God always takes the initiative in our relationship with him: love of him is a gift. So this love, which is the Holy Spirit, is not a hope but a truth. Prayer and worship does nothing for God. It is in part our acknowledgment of who he is and who we are – the one who loves and we who are loved.
Thus, all religious practice is for our benefit, a divine gift to bring us closer to the source of all life and goodness, to nourish the gift of a relationship with God.
Prayer is a growing in love with the one who first loved us. And because this first love is creative, our growth in the relationship helps us become more truly ourselves, more truly who we are.
The gift of the Mass is the source and summit of our Christian lives. In such worship the redemption of the world through Jesus’s Death and Resurrection is made present to us and we are nourished in our journey towards God.
2 comments:
Didn't Jesus come to set us free from all the rituals and legalism of the Old Testament? Jesus fought with the 'religious' people of his day so that we could worship God in spirit and in truth - in other words we could find God everywhere, in a river as much as in a church building...
Gareth
Jesus saves us as a community. God’s salvation begins by choosing a people, the descendants of Abraham (Gen. 12), whom he saves from slavery (Ex. 3-15). Being part of this ‘people of God’ saved from sin, is made possible and opened to all races through the redemption in Christ found in the Church, which is his Body: the people he established. ‘But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people’ (1 Pet. 2.9). So we gather together, in community, to worship God in spirit and in truth. ‘For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them’ said Jesus (Mt 18.20).
What is more, it is God who gives us everything: all of creation and our life; his love and grace and even the rituals to nourish this relationship with him are given. So, the sacraments of the church, celebrated when we are gathered together, are the God-given means for establishing and nourishing both his love for us and our ability to love him. And we love him as part of a family, a community. ‘For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith’ (Gal. 3.26).
Of course we can find God everywhere, but God invites us to his home, the Church and to be his family as sons of the Father and receive his love.
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