Why do I want to worship?

Homily

Solemnity of Christ the King

26 November 2023

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Why do I want to worship?

There were two other pivotal questions I considered for the Solemnity of Christ the King.  The first - what do I worship? The second - how do I want to be judged?  There are too many good options at the end of the liturgical year, when we consummate our celebration and practice of the Christian mysteries by focusing on ultimate things.  What a graced time of year, if not the easiest one to embrace.  

As we have said the last four weeks as we focus on the Catholic Final Four - death, judgment, heaven and hell - my freedom that makes me in the likeness of God is an awesome gift with a terrifying responsibility.  I get to choose my end.  I get to choose my destiny.  No parable makes this clearer than the one chosen by the Church for the liturgical year.  Look out!  Here comes Matthew Chapter 25!  Matthew 25 is about the particular judgment, a judgment that I am to look forward to, and to embrace, albeit with a dose of fear and trembling!

Why do I want to worship?  Today's Feast was instituted by Pius XI at the turn of the 20th Century to counteract the modern turn to the subject.  What's the modern turn to the subject? It's a focus on man more than God.  It's to flirt with the temptation to worship myself or an idol in this world.  Pius XI saw this conflict intensifying.  Gone was the assumption that everyone feared God in a holy way, and so everyone practiced their faith.  Instead, so many new ideas and things were proliferating, and vying for minds, hearts, wills and bodies.  So much was competing to be my ultimate concern, not the least of which was the idea that one day man would replace God.

Such is the original temptation, that never fades but instead intensifies in the history of man.  What's the temptation?  If I can somehow become God or replace God, then I don't have to worship to be in right relationship with truth and life.  If I can get out of worship, I can be the measure of God not vice versa, and maybe even I can escape judgment.  

The problem is that it doesn't work.  As much as I want to and as hard as I try, I can't make myself the center of reality or the author of life.  I am contingent, not necessary. As Bill Nye the science guy says, you're not special.  At most you are a speck on a speck on a speck against a seemingly endless and meaningless backdrop.  Even your deepest thought and most heroic act of love vanishes like smoke.  I am contingent, not necessary.  The only way I become significant is when I am in right relationship to the source of meaning; in other words, when I worship the true God.

So I worship today because I have to. That's true enough.  The only way for me to reach fulfillment is to worship reality, and to welcome judgment.  Otherwise, I can never reach my destiny, and as a kicker, the bad guys win in the end.  Matthew 25 is a terrible scene, to be sure, but it's better than the alternative.

Yet I don't just have to be here.  I can want to be here. Why do I want to worship?  It's because Jesus Christ is worthy.  It has been revealed in Him our King that ultimate truth, ultimate reality, and eternal life are grounded in what?  They're rooted in sacrificial love.  I worship a shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep.  I worship a King who comes not to be served, but to serve.  There can be no better news on the planet than this!  That my destiny lies in the hands of this King, who is a most merciful judge, if only I want to worship Him and not myself or an idol.

I worship because I want to be judged by this King and no other.  I want to be judged now and forever only on Matthew 25, on whether I truly belong to His Kingdom.  I am here to worship not merely because I have to, but because with all I am, I want to.

+mj