My Civic Engagement Experience

       While on Thanksgiving break, my best friend Jackson invited me to attend a Sunday morning mass at Immaculate Conception Catholic church. For my first time going to a church, I wanted to go with a friend who I felt comfortable with talking about it and be able to deal with me questioning it as I have never really been to a mass before as my family is not all that religious and do not go to church. So I decided to give it a try and be open minded to what goes on in a Sunday morning mass at a Catholic church and what my friend believes in. To someone new going to a Sunday morning mass, this was a little overwhelming at first when I did not know how to take it all in. I did not want to be disrespectful and ask questions on what was going on and why but while listening and just observing the families all here for this mass, I couldn't but help be nervous as I was an outsider to all of this and not knowing what was going on. I felt really strange and awkward here as I felt really out of place as I believe in something different than all the people here. It was however,  neat to see how this community comes together and listens and sings as one to something they believe in. When people were singing, I could just see the joy it brought to the ones who actually enjoyed being there and what they believed in. After a while of listening and singing from different versus' from the bible, the priest started to talk about the life lesson message of the day called the Gospel.  This Gospel for this Sunday was LK 23:35-43. This story was very eye opening to me. This Gospel, opened my eyes a little and actually gave me a life lesson. The lesson I took from it was that you need to be willing to accept the consequences for your actions as it was your action and no someone else's.  The Gospel kind of opened my mind to this religion of why everyone here, in my eyes, come to church and believe in this religion.  This gives them a reason to the question to 'why?' that us humans always question.  I take it as a reason to knowing the unknown forces that affect us each day. Close to the end of the mass, we all walked up to receive holy bread and wine that was blessed by the priest. This was where I felt really uncomfortable as an outsider as everyone accepted the bread and wine but my friend told me I could not receive this. I could not accept the bread and wine as I was never baptized or what my friend said was "blessed as a child."  
What I took out of this experience was that it gives people a purpose and sense of reason to what the unknown is. This is important to this community as it can help them make the 'right' decisions in their mind. This is important as it gives everyone a sense of belonging as everyone here believes in the same thing. I believe this is how it must be for other churches with different religions.