Let me start by saying that I have attended many types of worship services. I went to a conservative Lutheran Church until I was 7. I have worshiped in several different countries, seen charismatic and high liturgical services but no church service or mass that I have ever attended was as amazing as the mass we attended at the Köln Cathedral. By saying this I do not mean the content of the service was amazing as I only understood parts of it, but the grandeur of the service itself was overwhelming. The service involved almost every sense from smell with the incense to sight with how the Cathedral was beautiful and absolutely colossal. It’s a form of worship all by itself. The service was quite different from my home church. My home church is in the inner city on the west side of Chicago. It’s very diverse and much smaller than the Cathedral, not to mention the difference in language, content, worship music and tone of the service – people shout out in our services and that wouldn’t happen in the reverent Catholic mass.
I really enjoyed the service itself even though I could not understand most of it other than the Lord’s Prayer. It’s amazing how a person can worship totally in another language the same God together, it’s a picture of heaven. I actually recorded the entire service so I can listen to it again. My favorite part of the service was the organ music. My former piano teacher is a world-renowned organist and has played that organ, which must have been absolutely amazing. It was an unbelievably huge organ two stories high and had the trumpets in the back of the cathedral.
I can definitely see why there are more than 20,000 tourists that visit the cathedral. It is so beautiful and it is so detailed over its entire surface. It’s hard to believe that the technology existed to plan a structure of this size and detail over 800 years ago, although it did take several hundred years to complete. The church was meant to be the home of the relic s of the bones of the three wise men. These bones are encased in an all gold structure as a focal point inside the church. The rest of the inside is amazing too, with the massive amount of stained glass windows that tell various stories from the Bible, illustrate the prophets, and show the saints and various other items. There are also many statues all over the inside and outside of the church.
It is a shame that so many people come through the Cathedral to see the art and architecture and don’t see God in it even though the stories are all around them. I am so grateful to have had the chance to truly worship God in such an amazing place.