Sunday, February 28, 2010

Why is mass so boring?

Photo courtesy of Google

Yawnnnnnnnnnnnn... not a very 'ooomph' weekly mass. We Catholics refer to our weekly formal church gatherings as mass. The Protestants refer to it as service.

Today I decided to follow my mom and aunt to church as my mom will be going to KL on Sunday. Dad was in Ipoh for church meeting.

Normally Father Marshall, our resident parish priest of the church of Immaculate Conception will lead the mass. This time, we had a visitor. A Cappuchin priest. Indian specky guy.
All was good as ussual. He was trying to speak with an American accent but sadly a failure. Still I was patient and tolerable.

After, he read the readings from the bible (gospel), he began his homily. Homily is kinda like giving his opinion on the readings.

It was sooo boring. He was soooo in-depth and into biblical times that most of us felt so lost. I mean it is of course good to relate it to the bible. But it was too confusing and became hard to understand.

To make matters worst, he was talking about so many points rather than focusing on one.

I try my best to listen to homilies. I really like homillies that are able to relate with current world scenarios. It serves to me personally as a lesson and how I can approach things in my life in a Christian way.

As all of us Catholics live our daily lives, in offices and in schools, we face so many real life scenarios. We are so into technology especially the Internet, reading about so many things from politics, economy, technology, science etc. We are quite knowledgeable dare I say so.

Would it be possible to talk about something that reflects our daily lives? These lessons would teach us to be better at handling real life scenarios and acting in a Christian way with our colleagues and friends. We would be able to reflect also on how we can be better to others or see things in a more positive way. This lessons and changes would come from within as it is something within our reach and would be tangible.

Rather than to worry about resignning from our jobs and joinning the monestary just because we think we are not doing enough for the world/ believe that it could be a calling.

The change begins within our community, our circle of friends and family members. No one is asking you to go and do wonders. But if you could, deffinitely it would be good! Most of us do not have that ideology of thinking or considering joinning the monestary. So this is the little that we can do to make the world a better place.

I feel such hommilies that are confusing and misleading, result in the congregation dwindling in counts or joinning other churches or denominations. Some would see these as a vague picture of how the church sees things. Some may even change their religion!

I love being a Catholic. I understand and respect the aspects of tradition that need to be maintained. However, how the church approaches and reaches out to us should be with current times.

We are all growing. The religion remains the same. But we need to discover how we can grow with religion in such modern times.