Our first duty as human beings, our fundamental vocation, is to offer right praise and worship to God. Our primary purpose in life is to love God with all of our heart, soul, strength and spirit. Jesus defined this as the first and greatest commandment: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment.” (Mt 22,37f) All of the commandments that are given to us in Exodus 20, 1-17, follow from this first commandment. We are the children of God and God is our loving and merciful Father who is worthy of our praise and worship. John tells us in his gospel: “But Jesus would not trust himself to them because he knew them all, and did not need anyone to testify about human nature. He himself understood it well.” (Jn 2,24f) Jesus was well acquainted with our human nature. As human beings, we are busy, we have important things to do, we are distracted by many things in this world, we can be mercenaries, deal makers, and we seek “creative” ways to fulfill our obligations. If we can’t do something ourselves then we will pay someone to do it for us. Is it proper to pay someone to worship God for us and to make our offering to God? Could we hire someone to go to holy mass for us? The temple cult at the time of Jesus must have seemed to be just such an arrangement. There were money changers and merchants selling animals for sacrifice. It must have seemed more like a marketplace than a house of prayer. Jesus drives out the mercenaries and commands, “”Take these out of here, and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.” His disciples recalled the words of Scripture, Zeal for your house will consume me.” (Jn 2,16f) God is seeking true love in worship. Jesus reveals to the woman at the well in Samaria, “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him. God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth.” (Jn 4,23f)

Jesus institutes a new form of worship in Spirit and truth through the New Covenant in his body and blood. The glorified body of Jesus will be raised up as the new temple for spiritual worship. “Jesus answered and said to them, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and you will raise it up in three days?” but he was speaking about the temple of his body.” (Jn 2, 19ff) In our worship in Spirit and truth, we must offer our bodies, conformed to the Christ, as our spiritual worship, “I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.” (Rom 12,1) We are the living stones of the new house of worship: “Come to him, a living stone, rejected by human beings but chosen and precious in the sight of God, and, like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (1Pt 2,4f)

St. Paul will also emphasize that we are the new temple of God, the place of spiritual worship: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for the temple of God, which you are, is holy.” (1Cor 3,16f) “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been purchased at a price. Therefore glorify God in your body.” (1Cor 6,19f) Paul likely first heard Stephen speak of this new spiritual temple, “But Solomon built a house for him. Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands. As the prophet says: ‘The heavens are my throne, the earth is my footstool. What kind of house can you build for me? says the Lord, or what is to be my resting place? Did not my hand make all these things?’ You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always oppose the holy Spirit; you are just like your ancestors.” (Acts 7,47-51)

Through our Lenten penances and sacrifices we are purifying our temple of worship. As Jesus told Satan in the desert: “It is written: ‘The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.’” (Mt 4,10) When God is properly worshiped in Spirit and truth then all other things in our lives will be rightly ordered and we will know the peace of resting in God. We will be children, at home in the house of the Father who dwells within us and is with us always. Everything that we are, have and do will be sanctified and offered to the Father in love. As John saw in the new heavens in Revelations: “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God almighty and the Lamb.” (Rev 21,22) Be a true worshiper and your heart will always be in heaven!