The Work of Worship

Completing the work God has created us for

11/29/2020

Mark 13:33-37 Jesus said to his disciples: “Be watchful! Be alert! You do not know when the time will come. It is like a man traveling abroad. He leaves home and places his servants in charge, each with his own work, and orders the gatekeeper to be on the watch. Watch, therefore; you do not know when the Lord of the house is coming, whether in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning. May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to all: ‘Watch!’”

Happy New Year! Yes, in the Catholic Church, the first Sunday of Advent is our equivalent of “January 1st.” That means Catholics can close out the dreaded year 2020 a whole month before everyone else can! Just one more reason to be Roman Catholic. I don’t know about you but I am very ready for 2020 to come to an end and a better year to begin. Now, 2020 itself began with great promise – the so-called year of perfect vision (2020) – but it ended with a perfect pandemic that caused us to cancel the public celebration of Easter. Even our CEO Catholics (Christmas and Easter Only) were bummed out.

If we were to weigh the year 2020 on spiritual scales, there would be no greater tragedy than the cancelation of Easter: the Lord’s resurrection is the very heart and hope of our faith. Of course, on a natural level nothing is worse than the loss of human life, but on the supernatural level nothing is worse than the loss of worship, our spiritual life.

The first Sunday of Advent, therefore, we Catholics spiritually put 2020 to bed and awaken a new liturgical year, namely, Year B, the Year of the gospel of St. Mark, symbolized by the Lion. For most of the Sunday’s of the coming year the gospel readings will be taken from Mark. Even though Mark’s gospel is the shortest of the four gospels – only containing sixteen chapters – it still packs a powerful practical punch.

Today’s gospel, for example, is taken from Mark 13, Jesus’ famous “Olivet Discourse,” which he delivered during Passion Week (from Palm Sunday to Good Friday) seated on the Mount of Olives, facing the city of Jerusalem from the east. Some scholars also call Jesus’ Olivet Discourse “the little apocalypse.” Why? Well, because our Lord is teaching his disciples how to prepare for the end of the world, the apocalypse. But Jesus gives his apostles very curious counsel, saying: “It is like a man traveling abroad. He leaves home and places his servants in charge, each with his own work, and orders the gate keeper to be on the watch.”

In other words, the best way to prepare for the apocalypse is not by hoarding canned goods and bottles of water in your basement. Instead, it is to complete the work which God made you for. And I would suggest to you that our principal work for a Catholic Christians is not our job or our occupation but rather “worship,” the Sunday celebration of the Eucharist. To worship God is the work we were created for.

Did you ever see the movie “Chariots of Fire”? It is an incredibly inspiring movie about running in the Olympics, and why different athletes run. One runner name Eric Liddell runs for the glory of God, not for the fame and fortune, like so many other athletes. Eric eloquently explains his excitement about running to his sister Jenny, who wants Eric to quit running and go to the mission fields in China instead. He says: “I believe God made me for a purpose, for missionary work in China. But he also made me fast, and when I run, I feel his pleasure.”

Eric Liddell saw the work God had made him for not as some arbitrary occupation to bring home the bacon and retire rich. Rather, his missionary work and even his running was to glorify God and “to feel God’s pleasure.” This divine pleasure is precisely what Isaiah prophesied when he wrote in the first reading: “We are the clay and you are the potter: we are all the work of your hands.” To feel God’s pleasure is synonymous with being the work of his hands, because we feel his hands of the Potter on us when we do his work. And that is never more true than when we perform the work of worship.

My friends, as we turn the page to a new liturgical year, how will we make the coming year better than the previous year? Good Catholics should really make our new year’s resolution on the first Sunday of Advent, not waiting till January 1st. May I suggest that one resolution we make is to try to come to Mass whenever it is reasonable and safe every Sunday and holy day? Some Catholics have gotten into a habit this past year of staying home on Sundays and watching Mass on T.V. In some cases that was necessary because of the pandemic, but not in all cases. I fear some of the faithful have gotten used to “pajama Masses” on their couch with their favorite coffee. But you cannot “phone in” your faith. Why not? We have to be physically present to praise God, like you have to be physically present to make love to your spouse. That is why in both cases, in Mass as well as in marriage, we experience a “holy communion.”

Eric Liddell was known as the “Flying Scotsman” because of his speed. But his greatest talent was not his speed but his spirituality. Did you know he refused to run the one-hundred meters in the 1924 Paris Olympics, a race he was favored to win? He withdrew because the qualifying heat was on a Sunday, and he believed God did not want him to run on the Lord’s Day. Sunday is for the work of worship. If Eric Liddell put God first out of love for the Lord’s Day, then you and I can make a better effort in putting God first every Sunday in the coming year. Then, like Liddell, we too will “feel God’s pleasure,” and like Isaiah, we will be “clay in the hands of the Potter” because we will do the work we were created for. If 2020 was the year of perfect vision, then let us make 2021 the year of perfect faith.

Praised be Jesus Christ!