St. Paul of the Cross Roman Catholic Church

For Blog 4, I attended the Friday morning mass St. Paul of the Cross Catholic Church in La Mirada. I’ve always liked the way Catholics and Mormons have services every day, and wanted to see what this kind of service would be like and what kind of people would attend.

My brief research into this church beforehand made me expect mostly Hispanic parishioners, which their were. I arrived at the church about 30 minutes before the service started, and I could hear personal prayers being said aloud in Spanish. Of the 40 or so that were there, I was the only one that seemed younger than 50.

The cross is the most common symbol seen at the church, however, the Catholic Church is highly symbolic, and almost all of the decoration, the images and statues, the priest’s clothing, and even the design of the building, have meaning. The symbol I noticed especially was a large, almost to-scale cross with a statue of Jesus Christ hanging from it that hung on the front, inside wall

The service itself was liturgical, with a lot of standing up and sitting down, several scriptural readings, and a short homily by the priest. The only music I heard were old hymns that everyone sang out of an English/Spanish hymnal.

I spoke with a man named Oscar who had been the reader during the service, and he told me he had been attending the church for about 15 years, and that his three daughters were enrolled in the private school run by the church.

My prayer session afterward was very positive. I felt God working at St. Paul’s and thanked him for it.