Day 273: Him Only Shall You Serve (2095-2103)

• It’s Day 273!!

• “HIM ONLY SHALL YOU SERVE”

• ADORATION

• PRAYER

• SACRIFICE

• PROMISES AND VOWS

• Let’s pray!!

Prayer by Fr. Mike: “Father in Heaven, because of Jesus, we have access to your heart. We thank you for your Son. We thank you for loving us so much that you have given us not only your Son but also your Holy Spirit as another Paraclete as another Helper that has been poured out into our hearts. Thank you, Lord God. Thank you, Father. Thank you, Son and Holy Spirit. Holy Trinity, you are truly the mystery of mysteries, and we can hardly understand you, but help us to love you. Help us to love you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Help us to love you, one God. Help us to adore you. And every time we pray, help us to pray to you. Help us to know who it is that we are talking to. Help us to know who it is that loves us so much. Lord God, let every moment of this day be a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to you and to your glory. We make this prayer in the mighty name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen”

• So there we have it!!

• “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.”

• Paragraph 2095 says, “The theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity inform and give life to the moral virtues. Thus charity leads us to render to God what we as creatures owe him in all justice. The virtue of religion disposes us to have this attitude.”

• The virtue of religion is a proper virtue that belongs to the virtue of Justice

• Even ancient Greeks talked about virtues like justice

• Giving someone what they are owed

• Giving someone what is their due

• There are sub-virtues under the bigger umbrella of justice

• The first virtue of justice is the virtue of religion

• Giving to God what we owe to God

• ADORATION

• Paragraph 2096 says, “Adoration is the first act of the virtue of religion. To adore God is to acknowledge him as God, as the Creator and Savior, the Lord and Master of everything that exists, as infinite and merciful Love. ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve,’ says Jesus, citing Deuteronomy.”

• The first thing that we owe to God is to acknowledge that God is God and we are not

• That is the first act of the virtue of religion, which is the first sub-virtue under the virtue of justice

• If we want to be virtuous people who are standing upright before the Lord, adoration must be a regular part of our day

• So what is adoration?

• Paragraph 2097 says, “To adore God is to acknowledge, in respect and absolute submission, that ‘nothingness of the creature’ who would not exist but for God. To adore God is to praise and exalt him and to humble oneself, as Mary did in the Magnificat, confessing with gratitude that he has done great things and holy is his name. The worship of the one God sets man free from turning in on himself, from the slavery of sin and the idolatry of the world.”

• Without God, I am nothing

• That is just the beginning

• Humility is not insulting yourself  

• “Humility is not thinking less of yourself. Humility is thinking of yourself less.”

• This is the truth: “Lord God, without you, I am nothing. Before you, I am insignificant in comparison to your absolute goodness.”

• This is not putting oneself down

• That is simply describing the truth

• To adore God is to praise and exalt God and to humble oneself

• Why do we worship God?

• Not because God needs us to

• To worship God sets us FREE from turning in on ourselves

• It is the same thing with LOVE

• If you have experienced actual LOVE, not just affectionate love, where you are called upon to give of yourself, then you realize this

• To love anything brings you out of yourself

• It takes you out of yourself

• Adoration does the same thing

• Worship is meant to do the same thing

• It breaks open our small little words that we are so quick to turn in on ourselves

• How many times are you driving in your car and you are in your own little world and forget the fact that all these other cars have people inside of them with their own little worlds?

• If we just paused for a moment, we would realize that there are all these people, beings made in God’s image as well, for whom Jesus Christ died as well and He wants them to experience His Holy Spirit as well

• There is more than just us

• There is more than just me

• PRAYER

• Paragraph 2098 says, “The acts of faith, hope, and charity enjoined by the first commandment are accomplished in prayer. Lifting up the mind toward God is an expression of our adoration of God: prayer of praise and thanksgiving, intercession, and petition. Prayer is an indispensable condition for being able to obey God’s commandments. ‘[We] ought always to pray and not lose heart.’”

• Let’s listen to Fr. Mike’s story about Mark Heart…

• “Prayer does not help your relationship with God. Prayer IS your relationship with God.”

• If we do not pray, then we do not have a relationship with God, not one that is alive

• SACRIFICE

• Paragraph 2099 says, “It is right to offer sacrifice to God as a sign of adoration and gratitude, supplication and communion: ‘Every action done so as to cling to God in communion of holiness, and thus achieve blessedness, is a true sacrifice.’”

• Anything offered to God, anything you do, whether you are working, working out, sleeping, taking care of someone else, EVERY ACTION OFFERED TO GOD is a sacrifice

• A TRUE SACRIFICE

• There is no moment of your day that does not have to be a sacrifice or a part of worship

• Paragraph 2100 says, “Outward sacrifice, to be genuine, must be the expression of spiritual sacrifice: ‘The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit…’ The prophets of the Old Covenant often denounced sacrifices that were not from the heart or not coupled with love of neighbor. Jesus recalls the words of the prophet Hosea: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ The only perfect sacrifice is the one that Christ offered on the cross as a total offering to the Father’s love for our salvation. By uniting ourselves with his sacrifice we can make our lives a sacrifice to God.”

• It is not just outward sacrifice

• It is united to our inner heart

• We are not just on our own offering something as a sacrifice

• We are uniting those things with the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross, because that is the only perfect sacrifice

• PROMISES AND VOWS

• Paragraph 2101 says, “In many circumstances, the Christian is called to make promises to God. Baptism and Confirmation, Matrimony and Holy Orders always entail promises. Out of personal devotion, the Christian may also promise to God this action, that prayer, this alms-giving, that pilgrimage, and so forth. Fidelity to promises made to God is a sign of the respect owed to the divine majesty and of love for a faithful God.”

• “God, I promise you that, out of love for you, I want to pray for the next 29 days for 29 minutes in the presence of your Blessed Sacrament.”

• That could be a thing someone chooses to do

• That is an exemplary thing

• Why?

• Because fidelity to promises made to God is a sign of respect owed to the divine majesty and of love for a faithful God

• You don’t have to make promises

• St. Francis de Sales made a promise to pray the Rosary every day of his life

• Someone asked him, “Should I make that same promise?”

• St. Francis de Sales said, “No, just pray the Rosary every day. You don’t have to make a promise to pray the Rosary every day.”

• He made that promise but he also recognized because of that promise it limits him

• That is what promises do

• Promises limit us

• Think about Matrimony

• You make a promise to this one person and it limits you 

• That limitation is ACTUALLY freedom

• The limitation is, I promise no one else but you

• So I have limited myself to my spouse

• And now that gives me the freedom to FULLY LOVE MY SPOUSE and it gives my spouse the freedom to FULLY LOVE ME

• St. Francis wanted the people to have a different kind of freedom

• Not just the freedom to always pray the Rosary no matter what

• But the freedom to also choose another kind of prayer

• Does that make sense?

• You may be called to make that promise like St. Francis de Sales

• Weigh that out with a spiritual director of some sort before you make that kind of promise

• A vow is something more serious

• Paragraph 2102 says, “‘A vow is a deliberate and free promise made to God concerning a possible and better good which must be fulfilled by reason of the virtue of religion,’ A vow is an act of devotion in which the Christian dedicates himself to God or promises him some good work. By fulfilling his vows he renders to God what has been promised and consecrated to Him. The Acts of the Apostles shows us St. Paul concerned to fulfill the vows he had made.”

• An example is the evangelical counsels like vows of poverty, chastity, obedience

• Benedictine monks and nuns make a vow of obedience to their superior

• So do a lot of other religious communities

• When you make that vow of obedience, when it comes to what you do and what you don’t do, it will always be in obedience to that person you made the vow to

• Lumen Gentium says in Paragraph 2103, “Mother Church rejoices that she has within herself many men and women who pursue the Savior’s self-emptying more closely and show it forth more clearly, by undertaking poverty with the freedom of the children of God, and renouncing their own will: they submit themselves to man for the sake of God, thus going beyond what is of precept in the matter of perfection, so as to conform themselves more fully to the obedient Christ. The Church can, in certain cases and for proportionate reasons, dispense from vows and promises.”

• For 30 years of Jesus’ life, He returned to Nazareth and was obedient to His earthly parents, Mary and Joseph

• An individual might desire to say, “Ok, I want to go beyond the normal realm of obedience when it comes to obeying God and His Commandments. I am going to go beyond that and actually submit my will to a human being for the sake of God.”

• That is some of the blessing and benefit of making vows

• If a person mas made a vow, the Church can dispense a person from those vows in certain cases

• Not in all cases

• Fr. Mike is praying FOR YOU!!

• Please pray for Fr. Mike and for each other!!

• I cannot WAIT to see you when I see you!!