The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 273: Him Only Shall You Serve (2024)

Episode Date: September 29, 2024

How can we serve God? The Catechism identifies ways in which we can keep the first commandment through adoration, prayer, sacrifice, and promises and vows. Fr. Mike relates these to us and identifies how we can truly worship and serve the Lord throughout our daily lives. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 2095-2103. 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 is 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 a heavenly home, this is day 273. We are reading paragraphs 20, 95 to 21, 03. As always, I am using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes a 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 C-I-Y. And lastly, you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications today is day 273. I guess I said we're reading paragraph 2095 and 2103. Yesterday we talked about how the first part

of the first commandment is, you shall worship the Lord your God. And the second part is him only shall you serve. So yesterday we talked about what are the ways we can sin against this with regard to faith, hope and love. Today we're gonna talk about adoration, prayer. We're gonna look at sacrifice. What is the proper sacrifice? How do we adore the Lord?

How is it that we truly serve the Lord promises and vows as well as those things like the evangelical councils member? I think we had a little lesson on that little few days ago little lesson little days In the words are like chastity, poverty, obedience. Those are the evangelical councils that sometimes people make promises about those things. They make vows regarding poverty, chastity, and obedience. So we're looking at all of those, adoration, prayer, sacrifice, as well as promises and vows.

So, I hope that sums up some stuff in order to get ready for today. Let us call upon the Lord and enter into prayer. 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've 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're 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.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. As I said, it is day 273. We are reading paragraphs 2095 to 2103. Him only shall you serve. 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. Adoration 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. To adore God is to acknowledge, in respect and absolute submission, the 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. Prayer 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. Sacrifice It is right to offer sacrifice to God as a sign of adoration and gratitude, supplication and communion.

St. Augustine stated, Every action done so as to cling to God in communion of holiness and thus achieve blessedness is a true sacrifice. Outward sacrifices, 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 and for our salvation. By uniting ourselves with His sacrifice, we can make our lives a sacrifice to God. Promises and Vows 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 almsgiving, 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.

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. The Church recognizes an exemplary value in the vows to practice the evangelical councils. Lumen Gentium states,

There we have it, paragraphs 20, 95 to 21, 03, in building off what we heard yesterday. You shall worship the Lord to God and Him only shall you serve. And so we recognize that adoration belongs to the Lord. I love the fact that paragraph 2095 starts off by revealing to us, reminding us that charity or love leads us to render to God what we as creatures owe Him in all justice. So the virtue of religion, right, is a proper virtue that belongs to the virtue of justice.

I don't know if we've talked about this yet. So even the ancients, even ancient Greeks talking about the virtues would categorize like justice as one of the virtues, giving someone what they're owed, giving someone what is their due. We talked about that when we talked about the cardinal virtues. But there are these sub-virtues under the bigger umbrella of justice. So justice giving someone what they're owed. The first virtue of justice is the virtue of religion. Basically giving to God what we owe to God.

And the first act of the virtue of religion is adoration. So the first thing that we owe to God is to acknowledge that God is God and I'm not. So I love that in paragraph 2096, it states this, it says, "'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. That's the first act of the virtue of religion,

which is the first virtue under the virtue of justice. And so it's so critical for us, if we want to be virtuous people, if we want to be people who are upright, standing up, upright before the Lord, is that adoration is a regular part of our day. Okay. So what's adoration? Well, paragraph 20 97 highlights this. What is it to adore God to adore God is to acknowledge God. Okay.

That's that's actually pretty easy, right? To adore God is to acknowledge in respect and absolute submission, the nothingness of the creature who would not exist but for God. Isn't that, it's incredible. Just to realize, to adore God, part of that is simply to acknowledge, again with that respect and absolute submission,

that before the Lord, I'm nothing. Without God, I am nothing. That's not the end of that iteration, that's just the beginning. To adore God is to praise and exalt Him and to humble oneself, I am nothing. That's not the end of the adoration, that's just the beginning. To adore God is to praise and exalt him and to humble oneself like Mary did. Remember that humility is not putting yourself down. Humility is not insulting yourself.

Humility is not thinking less of yourself, right? As I think Rick Warren and other people have said, humility is not thinking less of yourself. Humility is thinking of yourself less. That sense of, I'm just gonna tell the truth, that's truly what it is to humble oneself. And so I'm gonna tell the truth. The truth is, Lord God, without you I'm nothing.

Before you I am insignificant in comparison to your absolute goodness. And that's not putting yourself down, that's simply describing the truth. And so to adore God is to praise and exalt God and to humble oneself the worship of the one God and was this due to us we talked about this yesterday I think maybe it's the day before sometimes these days run together for you for me for all of us we talked about this in that sense of well why do we worship God not because God needs us to. To worship God, it sets us free from turning in on ourselves.

I mean, this is what love does too, doesn't it? Love is the thing. If you've ever experienced this, where you've actually experienced actual love, not just affectionate love, actual love where you're called upon to give of yourself, then you realize this, that love, to love anything, it 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 worlds that we're so quick to turn in on ourselves. I mean, think about this, even on a human level. How many times are you driving in your car and you're in your own world, and we forget the fact that all these

Other cars have people inside them with their own little worlds or walking down the street. I got my thing I'm late for my thing I'm need to do my thing and need to accomplish my thing as opposed to realizing wait a second If I just paused for a moment I realize that there's all these other people around me all these other beings made in God's image as well, for whom Jesus Christ died as well, who he lives and he wants them to experience his Holy Spirit as well,

to realize all of us, there's more than just us, right? There's more than just me. And so love brings us out of ourselves. Adoration, worship, sets us free from turning in on ourselves. It sets us free from the slavery of sin and sets us free from the idolatry of the world. That's his adoration.

So then prayer keeps on going on. And this is so important. How important prayer is. In fact, it's paragraph 2098 says the prayer is so important that prayer is an indispensable condition for being able to obey God's commandments. Think about that. If I want to be a person of virtue, if as we go through these 10 commandments for the next number of days,

and I want to, even part of me, kind of, sorta, wants to be able to do what God asks of me, prayer is an indispensable condition for being able to obey God's commandments. I have a friend, his name's Mark Hart. Mark once said this, he said, prayer doesn't help your relationship with God, prayer is your relationship with God.

To be able to say, if I don't pray, we're gonna talk about this in the fourth pillar when it comes to prayer, if I don't pray, then I don't have a relationship with God, that's at least that one, not one that's alive. Moving on, sacrifice. Now this is so important. I love paragraph 2099 and 2100,

not just because they're good numbers, because what the content is, here we go, 2099 and 2100, not just because they're good numbers, but because what the content is. Here we go. 2099. It is right to offer sacrifice to God as a sign of adoration and gratitude, supplication and communion. And then there's this quote from St. Augustine and this is, we talked about this many, many times. We talked about this when it came to the vocation to holy orders, when it came to the vocation of marriage and family, when we talked about vocation of the laity, St. Augustine said this, every action done so as to cling to God in communion of holiness and thus achieve blessedness is a true sacrifice.

Essentially, what he's saying is anything offered to God, like anything you do, whether you're working, whether you're working out whether you're sleeping taking care of someone else whatever you're doing Every action done so as to cling to God and communion of holiness and thus achieve blessedness is a true sacrifice Another way to say it everything offered to God is a sacrifice Not only a sacrifice San Agustin says a true sacrifice. So keep that in mind There's there's no moment of your day that that doesn't have to be a sacrifice There's no moment of your day that doesn't have to be a sacrifice. There's no moment of your day that doesn't have to be part of worship. The next paragraph, 2100, highlights this part. But outward sacrifice, to be genuine, must be the expression of spiritual

sacrifice. Remember how many times the prophets in the Old Covenant are saying, you know, you're offering these sacrifices to God but your hearts are far from him or you're giving God this worship but you're not obeying his commandments or you're offering to God all these sacrifices but you're not taking care of the people next to you. You're not taking care of the people who need your care and Jesus even highlights this as well. Jesus echoes those words of the prophets. Remember Prophet Hosea who said, I desire mercy and not sacrifice. That is so important for us. Again, it's not just outward sacrifice, it's united to our inner heart. It goes on to say in

paragraph 2100, and you know this already, it says the only perfect sacrifice is the one that Christ offered on the cross as a total offering to the Father's love and for our salvation. We recognize that's the only perfect sacrifice. And what we get to do in our whole lives, like St. Augustine said, any every action done by uniting ourselves with His sacrifice, we can make our lives a sacrifice to God. That's what we're doing. We're not just on our own offering our deeds

or offering our whatever it is as a sacrifice. We're uniting whatever we do. We're uniting those things with the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross because that is the only perfect sacrifice. Now the last piece is promises and vows. We can, in many circumstances, we have to make promises. In baptism and confirmation, in holy orders and matrimony, we're making promises and that's a good thing. That is a good thing. And also, you could, out of personal devotion,

make a promise to God. You could say, I love how 2101 highlights this. It says, the Christian might also promise to God this action, that prayer, this almsgiving, that pilgrimage, and so forth. Yeah, all of the things that we could say, God, I promise you that out of love for you, I want to pray the next 29 days for 29 minutes in the presence of your blessed sacrament.

Like that could be a thing that someone decides to do. And you can make that promise. That is an exemplary thing. Why? Because fidelity to promises made to God is a sign of the respect owed to God and a sign of love to our faithful God. Now you don't have to make promises. In fact, I think St.

Francis de Sales, he had made a promise to pray the rosary every day of his life. And at one point someone asked him, they said, Hey, should I make that same promise? And St. Francis de Sales, apparently, according to a story that I read, discouraged that. He discouraged. He said, no, just, just, just pray the rosary every day. You don't have to make a promise to pray the rosary every day for himself he made that promise but he also recognized that because of that promise it limits him

now that's what promises do promises limit us I mean think about matrimony you make a promise to this one person and it limits you that limitation is actually freedom right we know this right with The limitation is I promise no one else but you. So I've limited myself to my spouse. That is great because it now gives you the freedom to fully love your spouse and the freedom for your spouse to fully love you. So St. Francis of Sales saying like,

yeah, they gave me freedom. I'm gonna pray the rosary every day. It's not even a question anymore. But he wanted the people who, the person at least, who asked him this question, to have a different kind of freedom. Not just the freedom to always, I'm gonna pray the rosary no matter what,

but the freedom to also choose another kind of prayer. Does that make sense? So, but you might be called like Saint Francis, you might be drawn to the idea, like Saint Francis de Sales, of making that promise. And this, I would say, weigh that out with the help of a spiritual guide of some sort before you make that kind of promise. A vow now is something even more serious, would say weigh that out with the help of a spiritual guide of some sort before you make that kind of promise

Avow now is something even more serious would say 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 So what is that? What are we saying? I vow is a deliberate and free promise. Okay, it's a promise It's a kind of promise. A promise made to God concerning a possible and better good which must be fulfilled by reason of the virtue of religion. So an example could be the evangelical councils. We mentioned that those evangelical councils are poverty, chastity, obedience. So someone might make a vow of poverty, right? They might make a vow of obedience. So Benedictine monks and Benedictine nuns, they make a vow of obedience to the superior.

Now, a lot of other religious communities do too. I just pickin' on the Benedictines. So if you're a monk, you make a vow of obedience to your superior. If you're a Benedictine nun, make a vow of obedience to your superior. And what that essentially means, you are making a vow, a promise to God,

that when it comes to what you do and what you don't do, you will always do that in obedience to this person. And Lumen Gentium, right, from the Second Vatican Council, highlights the good of this. It says this, it says, they submit themselves to man for the sake of God, thus going beyond what is of precept in the manner of perfection,

so as to conform themselves more fully to the obedient Christ, that Jesus, yes, of course, he's fully obedient to his father, but for 30 years of his life, Jesus returned to Nazareth and was obedient to his earthly parents, right? He's obedient to his natural mother and his foster father Joseph. And so there is that sense of obedience that here an individual might desire to say, okay, I wanna go beyond the normal realm of obedience when it comes to I'm gonna obey God in his commandments. I wanna go beyond that and actually submit my will

to a human being for the sake of God. So that's some of the blessing and benefit of making avow of obedience or a vow of chastity or a vow of poverty. The last note here, it's citing the code of canon law. It says, the church can, in certain cases, and for proportionate reasons, dispense from vows and promises.

So if a person has made a vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience, right, they've made a promise to enter into a religious community or something like this. The church can, in certain cases, not always, but in certain cases, and for proportionate reasons, dispense a person from those vows or those promises. I hope that makes sense. So wow, yes, today it feels like, does it feel like I'm talking a little faster today than normal?

I don't know if that's the case. I just, okay. Get excited. We're going to have to calm it down as we continue to go forward tomorrow. It's also very exciting. It's we're talking about the social duty of religion and the right to religious freedom, which I think is just. I so, so amazing that the church is highlighting this fact that yes, we

have a right to religious freedom and it's, it's not just, you know, in the American constitution, it is in, it's here in the catechism that here's this thing that predates the constitution. Here's this thing that predates so many civilizations, so many countries, and the church is saying, yes, no one may never ever force their religion upon another and no one may force their religion upon you. We have this duty of religion and also the right to religious freedom. We'll talk

about that tomorrow. Today though, guess what? I'm praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.