St. Michael's Lent 2026 - Reading #22 - Worship
Reading
Does God need our worship? Augustine’s answer frees the act — and sharpens what He actually desires.
"We must believe, then, that God has no need, not only of cattle, or any other earthly and material thing, but even of man's righteousness, and that whatever right worship is paid to God profits not Him, but man. For no man would say he did a benefit to a fountain by drinking, or to the light by seeing."
The thirsty one is helped by the drink, not the fountain.
He goes on, "And the fact that the ancient church offered animal sacrifices, which the people of God now-a-days reads of without imitating, proves nothing else than this, that those sacrifices signified the things which we do for the purpose of drawing near to God, and inducing our neighbour to do the same. A sacrifice, therefore, is the visible sacrament or sacred sign of an invisible sacrifice. Hence that penitent in the psalm, or it may be the Psalmist himself, entreating God to be merciful to his sins, says, 'If Thou desiredst sacrifice, I would give it: Thou delightest not in whole burnt-offerings. The sacrifice of God is a broken heart: a heart contrite and humble God will not despise.' Observe how, in the very words in which he is expressing God's refusal of sacrifice, he shows that God requires sacrifice. He does not desire the sacrifice of a slaughtered beast, but He desires the sacrifice of a contrite heart."
What He will not despise is the contrite heart.
Reflection
Settle this deep in your bones, because it changes the temperature of everything. You do not pray to keep an account current with a touchy deity. You pray the way a man drinks from a fountain — because he is the thirsty one. The Mass, the rosary, grace before meals: none of it tops up God. All of it feeds you. A father who grasps this stops presenting the faith to his children as tribute owed to a demanding power and starts presenting it as the well in the courtyard.
But note what God does desire: the contrite heart. Not the polished performance — the broken and honest one.
Perhaps the most powerful act of worship your children will ever witness is their father saying, out loud, I was wrong, forgive me — to God in prayer and to them across the table. That sacrifice is never despised.