Why does a God who claims to be love, ask us to worship Him? It would seem that a God who is selfless would only seek to give, but the God of Jacob, the God of Issac, the God of Abraham has demanded our worship. Why? As one who has been plagued with this question, I seek to explain the end of my thoughts, that is to say, what I believe God has revealed to me in fruitful silence.
Here are the questions that were to me keys of light to open the doors of understanding.
How can we come to know of God?
What is worship?
What is it in the nature of worship to belong to God alone? Why has Mother Church forbade us to worship people we love, especially Mary?
To the first question: How can we come to know of God? As Aquinas explains in his Prologue of the Gospel of John, we are finite creatures and thus we are limited in our finality, that is to say, as creature who have limits we cannot fully capture the infinity that has no limits. However, our limited capacity does not keep us from being able to understand the nature of God, it means that we will not be able to fully exhaust the mystery of our Creator; as a cup cannot capture the ocean, but it can hold some of it. Thus, we have the basis that we can know of God, but we may never find His ends. With this firm confidence of being able to know of our creator, let us turn our minds to the prayer that God himself taught us in Jesus Christ his Son.
Why are the first words of the perfect prayer, “Our Father,” and why is it that this is how God seeks to make Himself known to us? He is Lord of Lords, King of Kings, True God from True God yet he makes Himself known as Father because the nature of the First Person of the Trinity is most perfectly revealed to us as a Father in Heaven. Jesus conveys to us a mystery of the trinity through our humanity. Through our human familial bonds, we begin to understand God as Father through God the Son; and thus we learn that not only is our humanity a gift from God but through it we can come to better understand our relationship with Him. With this in mind, let us begin to answer the question What is Worship.
Worship is the divine I love you. Worship is how we tell God with the actions of our spirit I love you. Yet this explanation still leaves thirst for clarity. If worship is the act of love, why is it that we can not worship those that we love. Why is it that I am not allowed to worship Mary for all that she has done for me? The answer is because worship is the Divine Act of Love, and is perfectly related to us through our humanity in the gift of sex; as it is, exclusive, intimate, a full gift, and dignified.
It is exclusive, as Worship belongs to God alone. You shall not bow down to any other god, for the LORD—“Jealous” his name—is a jealous God (Exodus 34:14). It is exclusive because like sex it requires the total gift of self in the most intimate way. Like sex, this act of loverequires the supreme and total gift of self. Worship is the unrestrained gift of love to God. It is the gift of our very being to Being itself. If we are to give this act of divine love to anything other than God, if we are to give all of ourselves to anything other than the One True God, we would be committing divine adultery.
No more shall you be called “Forsaken,” nor your land called “Desolate,” But you shall be called “My Delight is in her,” and your land “Espoused.” For the LORD delights in you, and your land shall be espoused. For as a young man marries a virgin, your Builder shall marry you; And as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride so shall your God rejoice in you. (Isaiah 64:4-5)
But still the mystery goes further as we contemplate the nature of the Trinity we find that worship has a most noble dignity. Love must have three things present for it to exist, a lover, a beloved, and the love between the two. God is the Divine Act of Love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. From his seat in eternity, God always possessed in His essence the fullness of Love. God the Father has looked at His Son with total love, and the beloved Son has received and returned the Father’s love, and this eternal exchange of love is the Holy Spirit. Now in the present age we are called to participate in the eternal exchange of love shared by the Holy Trinity.Our builder created us to worship Him not out of egotism but rather, out of His own nature of love. So that out of love, Love himself called us to participate in the Divine Act of Being, which is the transmitting of love, and the perfection of which is worship. Thus, we come to understand the high dignity of worship and that God calls us to worship Him out of shear goodness to participate in His Divine Act of Being.
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