The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 272: You Shall Worship the Lord Your God (2026)

Episode Date: September 29, 2026

“You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.” Taking a look at the first commandment, we see how we are called to love and worship God above all else. The Catechism also lists the ways in which we may potentially fall into sins against faith, hope, and charity. Fr. Mike elaborates on these violations and reminds us that while it may seem overwhelming, God loved us first, and we must trust in him. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 2083-2094. This episode has been found to be in conformity with the Catechism by the Institute on the Catechism, under the Subcommittee on the Catechism, USCCB. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/ciy Please note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a Year is brought to you by Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is Day 272. We're reading paragraphs 283 to 2094. As always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the catechism, which includes the foundations of faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own catechism in a

year reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com slash cIY. And lastly, you can click follow or subscribe on your podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications today. As day 272, as I said, long promised paragraphs 2083 to 2094. We were beginning the Ten Commandments. We've had so much prep work. We had so much stuff to talk about to get us ready to look at the decalogue. to get us to look at the commandments. Remember everything we're going to talk about today and for the next quite a few number of days, everything has to do with relationship with the Lord. Every single piece of what we're going to talk about for the next number of, well, actually, well, is this a shock, right? A whole catechism. I think for the last 272 days, it has had everything to do with the Lord in our relationship with him.

But keep this in mind, you and I are made for and called to the heights of holiness, that you you and I have been brought into a relationship with our Heavenly Father, with the God who made the universe. And he has revealed himself to us. He's revealed how he's calling us to live. And the first thing he asks, the first thing he commands, the first thing he tells us is you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. The first commandment is essentially that you shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve. So we're going to talk about this first commandment for the next number of days. In fact, we have it broken down into quite a few things.

Twenty things, that's a technical term, meaning I can't think of a better word than things. But we're going to talk today about this first piece. You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve. That worship the Lord your God is the first part. And there's some aspects of this. How does that relate to faith? How does that relate to hope? And how does that relate to charity?

In fact, what are the ways that we can sin against faith in this regard? What are the ways that we can sin against hope in this regard? and what are some of the ways we can sin against love or charity in this regard? Now tomorrow we'll look at Him Only Shall You Serve and then some more things after that. But this first step of just recognizing that when it comes to you shall worship the Lord your God, there are ways in which under the categories of faith, hope, and love, that we can violate this first of all commandments. We should worship the Lord your God. And so in order to walk into this, we want to walk in with hope, we want to walk in this with faith.

and we definitely want to walk into this with love. And so we call upon the God who loves us, Father in heaven. You are good. You are God. You've called us into relationship. You've made us for a relationship. You've made it possible. You've made this relationship possible by the life, death, and resurrection of your son, Jesus Christ.

You've given us access to you by the power of your Holy Spirit. In this moment, Lord God, we ask that you please help us always to avoid the assaults against faith, the sins against hope. and the sins against love. Help us always to walk powerfully in faith, hope, and love. Help us to always walk humbly in faith, hope, and love. Help us to always walk trusting you and worshiping you alone in faith and in hope and in love. We make this prayer in the mighty name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen. It is day 272. We are reading paragraphs 2083 to 20094. Chapter 1. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. Jesus summed up man's duties toward God in this saying, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This immediately echoes the solemn call. Here, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.

God has loved us first. The love of the one God is recalled in the first of the ten words. The commandments then make explicit the response of love that man is called to give to his God. Article 1. The First Commandment. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourselves a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them. It is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve.

You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve. God makes himself known by recalling his all-powerful, loving, and liberating action in the history of the one he addresses, saying, I brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. The first word contains the first commandment of the law. You shall fear the Lord your God. You shall serve him. You shall not go after other gods. God's first call and just demand is that man accept him and worship him. The one and true God first reveals his glory to Israel. The revelation of the vocation and truth of man is linked to the revelation of God. Man's vocation is to make God manifest by acting in conformity with his creation in the image and likeness of God. St. Justin Martyr wrote, There will never be another God, Trifo. And there has been no other since the world began

than He who made and ordered the universe. We do not think that our God is different from yours. He is the same who brought your fathers out of Egypt by his powerful hand and his outstretched arm. We do not place our hope in some other God, for there is none, but in the same God as you do, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The First Commandment embraces faith, hope,

and charity. When we say God, we confess a constant, unchangeable being, always the same, faithful and just without any evil. It follows that we must necessarily accept his words and have complete faith in him and acknowledge his authority. He is almighty, merciful, and infinitely beneficent. Who could not place all hope in him? Who could not love him when contemplating the treasures of goodness and love he has poured out on us? Hence the formula God employs in the script. at the beginning and end of his commandments, I am the Lord. Faith. Our moral life has its source in faith in God who reveals his love to us. St. Paul speaks of the obedience of faith as our first obligation. He shows that ignorance of God is the

principle and explanation of all moral deviations. Our duty toward God is to believe in him and to bear witness to him. The First Commandment requires us to nourish and protect our faith with prudence and vigilance, and to reject everything that is opposed to it. There are various ways of sinning against faith. Voluntary doubt about the faith disregards or refuses to hold as true what God has revealed and the Church proposes for belief. Involuntary doubt refers to hesitation in believing, difficulty in overcoming objections connected with the faith,

or also anxiety aroused by its obscurity. If deliberately cultivated, doubt can lead to spiritual blindness. incredulity is the neglect of revealed truth or the willful refusal to assent to it. Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and Catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same. Apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith. Schism is the refusal of submission to the Roman pontiff or of communion with the members of the church subject to him. Hope

When God reveals himself and calls him, man cannot fully respond to the divine love by his own powers. He must hope that God will give him the capacity to love him in return and to act in conformity with the commandments of charity. Hope is the confident expectation of divine blessing and the beatific vision of God. It is also the fear of offending God's love and of incurring punishment. The First Commandment is also concerned with sins against hope, namely despair and presumption. By despair, man ceases to hope for his personal salvation

from God, for help in attaining it, or for the forgiveness of his sins. Despair is contrary to God's goodness, to his justice, for the Lord is faithful to his promises, and to his mercy. There are two kinds of presumption. Either man presumes upon his own capacities, hoping to be able to save himself without help from on high, or he presumes upon God's almighty power or his mercy, hoping to obtain his forgiveness without conversion and glory without merit. Charity Faith in God's love encompasses the call and the obligation to respond with sincere love to divine charity.

The First Commandment enjoins us to love God above everything, and all creatures for him and because of him. One can sin against God's love in various ways. Indifference neglects or reaffirms. refuses to reflect on divine charity. It fails to consider its prevenient goodness and denies its power. In gratitude fails or refuses to acknowledge divine charity and to return him love for love. Lequwarmness is hesitation or negligence in responding to divine love. It can imply refusal to give oneself over to the prompting of charity. Ascidia, or spiritual sloth, goes so far as to

refuse the joy that comes from God and to be repelled by divine goodness. hatred of God comes from pride. It is contrary to love of God, whose goodness it denies and whom it presumes to curse as the one who forbids sins and inflicts punishments. Right, there we have it, paragraphs 2083 to 2094, this beginning of this First Commandment. Oh, so good. I'm just, you guys, there is something so powerful about how the churches just laid this out. You know, one of the most compelling books I've maybe ever read.

is a book called The Screw Tape Letters by C.S. Lewis, you probably are familiar with it. In this book, C.S. Lewis puts it in the voice of the senior tempter, screw tape, writing to his nephew, his nephew demon, essentially, Wormwood. And in these letters, the senior tempter goes through all of the ways in which the evil one contempt this particular person, this fictional person in this book, contempt this fictional person to sin. It's not just one way. It's all these different ways. And sometimes we can be overwhelmed by that, right? As we went through faith, hope and charity, all these aspects, these ways in which we can sin against faith, like voluntary doubt or involuntary doubt, incredulity, heresy, schism, all those ways we can sin against the First Commandment with

regard to faith. And then hope and then love, it can seem overwhelming at times. But we also recognize that, yeah, the evil one is like that. Even our hearts are like that, right? Our broken hearts, our good hearts, but broken hearts are like that. There's not just one way that we can turn away from the Lord. I think G.K. Chesterton said something like this. He said, there's only one angle at which a person can stand upright, but there are many, many angles at which a person can fall. That's a paraphrase of G.K. Chesterton, but it's the truth. And so when it comes to this first commandment, we need to recognize this. This is so important. Paragraph 2084 highlights this. It says, God makes himself known by recalling his all-powerful, loving, and liberating action in the

history of the one he addresses. Because what does he say? Here's what the Lord God says in the book of Deuteronomy. He says, I brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. This is so important. The context that God is giving for obedience to him is that he's already initiated, right? He's the one who acts first. In fact, 2083 says that. God has loved us first. This is so important. And because God has loved us first, because as he said to the people of Israel, I'm the one, I'm the one who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. therefore you shall fear the Lord your God, you shall serve him, you shall not go after other gods. God's first call and just demand is that man accept him and worship him.

This is just, you know, so often people ask, we've talked about this before, like, why does God demand worship? He doesn't demand worship because he needs it at all. He doesn't need to stroke his ego. I mean, he makes it clear. How many times has got to make it clear in scriptures that like, no, I don't need your sacrifice of your bowls. I don't your sacrifice of your flocks or any of these sacrifices. I don't need any of those things. ultimately though we do why why does god command that we shall worship him alone and have no other gods

because our hearts as a protestant scholar once said our hearts are idol-making factories we make idols out of everything and those idols enslave us those idols take everything from us and give us nothing in return and god knows that about us he knows that our hearts are so broken that we make an idol out of anything and everything. And so what does God say? I want you to be free. I liberated you. I'm bringing you into relationship with me. Therefore, you shall have no other gods. In fact, be on guard against all those other small things, even good things that you want to make into a God, that you want to make into the source of all of your being. You want to make into that center of your gravity. Refuse to do that. Refuse to take these good things and make them ultimate things.

Here is God who reveals, I am the one ultimate. thing. And yet, here's all the ways we can do this. So let's go through a couple of them, if not all of them, because they're all so good. You guys, when I go through RCA and we go through this, oh my goodness, the students at the university are like, Father, we can read this. I'm like, yeah, but they're all so good. You guys, I'll be as brief as possible because it's so good. Okay, so ways that we can sit against faith with regard to this first commandment. So voluntary doubt. What is that? That disregards or refuses to hold as true what God has revealed and the church proposes for belief. Yeah, I know what you teach, Lord. Church, I know what

you teach. I refuse it. That's voluntary doubt. Involuntary doubt refers to hesitation in believing. You know, sometimes we balk at it, right? Sometimes we just, I'm not sure. Or difficulty in overcoming objections connected with the faith. Or also anxiety aroused by its obscurity. So often, you know, I'll ask the question. So often other people ask the question like, oh, wait, how does that work? Remember when we were talking about the Holy Trinity or we were talking about the dual nature of Jesus, that Jesus is one divine person with a divine and human nature, two natures, human and divine, and say, look, ah, that's how, how does that work? How, or even more recently, here's the action of grace. So God is the source. At the same time, we're still free. And we can

have a little bit of anxiety aroused by the obscurity of, I don't realize, I don't understand, how does that work? That's okay. Involuntary doubt, is that hesitation, is that struggle, is those difficulties, those don't have to be deadly sins. Involuntary doubt is just, but to acknowledge it is really important. If I deliberately cultivate doubt, it can lead to spiritual blindness where I refuse to see even the evidence God gives for himself, even the evidence that is given for the truth of this. In fact, I don't know if I mentioned this recently. I came across a little video of someone. It was a young woman who was an atheist, and she said that even if God were to show himself in the sky, you know, as tall as Mount Everest and say, yes, I'm real and I'm the same God of the Bible.

She said, I would not, I would not follow him. I would not believe in him. I would not give my life for him. I don't give my heart to him. And it's like, okay, that kind of doubt has gone all so far that she's saying, even if it was proven to me that he is who he says he is, blindness, deafness, a hard heart. Sometimes we can ask Pharaoh back in the day, right? And Egypt, how in the world all these plagues and Moses, you know, right in front of him does all these miracles. How could he not submit? Like, how could he not realize what was going on? Because that's what can happen. Voluntary doubt and involuntary doubt cultivated can lead us to spiritual blindness and hardness of heart. So going to moving on. Increduality is the neglect of revealed truth or the willful

refusal to assent to it. So incredulity is not like, wow, I can't believe that story you just told me about how you met your long-lost neighbor on the slopes of Vail, Colorado or something like that. That's incredulity is the neglect of revealed truth or the willful refusal to assent to it. So that sense of like, yep, I know what you're teaching. I know what the teaching is of the church. I know what the teaching is of the Lord. I'm just going to neglect that. I'm just going to kind of refuse to assent to it, which is dangerous, super deadly.

Heresy, this is an important one, just because I think it's helpful. for us to understand what heresy is and what it's not. Oftentimes, let's go back to my students, our students on campus so often as they're getting into their faith and someone says something that's erroneous, right, an error. They'll say, ah, heretic or that's heresy. And like, okay, it might be an error, but heresy is very specific. What is it? It's the obstinate. Okay, that means that I've been corrected, but I'm not going to be corrected, right? It's obstinate. Post-baptismal denial, so it means only Christians can be heretics. A Jewish person can't be a Christian heretic. You have to post-baptismal denial. So someone who's actually been brought into the

church of some truth, which must be believed with Catholic and divine faith. So something that's not just an opinion, not just a theological theory, but something that actually is a part of the doctrine, part of the dogma, something truth, which must be believed with divine and Catholic faith. So keep that in mind. And likewise, it's an obstinate doubt. Remember, not just I got it wrong, but obstinate doubt concerning the same. Apostasy is when someone totally turns away from the Christian faith, total repudiation of the Christian faith. So I no longer want to be associated with Christ and no longer want to be associated as a Christian. That's apostasy. Schism is refusal to submit to the Roman pontiff to the Holy Father, right, or to the members of the

church subject to him. So back in 1054, the great schism, where East and West split. That's schism. Yes, it just took however long to go through sins against faith, but let's keep trucking along because hope, this is really remarkable. Despair and presumption are two ways which one can sin against hope. Let's highlight this in paragraph 2090. It says, when God reveals himself and calls man, we cannot fully respond to the divine love with our own powers. We must hope that God will give him the capacity to love God in return and to act in conformity with the commandments of charity. So what is hope? Hope is the confident expectation of divine blessing and the beat, vision of God. So that's confident expectation of divine blessing. That is that, yes, I am weak,

God, but you're strong. I'm a sinner, but God, you're merciful. So we can sin against this, hope in two ways. Despair is one of the ways. By despair, a person ceases to hope for his personal salvation from God, or a person ceases to hope for help in attaining God's forgiveness of his sins. And despair is contrary to God's goodness, to his justice and to his mercy. Let's keep that in mind. It's that sense of like, I am beyond God's help. If you ever find yourself in that place of discouragement, I'm beyond God's help, that's a sin of despair. It's not meant to add sin upon sin, but it is to say the church highlights that this is despair

to cease to hope for God's help. It points that out so that we're reminded of his unstoppable mercy, his unstoppable love for you. You can never despair. of the salvation of any person in this life. Because God is faithful, and God will forgive any sin we ask him. Next is presumption. But there's two kinds of presumption.

This is fascinating. Two kinds of presumption. Either we presume upon our own capacities, meaning that I can save myself without God's help. That's one way. It's like, no, God, I got this. Don't worry about it. I don't need your grace. That's one form of presumption, deadly.

The other kind of presumption is it presumes upon God's almighty power and his mercy, basically saying, I can sin all I want. You know what? God's good. God's merciful. God will take me back. And just kind of sinning without any kind of sense of the seriousness of this,

without any sense that in order to actually be forgiven, I need to repent of my sins. So there's two presumptions. One is basically I don't need God. And the other is I've always got God in my back pocket. He'll always take me back. I don't even need to come back for him to take me back. Does that make sense? Okay.

So despair and presumption. Last thing, charity. There's a bunch of words here under the, the article of charity. So how can we sin against God's love? Well, one is indifference. And I don't have to go into all these things, but one is indifference.

Am I indifferent to God's love? Do I fail to consider his goodness or deny God's power? In gratitude, how many days, moments I go through life where I'm just, I'm ungrateful. Lukewarmness. Remember what Jesus said in the book of Revelation.

Those people who were lukewarm, he said, you're neither hot nor cold, and since you're neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm, I want to vomit you out of my mouth. Leukwarmness is a hesitation or negligence in responding to divine love. Acidia, or spiritual sloth, go so far as to refuse the joy that comes from God and to be repelled by divine goodness. One of the ways that there's this incredible book called The Noonday Devil about acedia. And it came out a number of years ago, and it just is so powerful.

It's just one of those that you can read through and pray on and look at yourself. And one of those ways you can define acetya or describe spiritual sloth is the idea that, okay, God, I know you put me here. I'd rather be somewhere else. I want to be somewhere else doing something else. As opposed to in this moment, God is calling me to engage him in this moment. So if you're a parent and you need to engage your children, to engage with your children, if you're a spouse and you're like, I'd rather not talk to my spouse, but I know I'm called to

to actually engage with them is to fight against acedia, fight against sloth. If it's time to pray and I think of everything on the world, I need to do other than pray. That's the temptation towards Assyria, temptation to not respond to God's love, not to respond to the joy that comes from God. Lastly, it's maybe an obvious one, but hatred of God. And hatred of God, you think, how is that possible?

It is very possible. Even for people whose lives are blessed, sometimes we think about hatred of God when it comes to those people who have difficult lives. It doesn't just have to be those people who have experienced tragedy. I know many of you have experienced great tragedy in your life. and you've not given into that temptation of hatred toward God. Why? Because of your humility. Because you recognize, okay, God, yes, I don't understand what's going on. I know, God. This is not fair.

This is not just. This is not good what I'm going through. And yet, I trust you. And yet, you are God and I'm not. Hatred of God comes from pride. It is contrary to the love of God, whose goodness it denies, and who it presumes to curse as the one who forbids. sins and inflicts punishments. But this is God's prerogative, right? God's prerogative is to forbid sins. In fact, God's love is that he forbids sins going back to the very beginning. God forbids sins because he loves us. God commands us to love him because he loves us and he knows this will give us the most life. And he inflicts punishments because, yes, this is what good dads do. They are able to lead their children to truth and to goodness and to strength. And when the children turn away, a good father, a good parent, allows their child to get what they've chosen. And this is our good

father does. To embrace humility is to realize, okay, God, you are God. I'm not. I might give in sorrow. I might give in to being confused about this, but I'm not going to give in to hatred. Now again, these are, you guys, we just started. You guys, we just started tomorrow. We'll talk about the fact that him only shall we serve, that only the Lord shall we serve. And there's ways in which God calls us to what, to adoration, to prayer, to sacrifice. How does this relate to promises and vows? We'll look at all of those tomorrow in the next few days. You guys, it's a lot, but it is good because God is good. And I'm so grateful that we're on this journey together all the way to day 272, a little 272, kind of a little numerical palindrome today. I am praying for you.

Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.