LIFE AS A WORSHIP

We, Christians, are accustomed to the idea of ​​worship as a Sunday celebration, which we perform in the temple, to worship God. Such a meeting, in fact, constitutes an important expression of worship and is indispensable for the life and communion of the faithful. The Apostle Paul, however, teaches in the letter to the Romans that worshiping the Lord involves much more than what we do in the church. He said: "...offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God - this is your true and proper worship "(12: 1).

The sacrifice of animals was the center of worship in Jewish worship and pointed to the death of Christ in favor of humanity. Thus, the Apostle teaches us that worshiping God is more than singing hymns, offering and hearing the homily in the temple. It includes the sacrifice of ourselves in renunciation of the lifestyle of the world, which consists in worshiping power, wealth, glory, despising the other and all that is sacred. This is not easy, and therefore constitutes a sacrifice, a rational worship, life as worship of God.

For Paul, we must live, in this world, according to the pattern that is Christ. This, however, does not mean a sad and alienated life of our time. It is, rather, a Christian counterculture in reaction to the Godless way of life of the global society in which we are inserted. We can enjoy the arts, sports, have fun with our friends and family, seek happiness, dedicate ourselves to studies, to business, but always with God at the base of our thinking, bearing witness to Christ.

There is a great risk in thinking that the worship of God comes down to what we do in the church temple. The risk of us becoming merely religious, of confusing the temple, the liturgy, the doctrines with God himself. We pleasure in form and despise content, that is, God. This is what happened to the religious establishment of Israel, at the time of Jesus. Such reductionism makes us lose sight of God and can lead us to the danger of confusing Him as one more god.

The worship of God, then, always involves a sense of renunciation of the autonomous and independent life of Him, that is, a sacrifice of ourselves. He himself sacrificed himself, in the death of the Son, to set us an example. But this notion of sacrifice is not confined to the individual sphere of worship alone. The cultic expression of the community of the faithful in the temple has its climax in the memory of the Eucharistic sacrifice, that is, in the death and resurrection of Christ.

Antônio Maia – M.Div.

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