Return to Worship of God

Richard Salbato 2-19-2010

In my 71 years of life I have never been as sad as I am now regarding the lack of Worship of God. The word Worship is only reserved for God and no one else, not even the Virgin Mary. Other words for Worship are - reverence, adoration, veneration and love of God. Love is not a state of mind, although everything starts in the mind, or an emotion, because we are not always in the right mood to love, but love is a verb, an action – what we do.

In order to obey the first three commandments we must understand them in the mind, the heart and then the action of loving God. Like the Trinity, it starts with the source, the mind, moves to the heart and then the action. Worship means to give to God, what we do not give to any other person or thing. If our worship (mind, heart, action) is no different than some other thing or person we love, it is not special and therefore not the worship God demands in the first three commandments.

Let us look at what it means to worship God by some of my experiences and then the history of worship. When I was on a roof patio in Damascus visiting the House of Soufanieh, I saw a priest I knew coming down the street, Father Malouli. He was holding a chalice with his hands covered with his stole, his head covered and bowed down low. Next to him was an altar boy, who was holding an incense burner, and ringing a bell. The people in the street moved aside and knelt down because they new that Father Malouli was carrying the Body and Blood of Our Lord. His reverence was full of love and fear. Not a fear of God but a fear of offending God.

I observed the same method of transporting the Eucharist by some nuns in Mexico at a large Religious Fiesta. Consider Saint Francis of Assisi, who is the saint of poverty and had one set of clothes almost all his life. However, when he built or restored a church, he spared no expense in building and decorating the altar, with expensive altars, gold candle holders and statues, even if the rest of the church was poor and simple.

Sixty years ago, which is not a long time back, children knew they were entering the presence of God, but by what parents told them, but by the example around them. When you stood before the doors of the church, your father stopped talking, your mother put her veil on, you entered the doors and made the sign of the cross with holy water and knelt down looking at the tabernacle and bowing your head very reverently. We went to the pews and knelt down again. Then we knelt down an prayed for a long time to offer the Mass for all our intentions. Up in the choir behind us soft singing was helping us pray and sounding like the angels in Heaven. No one talked, not even a “Hi!” During the Mass we knelt down for most prayer and always knelt down when the Eucharist was held up and the bells were ringing to let everyone know to worship Our Lord.

When we went to communion we knelt at the Altar Rail and put our hands under a white cloth, we received communion from a priest, who never looked at us but only at God in the Eucharist. He was taught to never take his eyes off the Eucharist and never distracting us from God. The altar boy held a patent under our chin in case the priest dropped the Eucharist or a peace of it.

No one entered behind the Altar Rail except the priest and altar servers, not even a deacon. Behind that Altar Rail was the Holy of Holies. Let me expand on that.

The Holy of Holies was the special place in the Great Temple of Solomon, where the Ark of the Covenant was and only the High Priest could enter once a year to pray for the entire Church. People were so afraid to offend God, that they would tie a rope around the High Priest’s waist in case he died inside and they could pull him out without entering.

Later when the Christians built churches (at first out in the open and later in caves) they built a Holy of Holies by creating a wall between the Altar and the people. Because this wall was decorated, it was called the Iconostand Wall. I was in the oldest still standing Catholic Church in the world, in Syria, built by Saint James and the Wall still stands 12 inches thick in lime stone.

When the Emperor of the World, Constantine the Great, was coming back from War in Germany, he stopped to attend Mass at a small city in Italy, Malan. He went up past the Altar Rail and sat in the Holy of Holies. The priest at the time, Saint Ambrose, ordered him off the Alter and into the pews and reprimanded him to presume that just because he was the Emperor of the World, he had a right to be on the Altar.

That is the way it was. That is what we mean by worship, reverence, respect and love of God. How is it today??????

I hear the horror stories everyday by email and phone, so I am not going into all that except for a few examples and trying to understand how this proper worship has almost disappeared. I go to two different churches every month, both with good priests but one has absolutely perfect worship practices and the other is horrid. The good one I could talk about for hours but let me only say that it is the most successful church in the diocese in every way you can measure it. Over the last 10 years it has grown from 10 families and one Mass on Sunday to thousands of families and 8 Masses on Sunday with standing room only.

The other, in spite of a good priest, will close within the next two years because it is down to 250 people attending three masses on Sunday. Architecturally it is a good church but the altar is the ugliest thing I have ever seen. Last year we spent $14,000 to put soft cushions on the pews but nothing for the altar. The quire is on the altar.

At Communion time there are 20 to 30 people on the altar (the Holy of Holies) and they preach money before mass, during mass, and after mass leaving no quiet time to pray before mass or after mass. There is so much talking in Church no one can pray unless you bring ear muffs.

Did you know that the original reason for deacons was so that priests did not have to talk about money? Did you know that your Eucharistic Ministers are a violation of Church laws? See Redemptionis Sacramentum and Clergy Obedience!

Most people do not realize what they are doing and have accepted it a normal, but I know that these changes were made deliberately to change the Church from a Church of Worship to a Social Church. They sold the sinful idea to priests and people by saying they must be relevant to the people of today and by so doing people would get more involved and bring more people with them to church.

Of course the opposite has happened and the people are leaving the Church in droves.

A good example of this attempt to water down worship and become more social to appeal to more people is the creation of Life Teen, an attempt to make the church more appealing to the changes of teens in America, more teen type music, more touchy feely celebrations, and watered down catechesis.

I first came involved with Life Teen when my grandchildren came back from a Life Teen retreat, where they were horrified at the lack of reverence and respect in Perpetual Adoration that they called sacrilegious actions in front of God.

What is amazing to me is that the founder of Life Teen, Father Dale Fushek, was excommunicated two years ago for child abuse, and last week liaised by Rome so that he cannot even say Mass.

In spite of this thousands of churches still have Life Teen programs that corrupt our children. How can you keep a program that abused children, a program for children? Where is your brain?

What can we do and Why?

What can you do? - First of all you must learn to worship God every day the way God wants it. That means that when you pray even at home, show the type of body language to God he deserves. In stead of saying morning prayers in bed, get up and at least genuflect before praying and pray with your hands folded. When you pray before meals, at least bow your head and fold your hands before praying and before passing out food. If you are like me – I pray better standing or walking, at least genuflect before and after prayer with your head bowed. When you go to Mass, give example to others by your actions. If you are brave enough to talk about these things in church do so, but most important, so not let God accuse you of not respecting His supremacy over all else.

If we want God to help us in all our problems and in the world’s problems, we must first show Him that we love and worship Him.

Richard Salbato