I went to the latin mass

What Protestants can learn

a dear catholic friend and i went to mass the other day.

here is my raw thoughts and opinions.

EUCHARISTIC ADORATION

The latin mass was confusing. Probably because it is in another language. I did enjoy that it felt other-worldly, but at times it felt like I was just sitting in the stands watching the priest interact with God, rather than myself interacting with God (holy run-on-sentence batman!).

But after the latin mass ended was my favorite part.

They put the wafer on the altar—called the exposition—and the attendees were urged to stay and pray with Jesus in the room.

My buddy I went with told me before,

“Yeah so they will put Jesus on the altar and we can just pray and spend time with Him as He is in the room with us.”

For those that do not know, Catholics believe Christ is physically present in the wafer when the priest has consecrated it.

BUT I LOVED THIS.

THESE PEOPLE ARE ACTING AS IF GOD IS IN THE ROOM.

Do we protestants treat church this way?

Do we tell people we bring to Church:

“yeah we will worship and we know Jesus is spiritually in the room and hears our praises.”

“as the word is preached, we can actually hear the words of Christ spoken unto us.”

No. We think “is this music good? is the sermon CoMfoRtinG? did the pastor say something a little edgey that triggered me?”

This is a core reason of why i love charismatics.

They are weird and funky and sometimes overspiritualize.

But they believe God is in the room more than any other sect of protestants.

THE SAINTS PRAYING

After the mass, there is a call to stay and pray with “Jesus” in the room.

It is silent. No g chord pad. No acoustic guitar played by the young tattooed worship leader.

Just silent or whispered prayer as they look on the Blessed Sacrament.

And you know what is happening to my heart during this?

Oh my God, your people actually do pray.

Too often we make prayer an outward display of our smart-guy theology.

We use beautiful vocabulary to try and invoke emotion in people—not a bad thing at all.

But at the expository? it is silent. it is looking around at the young girl praying her rosary, the 65 year old woman praying the liturgies, the 24 year old future priest praying the scriptures.

This built my faith.

What if after our Sunday church service we held the opportunity to stay and pray.

What if the Church returned to the “engine-room” of the prayer meeting?

Leonard Ravenhill once said:

“If you want to know how popular a church is, you go Sunday morning. If you want to know how popular the preacher is, you go Sunday night. If you want to know how popular God is, you go to the prayer meeting — and He loses every time.”

CONCLUSION

I like the protestant church expression more.

But, I think we can learn so much about how church is to look from the mass.

We can remind ourselves that Christ dwells among us.

We can create space for corporate prayer.

Honestly, I wish church was every day hahahha.

I love it.

I want to receive the Eucharist daily. I wan to pray with the saints. I want to be a part of a community that seeks to dwell together in unity.

I think we could learn a lot from the mass.

And may we always recognize Christ’s specific presence within the Church.

Blessings.