Our newest San Diego team set up recently in Balboa Park, a park/museum area next to the San Diego Zoo and with buildings dating back to 1915. They had many visitors. An atheist group had also set up that day, and one of them came over to make provocative remarks. The SPSE team briefly worried that it might “get ugly quick”, but it didn’t. They ended up having a friendly, if brief, conversation with the young man, who then returned to his own table.

During their session, the team welcomed many inactive Catholics. They provided them with Rosaries and Miraculous Medals, and encouraged them (and their families) to get back to church and to the Sacraments.

Worshiping God at Mass every Sunday is HUGELY beneficial. In fact, it is SO important, the Lord makes it OBLIGATORY through the Third Commandment, and the Catholic Church through its laws. Why? First, of course, to worship is part of our human nature, part of the law “written on our hearts” (cf. Jer 31:33). Everyone who sincerely seeks to know Who God is, and has been granted even a hint about the power, the grandeur, and the LOVE of the One Who Created us and then, astonishingly, sent His Only Son to save us (cf. John 3:16), responds by naturally WANTING TO WORSHIP God. Not only do we want to PRAISE and tell Him how wonderful He is, not only do we want to express our GRATITUDE, but we also find within ourselves the desire to offer our very selves in SERVICE to Him Who is the Source of all that is Good.

When we worship, we declare that we are at PEACE, and even more, that we DELIGHT in God. But God is the Creator, the Sustainer, and the very ground of ourselves, the whole universe, and everything that happens in it. And so to truly worship, therefore, is to make an act of peace and delight not only in God, but with ourselves and the world around us. TO WORSHIP, THEN, IS THE WAY TO PEACE AND JOY. Worship is the way of the Saints.

But we’re human. WE FORGET. We need not only to be reminded of all that God does for us, so to be at peace and to delight in Him, but we need to see others also rejoicing in His greatness. Not only that, but our souls NEED TO BE FED and strengthened for the week ahead. For that, we need the perhaps invisible, yet still very real, grace that He offers us in the Eucharist.

Our brothers and sisters who have walked away from this, for whatever reason, are missing out. Like those lukewarm ones in the Book of Revelation, so inactive Catholics today don’t know that they, too, “are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked” (3:17). Yet, Christ invites them back (cf. 3:20) — some, through SPSE. Love and worship God with your whole heart and soul, and then join us!