Mass of the Holy Spirit???

Thursday was the Mass of the Holy Spirit at SLU. I figured it was a pretty important thing considering that they cancelled all classes for it. I wasn’t going to go until I told Pastor Lindy on Monday night and he encouraged me to go and see what it was all about.

Since I have grown up in an A/G Church my whole life I know a lot about the Holy Spirit. So, when I read that we were having a Mass of the Holy Spirit, I was like, “Okay, Holy Spirit, why not?” Little did I know, Mass of the Holy Spirit is actually a mass. (Note to self when attending events at SLU: anything with the word mass, is probably mass…)

I had never attended a mass before so I was very confused. Once I realized I was in mass, I wanted to leave, but figured it would be rude to get up in the middle and leave. I know I would be offended if someone got up and left from a special service at my church.

Anyway, the Catholics have all of these cues of when they speak and stuff, which kinda freaked me out, not gonna lie. I tried hard to stand and sit when I was supposed to, even though I had no clue when to or why…

And then the priest or maybe it’s the father, got up and blessed some water in a bowl making it holy water. That was weird, but then he walked around the room and sprinkled us with it (which was even weirder) and the people all around me did that weird cross thing across their chest. Me, I was thinking, “Why in the world did you just sprinkle me with water? I know I walked across campus today, but I did have a shower already this morning, and it’s rude not to give me a towel to dry off with…” I wasn’t sure if it was rude wipe the water off my face and arm, so I just let it air dry. It took every thing in me not to wipe it off.

They sang some more songs and said the Lord’s Prayer while holding hands, which I thought was odd, but whatever.

They also read scripture from the bible. I thought they did a good job with that though. They read about the Tower of Babel, Acts 2, and something from Luke. I was impressed with the reading of Acts 2.

And finally we got to communion. Someone announced to the audience that if you weren’t catholic you could still come up for a blessing, just not take the emblems, and you had to cross your arms over your chest like they make you do when going down a waterslide. I decided it wasn’t worth the walk up to receive blessing if I couldn’t take the emblems, so I stayed in my seat. I was very disappointed with communion. First off, they all drink from the same cup, which is disgusting! And Secondly, they don’t read the scripture together and you can’t snap your little Styrofoam wafer thing when it says, “He took the bread and broke it.” They just walk up in a line and eat the bread and drink the wine. I should have told them they were doing it all wrong and showed them how its done7…

Finally, there was another song and maybe a blessing, I can’t remember, I zoned out about halfway through…

Let me just say that I was extremely happy this morning when I got to worship the way I wanted to and take communion without any question. I also was super happy to snap my wafer in half at the allotted time. (I don’t know why that makes me so happy, but it does ;) )

In closing, it will probably be too soon if I ever have to attend another mass, it’s just not my thing, LOL!