Part 9 — Where you might go next

You have finished a short course, and it has done what a short course can do. If you would like to go further, here are three honest directions.

Go deeper into the texts. Every liturgical source cited in this course is freely available and costs nothing. Read the Order for Holy Communion in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer straight through, then read the same rite in the Sarum Missal, and notice what each one keeps and what each one moves. You will learn more from that comparison than from a shelf of commentary.

Go deeper into the practice. Visit a congregation in a Western Rite tradition other than your own. Go twice, because the first visit is spent being a stranger and the second is when you start noticing things. Take this course's four units with you as a way of paying attention.

Go deeper into study. If this has stirred something more than curiosity — if you find you want to understand the sacraments, the ministry, or the shape of Christian formation properly — the Institute of Ministry offers longer and more demanding courses, and this one was designed as a doorway into them.

Whichever you choose, you now have what you did not have ten hours ago: you can walk into a liturgical church, understand what you are seeing, and explain it kindly to somebody else. That was the whole aim, and it was never a small one.