Liturgy

It’s amazing how many different ways people find the faith, how many different ways people find God. Some go through a traumatic experience and find the refuge that is the church, some convert, some are convinced, and yet others are born into ‘the’ faith. I’m sure most of us know at least one person who has found Christ through one of these vehicles, but there is another way that is not quite as common: through liturgy. Some encounter the liturgy first, then discover faith.
I stumbled around many ideas. I raised Episcopalian, eventually I decided I didn’t believe in a God, then eventually I decided I really did believe in a God, started attending a Presbyterian Church, decided Anglo-Catholicism was for me, developed strong opinions, and now I simply cannot believe or comprehend that I could ever have once been an atheist (and a staunch one at that) for two and a half years!
The liturgy is what saved me from a self-serving life of ignorance and arrogance. I attended Solemn Mass one Sunday at the Church of the Advent (an Anglo-Catholic parish in Boston) and I was so fascinated with the liturgy that I had to learn more, my research on this officious liturgy led me to try to find and to search for understanding in what was behind the liturgy, the faith itself. I did such, and I am forever indebted to that wonderful Parish for saving me from a future I’m glad is no longer mine.
There many who claim that high liturgy is superficial, irrelevant, disconnected. Some even go far enough to call it idolization and paganism. They are very wrong.
I am disheartened by the immense lack of faith I see in so many congregations and parishes of all denominations. I’ve attended such empty worship services, devoid of anything remotely spiritual or divine. I’ve seen children confirmed and never attend church again thereafter. I’ve seen children graduate atheists from Catholic schools. I cry inside and I fear inside, not only for the ever unsure future of the church as an institution, but also for my neighbors, as the church, the faith provides an incredible structure in human life.
The church provides a structure for community; a structure for outreach and for inreach, for help and for refuge, for understanding and for thought, for friendship and for love. The church as an institution, is an incredible way for us as humans on Earth to live and to love as Christ wants us to, to live an to love as we must.
I truly believe that the disrespect and disregard for divine liturgy is one of the (many) causes for the recent unacceptable short fallings of the church, for the loss of membership, for the loss of faith, for the loss of commitment, for the loss of ministry. There is little faith to be found in most mainstream churches these days; I cry inside and fear inside because of it.
It makes no sense to attempt to understand the divine in an earthly manner, yet so many try. Why not try to understand and encounter(!) the divine in a divine manner? I should think that an obvious conclusion, but few see it.

One of the first steps to fixing our broken church, is by fixing the liturgy in our congregations, by restoring high liturgy, and by embracing the divine liturgy.
Peace and Prayers.