Sacred Places Research Paper

A common consensus of a sacred place is that it encompasses a physical place. This place is a designated area where we are free to worship, release the burdens of life and verbally or physically communicate with God. More importantly, sacred places are said to be places of healing and spiritual development. As with any natural living process, organisms grow and change in sync with a rapidly evolving environment. This can be vaguely applied to the concept of sacred places which is mainly regarded as the church. Many consider the church environment to have subcultures in which those aiming for a unified function are most likely to thrive. This concept of unity is the central concept of sacred place.
Last Sunday (04/ 03/2016) I had the opportunity to visit Saint Paul Catholic Mass for a Sunday morning worship service. Before attending the service I developed my own thoughts about Catholicism and how “wrong” their form of worship is from the mainline Protestant church.
Ultimately, my preconceived notions about Catholicism clouded the first thirty minutes of my experience at Mass. As time went on I began to recognize that worship to God is all the same, the manner in which the worship is carried out may vary but in the end it is all …show more content…
The designated space given for the church is given character and meaning that gives birth to a well developed place. Without meaning sacred places would just be spaces (1). It is not until we develop a sense of meaning with spaces when we begin to feel a sense of home with the built establishments. I conducted a small survey with a sample size of five people and all mentioned that a sacred place first has to be a physical place and then has to display some sense of home. The added feature of home gives sacred places the ability to become places of refuge and furthermore places of social interaction —third