Within the four walls of a church building, I always hope that I will find something mystical, spiritual, something miles away from the mundane. Empty churches often have this quality for me (the older they are, the more I feel it) - but until I joined the Catholic Church this year I never found it during church services.

  Acts of worship in the Anglican community were to me very much a "going through the motions" kind of thing. Even at a church I'd attended for many years, I always felt that I was the outsider, looking in - but maybe looking in at something that didn't really mean much to me. It was kind of "oh yes, that's what we do and say at church. And now we go home and get on with our lives".

  Catholic Masses are different. There are lots of "cradle Catholics" for whom the Mass is not something they just attend once a week, it's something they have always had in their lives. It's part of their make-up - they are Catholics with a capital "C". For myself as a middle-aged convert, I can feel the connection with fellow-Catholics all over the world, whether I'm attending my home church or one in another country, which I do very often. I feel a sense of belonging and that sense of mysticism is now there for me, in the miracle of the Mass, as our priest always describes it.