Introduction

You are called to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind (see Matthew 22:37).  This is not an option if we want to be a Christian!  It’s a command of love from God and is an invitation to share in His divine life.  We should hear those words and soak them up desiring to fulfill them in our daily life.

How do we do this?  How do we love God with everything we are?  To say with all your “heart, mind and soul” means everything!  It means all that we are.  Our whole being.  So loving God in the way we are called to requires a very radical commitment on our part.  It requires that we are “all in” so to speak.  So, again, how do we do this?

The key is worship!  To worship God is to love God in the way we are called to love.  To worship God means that He is indeed the God of our life and nothing else gets in the way.  It means we allow our heart, soul and mind to become immersed in God and filled with His presence.  This is worship.  And it’s our calling in life.

To worship God requires two basic things.  It’s very simple.  First, it requires God acting on us.  This means He speaks, He calls to us, and He invites us into His life of grace.  So worship is first and foremost an act of God in our lives.  Second, worship is us responding to that incredible invitation.  It’s us saying yes to God.  Yes to His invitation and yes to His will.  This is done especially in surrender. Surrender to that glorious invitation from a God who loves us more than we can imagine!

Worship is prayer.  It’s true prayer.  But it’s not only a prayer we offer at church or at a specific prayer time.  Rather, we are called to worship God 24/7 in all that we do and all that we are.  We cannot set specific times of worship and times when we do not worship.  It’s a calling to constantly be in God’s presence surrendering all to Him. 

With that said, it’s also important to point out that each of us needs time, each and every day, and especially on Sunday, set aside ONLY for direct worship of God.  Yes, we must strive to continually live in His presence responding to His will each and every moment, but to do that well we need time when that’s all we do.  We need time to silence all other activities of life and give all our attention to the direct love and worship of our God.  If we do that well, we will more easily be able to bring God’s presence into our daily lives.

This book is about Worship of the Triune God!  There is nothing more important in life than what is presented here in these pages.  Not because of this book itself, but because of the truths this book shares. 

There are two main sections of this book.  The first section is about prayer as it is lived in the Sacraments of our Church.  The Sacraments can seem, at times, to be dry, dull and repetitive.  They can, at times, feel like empty rituals that we are “obliged” to do out of obedience.  But when understood and entered into correctly, the Sacraments become the greatest source of our intimacy with our God. They become personal.  They become My Catholic Worship! 

The second section of this book deals with all other forms of prayer.  It highlights various methods as well as the meaning of prayer.  So jump into this book with an open heart and know that God wants to draw you more closely to Himself in all forms of worship.  He wants you to know and love Him with your whole heart, soul and strength.  And the way to do just that is prayer!

For me, prayer is a surge of the heart;

it is a simple look turned toward heaven,

it is a cry of recognition and of love,

embracing both trial and joy.

St. Therese of Lisieux (Catechism of the Catholic Church #2558)