songs are chosen carefully.
There is precise language that is used, not words chosen in a haphazard way. The language of worship is important, words must be chosen carefully.
The object in liturgical worship is God alone. Not the preacher, not the music. It is a corporate expression of worship to an invisible God. It is not a spectator sport, it is an interactive experience.
It is clear where irreverent worship has taken us in our Western society. What passes for worship in the modern Church are programs and entertainment or turning the Church into a lecture hall. It lacks the heart and soul of true worship. In the modern Church’s efforts to be innovative and create a ‘worship style’ it has manufactured a worship in the pattern of man’s invention, void of meaning.
However, Catholic worship is not without meaning. God has provided an outline, a form of worship that combines with our zeal to create meaning. The worshipper that worships God with every fiber of his being will bring to that service all the love and devotion he has for the Creator.The 'liturgy' of the early church was not 3 songs, an offering, the announcements, a special, the sermon, and the invitation. It looked very different. It may have included all those things (except for the invitation), but the center of the worship was different.
So many churches resemble more like a informal meeting on somebody’s back porch, there is no sense of sacredness. The early church understood that. The 'main event' was not the “mannagod” shilling his sermon and selling the invitation bench like a telemarketer.’
It is not chaotic in nature. It’s emphasis is not on a subjective “experience”. The problem with basing a theology on subjective experience is that I will always be looking for a bigger 'experience'. Tongues? Boring, let's do the holy laughter. Healing? boring, let's 'get drunk’ in the spirit (little 's' deliberate). Neat new theologies? Oh sure, the popular TV evangelist will comply with that.
I think the key is intimacy. Meeting with God. True, there are charismatic churches I have been in and the worship was wild, over the top. The preacher doing the 'Benny Hinn bunny hop' must be seen to be believed. Watching people dance in the aisle, be slain in the Spirit is not for the faint of heart. IT'S CREEPY.
But lets face it, these dear people are looking for that intimacy. But what they don't understand is that God is not moved by our subjective emotions.
On the other hand, to limit God to a few hymns and a sermon is AVOIDING that intimacy. I think that is why they are uncomfortable and feel 'creepy'. God not limited to my King James Bible? God on earth NOW? God present in the Eucharist?
Remember when God gave the Ten Commandments, the Israelites told Moses they wanted HIM to speak for God because the voice of God was frightening. When Isaiah saw God on the throne, he fell on his face, as did John in Revelation. It's SCARY to come face to face with God.

3.
Jesus said: ‘where two or three are gathered in My Name, there am I in the midst of them.’ In the company of other Christians, we lay hold of the Lord and His abiding presence. The Church is not made up of isolated individuals, but members of the mystical body of Christ Himself. Paul said we are “members one to another”. It is in corporate worship that this is seen the greatest.
Today people think that missing church hurts nobody but themselves. But in the early church, they thought quite the opposite. Separation from fellowship meant separation from the Body of Christ. Without each one’s participation, that Body was dismembered of a necessary limb, unity is broken.
An early church manual said “Since you are the members of Christ, do not scatter yourselves from the Church by not assembling. For since you have Christ for your head, as He promised, do not be neglectful of yourselves nor deprive the Savior of His members, nor rend and scatter His Body”. People who were absent due to no fault of their own were brought the Communion elements by others.
People who selfishly judge public worship by ‘I got nothing out it’ do not think of what they can put into it out of selflessness.
There is a respect and a dignity to liturgical worship that I do not see in evangelical/fundamentalist churches. Saying prayers and confessions out loud in unison has more meaning with the power of the Holy Spirit. It is not a mark of 'dead worship', it is a mark of living worship.
It is the Holy Spirit that gives life to worship. Liturgical worship contains no 45 minute sermon with jokes and 'what I think'. It is a simple message fit nicely into the service. There is more public scripture reading in a liturgical church than in many 'Bible-believing’ churches.The smoke and mirrors of the mega-churches burns out pretty quickly. God puts in each person a desire to worship, something. Even a non-Christian worships, it might not be God, but it's worship nonetheless. One cannot worship with just the mind. One cannot worship by sitting in a pew staring. Liturgical worship feeds that desire.
I think many evangelicals are looking for genuine stable authority on Biblical issues. I know I grow very tired of the latest evangelical 'Pope with a Bible'. Preaching the Word is very important, but the preacher is not and should not be the center of worship. That is very dangerous.I also think evangelicals wish to know the mystery and awe of entering into the presence of God. The quietness, the silent prayer. That is NEVER found in Baptist churches. Jesus said "true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him." We do not dictate to God how He is worshiped. It's not about us, its about giving Him a sacrifice of praise for what He has done for us.

4.
Some Christians (like me) have gone from Catholic to Evangelical, and then when age and wisdom catch up with us, back to Catholic. But some Christians, are born in the Christian wilderness. They have never been in a liturgical, let alone a Catholic church. And when they walk into one, well, let's face it, it can be kind of scary.
They see statues, stained glass windows. They smell incense. They see an altar, kneelers, people genuflecting, crossing themselves, holy water, crucifixes. Instead of a preacher, they see a priest in a robe.
People aren't standing around talking, they're in silent prayer. They are required to respond in prayer, creeds. Just not sitting in a pew staring. Let's face it, for the person born in the Little Church on the Evangelical Prairie, it's like stepping off a spaceship onto another planet.
A 'good ole boy' who puts on his 'go to meetin'' clothes on Sunday to 'hear the preacher' is coming from a totally different mindset and church culture. Even if the church is not hostile to the RCC, for him, it's a different world. Generations of conditioning have produced this. His father was ________, his father was a ________.On the other side of the coin, the first time I walked into an evangelical church, what struck me was nothing was required of me (which perhaps fed into my lazy nature). No order of service, just listening to a preacher…and well, that's pretty much it. I think both need to understand there are generations of Christians who have never experienced the other. This is not helped by fundamentalists on both sides anesthetizing the other. So to many Christians in the RCC, Protestant, and evangelical, nothing is known and communication does not exist.
It’s like a science fiction story of two planets who have been at war for so long they no longer remember the reason why or even know what the “enemy” looks like.
I think the reason many evangelicals are turning to the Catholic and Episcopal churches are more complicated than many evangelicals imagine. I believe it is found in one area:A longing for the Eucharist.
Wherever you meet the early church, there is one characteristic. Whether it be in the arena just before they are fed to the wild lions. In that anteroom they were doing something. If you went to their secret meetings in the cemeteries where they met for fear of the authorities on a Sunday morning, they will be doing the same thing that they were doing in the anteroom. Wherever you find these Christians, that’s the one thing they did.
Eating of the Body and Blood of Christ.

5.
In the anteroom in the arena, and in there secret church meetings, they gathered around, and took a piece of bread, and they broke it, and they said, “this is the body of Christ”, and they ate it. And they took a cup of wine, and they said, “this is the blood of Christ”, and they drank it. And mystically, but all so really, they went out stronger than human beings to face whatever there was to face. That’s why you went to church on a Sunday morning. It wasn’t to have another Gospel meeting. In fact they wouldn’t allow unconverted people to come. Isn’t that shocking! They had a deacon at the door, and just before the act of breaking the bread, the fellow in charge would yell out, “doors! The deacons would guard the doors to make sure no unbelievers would come in. This was family time. The family sat down to eat in the presence of Jesus. And the meal was Jesus.
Jesus said do this in remembrance of me. And the word remembrance does not mean to send your mind back and try to mentally imagine. That is not the meaning of the word. The word means to bring something forward into the present, and re-enact it. So they re-enacted it just like Jesus did on that last night. They took bread just like He did; they took wine just like He did. And they said the words He said, because He promised that He would be unusually, uniquely present, that He would be the Host of that meal in a way present as no where else, and that he would actually feed them with His own very person and self. And they would go up. And they said Christ is in me, and they said it at a level of understanding that was more than some mystical way because I kept repeating it long enough that I kind of psyched myself into it. No, they actually knew! They had partaken of Christ himself and were strengthened.
That is strange to our western ears, but it is not strange to the ears of the early church! That was the beating heart of Christianity, a meal together with Jesus! And they did it every time they came together, and they did it every time they faced incredible pressure. There was a meal; it was a covenant meal. It was a meal where Jesus was the Host at the table, and Jesus fed them with his very self.