I love reading historical fiction. It is a genre of books that I always seem to fall back on when finding something to read. There are so many different kinds of historical fiction and they are always very interesting. I was surprised at how much I know about Roman Liturgy just from the historically based novel series I have read.
I found the assigned reading on Roman Liturgies very interesting. I have learned from my many past worldview classes how some of our current practices and traditions in churches have been passed down from Roman Catholicism. Roman Catholicism is the foundational church for the Christian churches. Almost every other denomination split off from the Roman Catholic Church. With other denominations being derived from Roman Catholicism, it makes sense that some of the traditions and practices have spread to other denominations. Some of these traditions were started in the early church and solidified with Catholicism while Catholicism started the others. One example of this is Advent. Advent is a tradition that was started in the Catholic Church and was continued on when other churches split off.
As I continued reading, I realized how similar modern day worship is to medieval Roman worship. The order in which mass was structured reminded me of how I am used to a church service being conducted. In mass, there is a lot more traditional statements and structure that I do not normally see when I go to church. However, the similarities are striking. Because there are so many similarities and it would take an entire thesis to explain, I am to give one example. The Benediction is one of the striking similarities in the services. The Benediction was a similarity that I was not expecting and stuck out to me. For those who do not know what a Benediction is, it is the time at the end of the service where the congregation is dismissed by the pastor. Sometimes this is right after a closing worship song which is also called the Benediction. This is very similar to what the reading said happened in the Roman Church. The Benediction was similar if not the same.
Did you see any similarities to the Roman Catholic mass to modern services?
I commented on Ian’s and Isabelle’s posts.
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