Lectio
“The importance of silence for the sacred celebration cannot be overstressed — silence which prepares for it as well as that silence which establishes itself again and again during the ceremony. Silence opens the inner fount from which the word rises.”
— Fr. Romano Guardini, Meditations Before Mass
Meditatio
At the heart of worship is a relationship, an exchange, not in the reciprocal sense, but as a sacred dance.
The essence of this dance is one of simultaneous giving and giving, and receiving and receiving, not as an exchange, as in giving and taking, but in a mutual and communal pouring out of love and filling up of love between lover and beloved alike.
For in this dance, the lover is at once beloved, and the beloved is at once lover.
Worship is the dance of mutual and participatory consent. It is a yes given over to a yes received as a yes.
It is unbound generosity and unconditional love poured out between creator and creation, joined as one spirit in the Incarnate Word and as one body in the Church.
And this all happens in an instant. And it happens across a lifetime. And it is happening in eternity at all times and as time itself.
And all of this happens at the very moment that we accept it. At the very moment we agree to give. At the very moment we agree to receive. At the very moment we say yes to love and to be loved, and that this love shared is our existence — that to worship the God who created us is to simply love him and be loved by him.
And all of this happens in a kind of graced silence that cannot be manufactured, it cannot be forced, it cannot be held onto. It is as much a gift as our birth, our breath, and our heartbeat, none of which we could ever will into being.
And in this graced silence that at once pours out unto us and draws us into itself, we become worship incarnate. We become the yes of Christ. We become the love of God. We become the fount from which the word rises and into which the Word is received.
It is for this that we show up for ritual. It is for this that we show up for ceremony. It is for this that we show up for prayer. It is for this that we show up for adoration. It is for God and by God that we show up with God, and it is for us and by our consent that God shows up with us, although in the end we come to realize that all of this is happening in and with God with and for us whether we see it or not, whether we receive it or not, and whether we return it or not.
And it is in silence that this all unfolds within and through us. For only there, at the end of our ideas, agendas, and expectations, do the walls of division between our divine nature and Divine Nature itself dissolve. This is the state in which our lives become worship without beginning and without end.
Oratio
where my words fail
your Word is revealed
not for me to understand
but for me to share
to participate
to dance
in love
with Love
pouring out love
into love
pouring out love
into me
Contemplatio
What would it mean for your daily life to become worship without beginning and without end?
Related Scripture
“O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.”
— Psalms 95:6–7 (NRSVCE)
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Awakened by Love: Christ’s Yes, Our Yes, and the Sleep We Leave Behind, which explores how Christ’s perfect yes becomes the ground of our own — and how, through him, our consent is drawn into a love that was always already given.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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