Hello.
The last two Sundays, I have attended Mass at the other Catholic church in town with my boyfriend and his friends. The church they attend is within walking distance of the college campus, and so consists mostly of college kids. The one I attend is mostly families, which is something I like about it.
More than that, though, I attend the other Catholic church because I felt it would be a distraction to an honest investigation of Catholicism to sit beside my boyfriend in Mass.
It is.
But I enjoy the service all the same. It's absolutely beautiful standing beside the man I love, both of us holding our hands up with the rest of the assembly, singing the Lord's Prayer together with the Church. I find my thoughts wandering from us to the rest of the world, who will all read the same Scriptures today, repeat the Lord's Prayer together today, proclaim the mystery* together, and receive the Eucharist together today all over the world. But more on that later.
(*proclaim the mystery of faith - all say, "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.")
So, the Mass.
Today I was struck with the beautiful mystery of the Catholic faith. There are so many connections that I'd never noted before.
For example, I'm beginning to understand Mary as sort of a first symbol of the Church. She was the first person to ever be devoted to Christ. The Bible says she was "full of grace", which the Catholic church believes means that she was filled with God's grace even from infancy. In all of human history, God could have chosen any woman to be the mother of Jesus, and he chose Mary.
I also cried again today during Communion. I would like to discuss that in more detail later, so I'll leave it for now.
I also plan to write a post about my journey to Catholicism, both in terms of the actual events and in terms of the structure of my belief changes that led me to this. But it's getting quite late here, so I'll postpone that discussion as well.
God be with you.
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