The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 273: Him Only Shall You Serve (2025)

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

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're reading paragraphs 2095 to 2103, as always. I'm 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 with 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 in your podcast app for daily updates. And daily notifications today is day 273. I guess I said, we're reading paragraph 295 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 sit against this with regard to faith, hope, and love. Today, we're going to talk about adoration, prayer. We're going to 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. Remember, I think we had a little lesson on that a little few days ago, little lesson, little days. And the words are like chastity, poverty, obedience. those of 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, oh, well, 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, 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 295 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, oh, 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 nothing 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 Gensium states, 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 a 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. There we have it, paragraphs 2095 to 2103 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 telling us, 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 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 2097 highlights this. What is it to adore God. To adore God is to acknowledge God. Okay, 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? That'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 adoration. That's just the beginning. 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 going to tell the truth. That's truly what it is to humble oneself. And so I'm going to tell the truth. The truth is, Lord God, without you, I'm nothing.

Before you, I am insignificant in comparison to your absolute goodness. Again, 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 what's 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 is the thing that if you've ever experienced this where you've actually experienced actual love not just affectionate love you know 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 just, 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 need to do my thing. I need to accomplish my thing, as opposed to realizing, wait a second, if I just paused for a moment, I'd 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, he lives and 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. And then prayer keeps on going on. And this is so important. How important prayer is. In fact, it's paragraph 298 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 sort of wants to be able to do what. And I want 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 going to 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. At least not one that's alive. Moving on. Sacrifice. Now, this is so important. I love paragraph 299 and 2100, not just because they're 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've 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 in 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, St. Augustine says, a true sacrifice. So keep that in mind. 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 for out need isn't say but, I say but, 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 Osea, 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. He 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, 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 many circumstances we have to make promises in baptism and confirmation in holy orders and matrimony we're making promises and that's 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 as i love 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 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 DeSales, 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 DeSales, apparently, according to a story that I read, discouraged that. He discouraged. He said, no, 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. We know this, right? 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, give me freedom. I'm going to pray the rosary every day. it's not even a question anymore, but he wanted the person, at least, who asked him this

question, to have a different kind of freedom, not just the freedom to always, I'm going to pray the rosary no matter what, but the freedom to also choose another kind of prayer. Does that make sense? So you might be called like St. Francis, you might be drawn to the idea like St. Francis to sales of making that promise. And this, I would say, weigh that out with the help of spiritual guide of some sort before you make that kind of promise. A vow 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? A 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 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 picking on the Benedictans. 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, 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 lumensium, right, from the Second Vatican Council, highlights what 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 want to go beyond the normal realm of obedience when it comes to I'm going to obey God in His commandments. I'm going to 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 a vow 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, 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, you guys, 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. We're talking about the social duty of religion and the right to religious freedom, which I think is just 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 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 the religion upon another and no one may force the 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.