Gospel of John, chapter 4:24

There is a story told of Dante, the author of the Divine Comedy. One day during a church service, Dante was lost in meditation and forgot to kneel at the proper time. His detractors hurried to the bishop and demanded that Dante be punished for this act of sacrilege. Dante defended himself by saying, “If those who accuse me had had their eyes and minds on God, as I had, they would most certainly not have noticed what I was doing.” Dante was right. True worship of God is not simply a matter of performing certain religious acts to be seen, as Jesus points out in Matthew, chapter six. Worship is first and foremost a matter of the spirit, and it can be conducted anywhere; in the privacy of your room, in church, or in the midst of God’s awesome world of nature.

The conversation that took place in John, chapter four, between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well centered on worship. (John 4:7-42) The woman perceived worship as something that should take place on a “mountain” as opposed to the Jews who held that “Jerusalem is the place where we should worship God” (John 6:20). In this beautiful encounter at the well, Jesus freed worship from the restrictions of place and time, saying that the time is “already here when people will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:23)

St Paul faced a similar dilemma about worship in the early church, and argued that the gentile Christians, who did not share in the temple sacrifice of Jewish Christians, worshipped authentically because what mattered was not temple worship but spiritual worship. Thus He wrote: “offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God, dedicated to His service and pleasing to Him. This is the true worship that you should offer.” (Romans 12:1)

The woman at the well recognized Christ’s new kind of worship. It was a living worship, all wrapped up in His presence, and manifested by the power of His example. Not only did the woman respond whole-heartedly to Christ who personalized worship; she rushed back to her village to tell the rest of the inhabitants. Many who met Christ face-to-face, told the woman: “we believe now, not because of what you said, but because we ourselves have heard Him, and we know that He really is the Savior of the world.” (John 4:42)

When you realize what spiritual worship is, and live your lives as one successive act of true worship, then you begin to understand that worship in church should draw from your real lives and lead back to your lives outside of church. Just as you engage in public worship in church on Sunday, so too you should always worship God spiritually during the rest of the week; at work, at home, in school, in the gym, on the playground and during meals.

This is worship in spirit and in truth, and it is wholly acceptable to God.

Fr. Hugh Duffy

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