Amy Welborn recently worshiped at an Eastern Rite parish, and shares her reflections on the visit, including thoughts about the Eastern Rite. Please head over there and read the post.
I especially enjoyed her introduction to the post:
I’m going to do that thing again – that thing of encouraging you Latin-Rite Catholics out there to dip your toe into the Eastern Catholic waters.
Not as a tourist, not as an observer at a zoo, but as a Catholic with other Catholics, worshipping God in ancient rites. Yes, it is confusing – even with a book in hand, you are not quite sure where everyone is all the time – but that is part of the fruit, I think. A letting go, a deepening of a sense that something is going on here, something vital and awe-some, even if I cannot fully follow along. For that is what life is. I may want to control it or feel as if I fully, intellectually understand the why’s and what’s of the events in my life and, most importantly, where God is in every iota of it but that’s really too bad, isn’t it?
She makes an excellent point. When we visit the Eastern Rite parishes, we are taking part in worship with fellow Catholics. The Eastern Rite is a full part of our Catholic heritage. We Latin Rite Catholics are heirs of this heritage too, just as Eastern Rite Catholics can claim the wisdom of the Western Rite. I guess this really hit me, because when I have attended Eastern Rite parishes, it sometimes seems so different (and certainly marvelous) that I always need reminded that we are all Catholics! In terms of communion together, when visiting an Eastern Rite liturgy, we are not outsiders observing the worship of insiders, but rather we are all insiders, in the same Church (even if we visitors of the Latin Rite may be slightly confused insiders!)
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Smallest point of clarification… but it isn’t really accurate to talk about “The Eastern Rite” as their are in point of fact 21 individual Catholic Churches that use 5+ different rites with as many or more rescensions (versions of a rite) as their are churches… Coptic Catholics, Maronite Catholics, Armenian Catholics, Chaldean Catholics and Byzantine Catholics (the latter of which is what I am) are all different and distinct churches that use different rites altogether.
When Greek Catholics attend an Armenian or Maronite or Erritrean Catholic Mass for the first time, we are no more familiar with it than Latin first-timers are to the Byzantine DL.