Right Worship, Right Love

Back in the Old Testament, the prophets confronted a problem that looks strikingly familiar today. The people of God tended to fall into two recurring failures. First, they failed to worship God rightly. Again and again, they abandoned their duties toward Him, turning to false gods or offering worship that was hollow, careless, or insincere. Their sacrifices were not pleasing because their hearts were not rightly ordered.

Second, they neglected their duty toward their fellow man. The prophets make this unmistakably clear. Isaiah warns the people that true worship must include feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and clothing the naked. Worship divorced from justice was not worship at all. Centuries later, Jesus would express this same truth with perfect clarity: the whole law is fulfilled in loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves.

We are prone to the same imbalance. On the one hand, we rightly insist that God must be worshiped well. The liturgy matters. Sacrifice matters. Reverence matters. But sometimes this concern is twisted into an excuse to ignore the suffering around us, as though care for others were a distraction from holiness rather than its fruit. On the other hand, there are those who pour themselves into works of charity while neglecting the worship of God altogether, as if love of neighbor could stand on its own without reference to the One who is Love itself. And of course, there are those who neglect both.

We must remember that God is most important, but that does not mean our brothers and sisters are unimportant. In fact, the opposite is true. Because God is most important, the way we treat others matters profoundly.

“You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.” Our witness is meant to shine before others, and the most compelling witness we offer is not argument or cleverness, but our lives themselves. The way we love. The way we love God and the way we love our neighbor should draw others toward Him, not push them away. People should be able to look at a Christian life and say, “I want what that person has. How do I get it?” That is the most effective evangelization there is.

This is not something we accomplish by our own strength. We do not rely on eloquence, technique, or human wisdom. We rely on Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. We cannot live this way without grace. It is only possible because the Holy Spirit dwells within us, given to us in baptism and made possible through Christ’s reconciling sacrifice.

Our faith does not rest on human ingenuity, but on the power of God at work within us.

Whenever we see a divide between right worship and care for our brothers and sisters, something has gone seriously wrong. If we notice this tension within ourselves, or within the life of the Church around us, it should give us pause. It is a call to reflection, repentance, and reordering our loves, so that both worship and charity flow together from the same source: love of God, rightly received and faithfully lived.