Worship is not a mindless exercise. First and foremost, worship is a rational activity. It arises from careful reflection on who God is (in the infinite glory of His being) and what He has done… Worship without theology is bound to degenerate into idolatry; hence, the...
Is not formal worship, some ask, an irrelevant waste of time? Perhaps it can be so construed. For candles and flowers are as irrelevant as the song of birds, hymn and chant are as non-utilitarian as a lover’s kiss, prayers and litanies are just words—cheap as...
It is a help to think of the life and death of Jesus as sacrifice, but the word needs to be used with care. In the world of religion a sacrifice is either an offering to the ultimately holy or the giving up of something in devotion to the holy. The two ideas can blend...
The awareness that we are yet meant to do more than we are signals where God lies in wait for us to become what we are meant to be. Then the spiritual life, the awareness of a driving energy within that is greater than ourselves, greater than anything around us,...
The saints have no need of honor from us; neither does our devotion add the slightest thing to what is theirs. Clearly, if we venerate their memory, it serves us, not them. But I tell you, when I think of them, I feel myself inflamed by tremendous yearning.
The temptations to misread the Bible on our own behalf and to domesticate it for our own purposes are many and dangerous, and in America, devoted as we are to the Bible, we have tried them all. Bibliolatry, the worship of the Bible and the making of it an object of...