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I had an Aunt who was a devout catholic until she died and I'm convinced she knew and loves Jesus and is with Him now. But in my years as a catholic to find that kind of love and joy-filled person is very rare. She was regarded as a bit of an eccentric among the rank and file at the parish. I am filled with the Holy Spirit. I have experienced true worship both corporately and privately. I know a movement of the Spirit when I see it. Maybe you're an exception and somehow when you read your chosen verses you manage to convey a deeper meaning and spark something among your audience but for the most part I've never experienced that once at mass. In the military I've attended mass at locations in different parts of the country and it's predictably the same. There's just no life in the redundancy of the ceremony and none among the obligatory attendees. I had to escape Holy Mother Church with the velocity of an ejection seat. Sorry, you seem to love it more than the One for whom it was created but there's simply no freedom in your religion.

PeteePie,

These are quite a few, subjective and personal observations and perceptions that miss the larger picture.

I ,too, am a lector. I know what it takes to prepare to read the Sacred Scripture in such a way as to elevate and edify for the sake of the listeners. It isn’t about us lectors and we are told that. It’s about prayerful meditating on the Scriptures that we are to read so that we understand it and have assimilated it into our lives. Only in this way can ANYONE benefit from Scripture.

I also am part of a large community of people who have committed themselves, as lay people, to a life of daily prayer, the Divine Office (now known as the Liturgy of the Hours). This practice is the Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer which is the meditative reading of the Psalms, selections from the Epistles and/or the Old Testament.

In my lay community alone (Carmelite) we have about 10,000 committed members. Other lay commmunities, of which there are many, (such as Benedictine, Franciscan, etc.) have equal numbers of members.

There is no way that anyone can qualify or quantify the working of the Holy Spirit in the life of another person.

That you have “experienced true worship” is your experience and you proclaim it. It isn’t prudent to deny the working of the Holy Spirit in any other person. As Scripture tells us, the Spirit moves where He wills. And we poor mortals don’t know the how, where, who and what in all that He does.

**There’s just no life in the redundancy of the ceremony and none among the obligatory attendees. I had to escape Holy Mother Church with the velocity of an ejection seat.**

There is much life in the Catholic Church — are you talking about fellowship? Fellowship doesn’t get you to heaven, believe in Jesus, the REAL PRESENCE in the Holy Eucharist and taking part in the Sacraments gets you on the way to heaven.

You can come back to the Catholic Church any time. I invite you right now. Please sit down with a priest and get your questions answered, for you see, if you were baptized a Catholic — you STILL are a Catholic!

(That is unless you filled out tons of paperwork and had a hearing in front of a panel.

You are being EXTREMELY presumptuous about me.

I am not your Aunt
I am not you

And presuming the mind of a FReeper is against the rules of the Religion Forum.

My relationship with Our Lord is between me and Him. I don’t care what you think of it. It really doesn’t matter to me at all. You are proclaiming over and over that you got nothing out of the Holy Mass. Pity.