El Logos

On Friday I subbed at Jenni's school (St. Mary's Catholic School). We had to attend mass. I had several thoughts as I participated in the goings on, actually there was more observation than participation. One major thought I had was how much scripture is weaved in and out of their liturgy. The priest even hit on this in his homiletical address. He talked about the words they say right before they take communion and how they are a reworking of the words the centurion said to Jesus in Luke 7, "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed." (what Catholics say before receiving the Eucharist).
My thoughts over the extraordinary inclusion of scripture into all that they do made me ask the question of "Why?". Why does the Catholic Church have so much scripture inter weaved within their mass and prayers. I have a feeling that the answer has to do with several factors. One major and obvious factor is that the scripture is one of the places Catholics base their belief of Jesus upon (the other being the church - as I understand the Catholic theology). Other factors I might speculate upon would be literacy rates throughout history, the availability of printed scripture, etc. I don't know that I have a good answer as to why, but as I asked the question of "why" I found myself asking "why not?".
The typical protestant church puts much pressure on congregants to study scripture on their own accord. We have individualized the faith. The letters written in the New Testament were letters written to churches, not individuals (excluding Philemon, and the Timothy's - even these letters became documents that were passed around from church to church). It is also inconceivable that the early church had copies of every letter for every person, it is more likely that each congregation (however you want to interpret that) had it's own copies of some of the letters, and maybe not even all... I imagine these types of prayers and repetitious speaking was a common event in their services in order to place the words and thoughts of God in the minds of their people.
I can't believe that we have taken this completely out of our protestant churches. We elevate "fly by the seat of your pants prayers" above scripted ones because they have more personal meaning. By doing so we loose the benefit of filling anothers mind with the Logos (the word). We leave out the congregational reading because it is dry and dull, and yet for some it is the only time they will allow the words of life to pass through their lips.
I am not saying we need to adopt a Catholic service as our own. It was indeed interesting to me - but part of that has to do with it being different. I feel much of it is dull and slow paced, not because the content has lost it's power, but because our culture has lost it's patience. I will be doing thinking on this. I think it is a great idea to be instilling the scripture within a person without expecting them to necessarily have to go and sit down and read it...