The most fundamental truth of the human person—the thing that separates us from all other creatures and makes each of us infinitely valuable—is that we worship. This is why a world dominated by a secular worldview cannot come up with a coherent, shared moral vision, and it is also why the world we live in today is completely baffled by Catholic morality.
The Catechism says, “Human life finds its unity in the adoration of the one God. The commandment to worship the Lord alone integrates man and saves him from an endless disintegration” (2114). The whole of creation reflects the light of God, but human beings occupy a unique place in the created order. We are like other animals in that we are physical beings with instincts and needs. We are a part of nature, not separate from it. Yet we also have souls, which means at the deepest level we are aware of God and long for Him. This is not about religion per se. All human beings are capable of this awareness, even if we choose to ignore it or call it something other than what it is. We all long for transcendence, for something beyond ourselves that can give our lives meaning and purpose. However you dress it up, this is a longing for God. It is that longing that puts us in a different category from birds and trees and flowers.
To worship is to assign worth to something, to recognize its value and dedicate ourselves to it. In the marriage rite in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the man says to his bride, “With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship…” He declares through the symbols of matrimony but also through the actions of his own body—serving her, protecting her, showing affection to her—that she holds immeasurable value. She is worthy of the worship of his heart.
As much as a man may love his wife though, or a woman her husband, the worship offered in marriage is not ultimate. We worship many things: friends and family, music and art, pets, even nature itself, but all of it in a secondary way. We worship these things because we sense, however faintly, that they are means of drawing us closer to that ultimate reality which deserves to be worshiped. This is what is meant by “adoration.” It is the fullest worship, the offering of the whole heart to that which has a value exceeding all else. We want to find that ultimate reality and to be joined with it, to find ourselves immersed in it. This is the longing for God.
In our confusion, we often try to elevate other things we worship to the place of adoration, but they never satisfy, and such worship eventually erodes the goodness of these other things. It is this warping of worship that puts the whole creation out of right relationship with God. Our personhood is our priesthood. We were made to be the priests of creation, offering worship to God on behalf of the whole created order. But our inheritance of sin has knocked all that off kilter, so that we no longer intuitively recognize what it is to worship God. This imbalance lives at the heart of every moral question.
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