Ahmad Goes to Catholic Church (P1b)

Right, this is where I share the experience of communal service in a Catholic Church on a Sunday, following on from Part1a. It's a brilliant, sunny day outside today, but it's too hot for Ahmad to be out and it's better I keep myself enclosed in my room and just type away on my laptop.

The Catholics in the Church
I had the notion that it would be old, white folks coming to the Church for some blessing they think they receive on a Sunday. I'm not saying Christianity is a white man's religion as I know much of South America and Central America, as well as many parts of Far East Asia are Christians, but my city is predominantly white and the ethnic minorities are usually made of students and tourists (and the working class Asians in catering). Hinduism, on the other hand, is originally brown man's religion (India being the birthplace) and I have not heard of non-brown converts to Hinduism.

I was quite right about my notion, but it was intriguing to find people from other cultures and races as well, such as Filipino, black and even one brown dude!

As I entered ...
A lady was handing out leaflets about which hymn they are going to sing that day. A hymn is a song, usually of religious nature, to praise and venerate the deity or a saint. A Christian hymn was defined as "A hymn is the praise of God with song; a song is the exultation of the mind dwelling on eternal things, bursting forth in the voice." The closest match in Islam to a hymn is a Nasheed (نشيد). I collected one leaflet and the particular hymn to be sung that Sunday was called "Hail the day that sees him rise"

The hymn had the first three lines as follows:

Hail the day that sees him rise, alleluia!
To his throne above the skies; alleluia!
Christ, the Lamb for sinners given, alleluia!

The word "alleluia" literally means "Praise God" and this particular hymn is about the Christians praising the Christ Jesus ascending. It should be noted that these hymns were not read or created at the times of Jesus, as this particular hymn is taken from 1742 book "Hymns and Sacred Poems" by Charles Wesley. The earliest song found in Biblical Scripture is the Song of Songs, which is said to be the Song that Solomon (Prophet Sulayman) sang to show love for his woman.

I chose to sit closer to the back of the masses so that I can observe things from a wider angle and not be mistaken for a devout Catholic. They have this type of seating arrangement in the Church, I'm not sure how to explain it, so I'd just show it in picture.

As soon as a Catholic comes in, he/she bends down on their knees on that platform and makes some kind of prayer. It looks like it's a thing to do when you enter the Church, much like you have 2 units of prayer called 'Tahiyyatul Masjid' as you enter a Mosque. Although the Catholics would do this prayer thing on that platform a number of times during the communal service.

I don't feel like continuing with the rest of the experience right now. The communal service was about to start then, and I'd share it some other time ...