My recent experience attending a Slovak Catholic church
October 23, 2015 at 10:29 pm
(This post was last modified: October 23, 2015 at 10:34 pm by Mudhammam.)
This was part of an assignment for my Comparative Religions class. It turned out to be interesting enough that I thought I might as well share it here.
A couple of Saturdays ago, I dragged my girlfriend with me to Catholic mass. We did not know which church to attend, so, after we had left from visiting with my mother to go out for a late lunch date, we decided we would simply go to a random five or six o’clock service in the area (earlier I had looked around on the internet and there were plenty to choose from). Before we drove more than a couple of miles, however, we saw numerous cars were filing into Ss. Cyril & Methodius Slovak Catholic Church. My girlfriend told me to pull in there. “Let’s just get it over with” were her precise words. So, I turned the car around and we did exactly that.
The interior of the building wasn’t all that spectacular. I have definitely seen more beautiful structures; having grown up an Evangelical, only attending Catholic churches on a few occasions with my grandmothers, it looked rather like a familiar place of worship. As we were walking towards the entrance we passed some sort of shrine where a couple of people were praying, and a table where DVDs were being sold (I didn’t stop to find out what they were but would learn soon enough).
Inside we quickly found a seat near the back. Everyone was citing a prayer in unison, which I thought was interesting. We were about ten minutes early but the place filled up quickly, people kneeling and signing the cross before they entered into whichever row they decided to sit. I opened up the hymn book that I found in front of me, saw the Nicene Creed, a number of prayers and other useful information, some in Latin. Once the service started, we sang some hymns, which I quite enjoyed (who doesn’t like sing-alongs?). They were a lot different than the contemporary-style of worship that I am more accustomed to, where there is a full band on stage and everyone sings each word on the projector screen at the head of the sanctuary. Here there was simply an organ player, who did the bulk of the singing, followed by a line or a chorus in which the congregation would participate (though there was one hymn which we all sang together). At any rate, I much preferred this.
When the sing-along was finished, the female organ player read a passage from the book of Wisdom, which I found deeply moving (I’ll include it at the end of this summary). As it is my hope to become a philosopher one day, I thought of something I had recently read in Augustine’s seminal work, City of God. The word “philosopher” derives from Pythagoras. Augustine says: “When Pythagoras was asked about his profession, he replied that he was a ‘philosopher’, that is, a devotee, or lover of wisdom” (VIII. 2). Thus, I viewed the words spoken in Wisdom as praise for true philosophy, and they resonated with me; there’s also the fact that this work is very ancient, which naturally added to the allure of its already seductive imagery.
When the priest came up, he told the story of St. Maria Goretti. She was an Italian girl who lost her father at a young age to malaria (he contracted it through a mosquito bite!). She had to take over household duties, including the care of her five younger siblings, as her mother took over upkeep of the family farm, which was their livelihood. The family also began to share their house with a widower and his son, the Serenellis, to help out with labour and finances. The Serenelli son, named Alessandro, found Maria very attractive and pressured her to accede her virginity to him. When she continually refused, he brutally murdered her by stabbing her fourteen times. She was only eleven years old. The priest went into very graphic detail and there were many tears among the congregants. As the young girl lay on her deathbed, doctors doing everything they could to stitch up her wounds and stop the internal bleeding, the girl said that she forgave Alessandro Serenelli and wanted him to become a Catholic.
To keep a long story short, Alessandro spent 27 years in prison, during which time he had a dream of Maria that he took as a heavenly vision. He repented and become a Catholic, and following his release from prison, did a lot of charitable work in the church. Maria, whose name and image apparently sometimes carry magical healing powers when evoked, was granted sainthood (the only time that a Saint’s parent i.e. Maria’s mother, was present at such a ceremony). According to the priest, he thinks even Alessandro, Maria’s murderer, is on his way to sainthood. The point of the story was that Maria’s act of forgiveness, to choose to be a saint in the face of death, turned a horrific crime into an event that has positively impacted millions of people around the world. Then, however, the service turned far more fascinating than I could have hoped for.
As it turns out, St. Maria’s bones are currently on tour in the U.S. and she was at the church that very day! They are kept inside a wax statue, which was in a glass case in another room. The priest said that there were prayer cards, with the pictures of Maria Goretti and Alessandro Serenelli, that everybody could get in the room where the body was on display. These cards, which touched the relic (the wax statue) itself, have special power to heal, and moreover, the priest said that if you visit the statue, do confession, take the Eucharist, and a few other things, then you can get “Plenary indulgences” for yourself or for a deceased relative - apparently to get them out of purgatory or something. Anyway, they did the Eucharist next but I didn’t stay. The place was packed and I wanted to go see the wax statue before everyone filed into the the other room. I certainly wasn’t interested in waiting in a long, long line to see where the dead saint’s bones were kept, and since I’m not a Catholic, it would have been pointless to sit through Holy Communion. My girlfriend and I got the cards, saw the statue, and left before getting bogged down by traffic.
Overall, I liked the service, minus the weird bits about venerating dead people and obviously fictitious stories about Maria’s prayer cards possessing miraculous powers. The room with the bones was also filled with merchandise tables (the DVDs I saw earlier were about the saint’s life), which explained to me why the church is either so cynical in creating such stories about miraculous cards out of thin air or credulous in believing them as such. My girlfriend didn’t like the idea that Alessandro was this great figure simply because he turned his life around and was forgiven by the little girl, but as I told her, “I’m all about redemption.” In the end, it was a cool experience, and I feel lucky that we ended up going - without a clue of what to expect beforehand - and witnessing something that probably doesn’t occur too often.
Therefore I prayed, and prudence was given me;
I pleaded and the spirit of Wisdom came to me.
I preferred her to scepter and throne,
And deemed riches nothing in comparison with her,
nor did I liken any priceless gem to her;
Because all gold, in view of her, is a bit of sand,
and before her, silver is to be accounted mire.
Beyond health and beauty I loved her,
And I chose to have her rather than the light,
because her radiance never ceases.
Yet all good things together came to me with her,
and countless riches at her hands;
I rejoiced in them all, because Wisdom is their leader,
though I had not known that she is their mother.
- Wisdom 7:7-12
A couple of Saturdays ago, I dragged my girlfriend with me to Catholic mass. We did not know which church to attend, so, after we had left from visiting with my mother to go out for a late lunch date, we decided we would simply go to a random five or six o’clock service in the area (earlier I had looked around on the internet and there were plenty to choose from). Before we drove more than a couple of miles, however, we saw numerous cars were filing into Ss. Cyril & Methodius Slovak Catholic Church. My girlfriend told me to pull in there. “Let’s just get it over with” were her precise words. So, I turned the car around and we did exactly that.
The interior of the building wasn’t all that spectacular. I have definitely seen more beautiful structures; having grown up an Evangelical, only attending Catholic churches on a few occasions with my grandmothers, it looked rather like a familiar place of worship. As we were walking towards the entrance we passed some sort of shrine where a couple of people were praying, and a table where DVDs were being sold (I didn’t stop to find out what they were but would learn soon enough).
Inside we quickly found a seat near the back. Everyone was citing a prayer in unison, which I thought was interesting. We were about ten minutes early but the place filled up quickly, people kneeling and signing the cross before they entered into whichever row they decided to sit. I opened up the hymn book that I found in front of me, saw the Nicene Creed, a number of prayers and other useful information, some in Latin. Once the service started, we sang some hymns, which I quite enjoyed (who doesn’t like sing-alongs?). They were a lot different than the contemporary-style of worship that I am more accustomed to, where there is a full band on stage and everyone sings each word on the projector screen at the head of the sanctuary. Here there was simply an organ player, who did the bulk of the singing, followed by a line or a chorus in which the congregation would participate (though there was one hymn which we all sang together). At any rate, I much preferred this.
When the sing-along was finished, the female organ player read a passage from the book of Wisdom, which I found deeply moving (I’ll include it at the end of this summary). As it is my hope to become a philosopher one day, I thought of something I had recently read in Augustine’s seminal work, City of God. The word “philosopher” derives from Pythagoras. Augustine says: “When Pythagoras was asked about his profession, he replied that he was a ‘philosopher’, that is, a devotee, or lover of wisdom” (VIII. 2). Thus, I viewed the words spoken in Wisdom as praise for true philosophy, and they resonated with me; there’s also the fact that this work is very ancient, which naturally added to the allure of its already seductive imagery.
When the priest came up, he told the story of St. Maria Goretti. She was an Italian girl who lost her father at a young age to malaria (he contracted it through a mosquito bite!). She had to take over household duties, including the care of her five younger siblings, as her mother took over upkeep of the family farm, which was their livelihood. The family also began to share their house with a widower and his son, the Serenellis, to help out with labour and finances. The Serenelli son, named Alessandro, found Maria very attractive and pressured her to accede her virginity to him. When she continually refused, he brutally murdered her by stabbing her fourteen times. She was only eleven years old. The priest went into very graphic detail and there were many tears among the congregants. As the young girl lay on her deathbed, doctors doing everything they could to stitch up her wounds and stop the internal bleeding, the girl said that she forgave Alessandro Serenelli and wanted him to become a Catholic.
To keep a long story short, Alessandro spent 27 years in prison, during which time he had a dream of Maria that he took as a heavenly vision. He repented and become a Catholic, and following his release from prison, did a lot of charitable work in the church. Maria, whose name and image apparently sometimes carry magical healing powers when evoked, was granted sainthood (the only time that a Saint’s parent i.e. Maria’s mother, was present at such a ceremony). According to the priest, he thinks even Alessandro, Maria’s murderer, is on his way to sainthood. The point of the story was that Maria’s act of forgiveness, to choose to be a saint in the face of death, turned a horrific crime into an event that has positively impacted millions of people around the world. Then, however, the service turned far more fascinating than I could have hoped for.
As it turns out, St. Maria’s bones are currently on tour in the U.S. and she was at the church that very day! They are kept inside a wax statue, which was in a glass case in another room. The priest said that there were prayer cards, with the pictures of Maria Goretti and Alessandro Serenelli, that everybody could get in the room where the body was on display. These cards, which touched the relic (the wax statue) itself, have special power to heal, and moreover, the priest said that if you visit the statue, do confession, take the Eucharist, and a few other things, then you can get “Plenary indulgences” for yourself or for a deceased relative - apparently to get them out of purgatory or something. Anyway, they did the Eucharist next but I didn’t stay. The place was packed and I wanted to go see the wax statue before everyone filed into the the other room. I certainly wasn’t interested in waiting in a long, long line to see where the dead saint’s bones were kept, and since I’m not a Catholic, it would have been pointless to sit through Holy Communion. My girlfriend and I got the cards, saw the statue, and left before getting bogged down by traffic.
Overall, I liked the service, minus the weird bits about venerating dead people and obviously fictitious stories about Maria’s prayer cards possessing miraculous powers. The room with the bones was also filled with merchandise tables (the DVDs I saw earlier were about the saint’s life), which explained to me why the church is either so cynical in creating such stories about miraculous cards out of thin air or credulous in believing them as such. My girlfriend didn’t like the idea that Alessandro was this great figure simply because he turned his life around and was forgiven by the little girl, but as I told her, “I’m all about redemption.” In the end, it was a cool experience, and I feel lucky that we ended up going - without a clue of what to expect beforehand - and witnessing something that probably doesn’t occur too often.
Therefore I prayed, and prudence was given me;
I pleaded and the spirit of Wisdom came to me.
I preferred her to scepter and throne,
And deemed riches nothing in comparison with her,
nor did I liken any priceless gem to her;
Because all gold, in view of her, is a bit of sand,
and before her, silver is to be accounted mire.
Beyond health and beauty I loved her,
And I chose to have her rather than the light,
because her radiance never ceases.
Yet all good things together came to me with her,
and countless riches at her hands;
I rejoiced in them all, because Wisdom is their leader,
though I had not known that she is their mother.
- Wisdom 7:7-12
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza
. You would've gotten a blessing from the priest you know! Non-catholics can simply cross their arms over their chest to indicate they have not received the sacrament of holy communion and receive a blessing instead. (I haven't set foot in a Catholic church in a good 15 years, why do I remember this again????)
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