Often, when we go to worship at our local church, we bring with us a bad attitude, one which has us ignore the point of our worship. Instead of focusing on our own spiritual development, and with it, a positive relationship with God (and with others thanks to our relationship with God), we like to show off, doing what we think will make us appear to be better than everyone else. We want others to look to upon us as the standard they should try to imitate, to represent what it means to be a good, pious follower of Christ. To make that happen, we judge everyone else who is there with us, telling them reasons why they are not as good as we think they should be. That way, we reinforce the role we think we should have in our community, where we not only become the standard-bearer of piety, but it also gives us a sense of authority over everyone else. We want others to follow our personal likes and interests, making them normative for our community, if not the whole of the Christian faith itself. We can do this in many ways, but the easiest are to take secondary, accidentally, concerns, such as the clothing people wear, and find a way to make those issues appear fundamental. Thus, we might tell people they must wear clothing which demonstrates their reverence, and once we do that, we begin to dictate which clothing is reverent and which is not.
What, exactly, is it we think we are doing? We are judging others with unjust judgments, ignoring the reason why we are going to church. We should not being promoting ourselves, our way of life, or indeed, our ideologies, but rather, we should find a way to bond with our fellow Christian and with God through love. Going with a judgmental attitude breaks apart the love which we should have; if there is any conflict, any scandal, which emerges, we should blame ourselves. This is why St. Caesarius of Arles said, “When you come to church, pray for your sins; do not engage in quarrels or provoke scandals.”[1]
We can see another example of this in the way many of judge the piety of others based upon what we think they should be doing during worship. Many of us presume kneeling represents a greater form of piety than not-kneeling, and so, if we see people who are not kneeling, or not kneeling well, in a situation we think they should, we tell them, or others, how bad we think they are for their impiety. Such lack of charity, however, makes us impious. We do not know why someone is not kneeling; often, a person cannot do so, even if it does not appear they would have a difficulty doing so. Indeed, the notion that kneeling during a liturgical celebration is necessary is an idea which is not universal; in many times and places, kneeling was frowned upon because it seemed to suggest we disengaged ourselves from the joy we should have in our worship. Kneeling is not important in and of itself. Kneeling is secondary, and if the practice of kneeling in worship ended today, it would not indicate some terrible change in the disposition of Christians. It would not be indicative of Christians becoming less reverent.. Reverence comes from inside. This is why wearing fancy clothing, or engaging cultural standards (such as those which led to kneeling during liturgical services), do not in and of themselves indicate reverence. Adam and Eve, at their holiest, were naked, and God did not consider them irreverent. Veils, in and of themselves, do not indicate greater reverence; if they did, men would be expected to wear them. It is important for us to get beyond such pettiness.
We need to stop having a judgmental attitude which looks at others and focuses on what they are doing when they come to church to pray. We need to be focusing on ourselves, and our own spiritual development. Prayer should motivate us to be compassionate, not judgmental. If we find ourselves growing cold, legalistic and merciless, instead of merciful and loving, our prayer life is going in the wrong direction, just as, if we fast for the sake of piety or personal glory, ignoring the charity which is to be established with fasting, all we would be doing is making ourselves needlessly hungry and grouchy:
But since fasting without mercy is deficient, fasting without kindness goes hungry, prayer without compassion is enfeebled, prayer without generosity grows weary, let us invigorate our fasting with an exhortation to mercy, let us arouse our prayer by hearing about kindness, let us invoke mercy as the patroness of fasting, since it is the hunger of avarice to fast without mercy; it is the punishment of greed to fast without kindness; it is an act of spite, not of devotion; it is not fasting for God but for one’s purse; it is wearing one’s self out of abstinence and being puffed up all swollen with greed, relieving our stomach of food and weighing down the mind with the burden of money. [2]
Jesus, in the Lord’s Prayer, gave us the example we are to follow with prayer, and in it, we are told to be merciful and forgiving of others if we want to receive mercy and forgiveness ourselves. If we go to church with a spirit of looking towards others to judge and condemn them for not being what we think they should be like, we fail to live out the way Christ told us to live. As a result, we, not the ones we condemn, are going astray. “Whoever, then, does not from his heart forgive the brother who has offended him will, by this entreaty, be asking not for pardon but for condemnation for himself, and by his own say so he will be requesting a harsher judgment for himself when he says: Forgive me as I also have forgiven.”[3]
Our time in church should be a time in which we grow in love, and through such love, find ourselves connecting with others, indeed, with the whole world, sharing the love which we have received from God with each other. Our prayer, our liturgical celebration, should be about bringing forth a holy unity in the world, a unity of love. That is one of the purposes our lives as Christians, to share the love of God with others so we can establish those bonds which can make the world one. “When a man joins himself to God in prayer he unites also the souls of others to him, becoming a link in the chain which binds God and material creation.” [4]
We break apart the chain of love when we become focused on judging and condemning others, because then, we do not know how to love them. In so doing, we risk being the one cut off from God, as the link which unites us with God, love, is being destroyed by us. We are to love and be loved and share that love with everyone else, and that is what our time in church should help promote. If it does not, we must question ourselves, why isn’t it?
[1] St. Caesarius of Arles, Sermons Volume I (1-80). Trans. Mary Magdeleine Mueller, OSF (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1956), 76 [Sermon 13].
[2] St. Peter Chrysologus, Selected Sermons. Volume 2. Trans. Willam B Palardy (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2004),168 [Sermon 42].
[3] John Cassian, The Conferences. Trans. Boniface Ramsey, OP (New York: Newman Press, 1997), 344 [Ninth Conference; Abba Isaac].
[4] Vladimir Solovyey, God, Man & The Church. The Spiritual Foundations Of Life. Trans. Donald Attwater (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2016), 33.
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