3.2 Worship and Connection to God
The Purpose of Worship
Worship is the lifting up of thought toward God. Through worship, the soul draws nearer to its Creator.
Worship results from an innate sentiment, like that of the Divinity. Awareness of human weakness leads people to bow before the One who can protect them.
There have never been peoples entirely devoid of the sentiment of worship, because there have never been wholly atheistic peoples. All have understood that there is a Supreme Being above them.
Worship has its source in natural law because it is the result of an innate sentiment in humankind. That is why it is found among all peoples, although expressed in different forms.
Outward Forms of Worship
True worship comes from the heart. In all your actions, always remember that the Lord is watching you.
Outward forms of worship are useful if they are not a vain pretense. They are useful for setting a good example. But those who practice such forms only out of affectation and vanity, while belying their appearance of piety by their conduct, set a bad example rather than a good one and do more harm than they can imagine.
God prefers those who sincerely worship from the depths of their heart, doing good and avoiding evil, to those who think they honor God through ceremonies that do not make them any better than their neighbors.
All are brothers and sisters, children of the same God, and God calls all those who follow the divinely established laws, whatever form their expression may take.
Those who only put on an appearance of piety are hypocrites. Those for whom worship is only a pretense contradicted by their actual conduct set a bad example.
Those who profess to worship Christ, but who are proud, envious, and jealous; who are hard and unforgiving toward others; or who are ambitious for worldly things, have religion on their lips only and not in their heart. God, who sees everything, will say: those who know the truth are a hundred times guiltier for the evil they do than the unknowing nomad in the desert, and they will be treated accordingly on judgment day. If a blind person passing by accidentally knocks you down, you forgive it; but if it is a person with perfect sight, you rightly take offense.
There is no particular form of worship that is most acceptable, since that would be like asking whether it is more pleasing to God to be worshiped in one language rather than another. Hymns do not reach God except through the door of the heart.
It is not wrong to practice a religion that is not believed in from the depths of the heart if this is done out of human respect and in order not to offend those who think differently. As in so many other things, intent is the rule. Those whose sole aim is to show respect for the beliefs of others do no wrong; in fact, they do better than those who would ridicule such beliefs, for ridicule would show a lack of charity. However, those who practice a religion out of ulterior motives or ambition are contemptible in the sight of God and humankind. God cannot be pleased with those who only put on a show of humility in order to gain the approval of others.
Collective worship is preferable to individual worship in that those who assemble in communion of thought and sentiment have more power to attract good spirits; the same applies when they gather to worship God. But individual worship is not therefore less effective, for each person can worship God with sincere thought.
The Contemplative Life
Those who dedicate themselves to the contemplative life, doing no evil and thinking only of God, have no merit in the divine sight. Even though they do nothing evil, neither do they do any good. Moreover, not doing good is itself evil. God wants men and women to think about God, but does not want them to do only that, for God has given them duties to fulfill. Those who spend all their time in meditation and contemplation do nothing meritorious before God, since their life is entirely personal and of no use to humankind. God will ask them to account for the good they did not do.
Prayer
Prayer is always pleasing to God when it rises from the heart, for intent is everything to God. A prayer from the heart is preferable to one that is read, no matter how beautiful it may be, if it is read more with the lips than with thought. Prayer is pleasing to God when it is offered with faith, fervor, and sincerity. God is not touched by the prayer of the vain, proud, or selfish unless that prayer represents an act of sincere repentance and true humility.
Prayer is an act of worship. To pray to God is to think of God, draw nearer to God, and put oneself in communication with God. Through prayer one may do three things: praise, ask, and thank.
Prayer does make people better, because those who pray fervently and confidently strengthen themselves against the temptations of evil, and God sends them good spirits to assist them. Such help is never refused when sincerely asked.
What is essential is not to pray a great deal, but to pray rightly. Certain people who pray a great deal are nevertheless jealous, envious, cantankerous, lacking in benevolence and forbearance, and even cruel, because they imagine that all merit lies in the length of the prayer while closing their eyes to their own defects. For them, prayer is an occupation, a use of time, but not self-examination. It is not the remedy itself that is ineffectual, but the way in which it is applied.
One may ask God to forgive one’s sins, but God knows how to discern between good and evil, and prayer does not hide sins. Those who ask God to forgive their sins do not receive forgiveness unless they change their conduct. Good deeds are the best prayers, for deeds are worth more than words.
One may pray effectively for others. The spirit of the one who prays acts out of a will to do good. Through prayer it attracts good spirits who cooperate in the good it desires to do.
Through thought and will there is an inner power of action that extends far beyond the limits of the corporeal sphere. A prayer for others is an act of that will. If it is ardent and sincere, it can call good spirits to the aid of those for whom it is offered, so that those spirits may suggest good thoughts to them and give them the needed strength for body and soul. But even then, prayer from the heart is everything; prayer from the lips is nothing.
Prayers offered for oneself cannot modify the nature of trials or change their course. Trials are in God’s hands, and some must be endured to the very end; however, God always takes resignation into account. Prayer attracts good spirits who give strength to endure trials courageously; thus, they seem less difficult. Prayer is never useless when rightly offered, because it provides strength, which is itself a good result. Heaven helps those who help themselves. Besides, God cannot change the workings of nature to suit the preference of each individual, since what may appear a great evil from a narrow point of view and for ephemeral life is often a great good within the general order of the universe. Furthermore, many misfortunes are brought about by people themselves through their own improvidence or wrongdoing; they are punished for their own faults. Nevertheless, just requests are heard more often than might be supposed. One may think that God has not heard prayer because there has been no miracle, while divine assistance has in fact been received through means so natural that it seems to have happened by chance or necessity. Most often, God suggests the thought needed for people to get themselves out of their predicament.
It is useful to pray for the dead and for suffering spirits. Prayer does not change God’s designs, but the soul for whom one prays experiences relief because it sees the interest shown in it, and because an unhappy soul is always consoled when it encounters charitable souls who share in its suffering. Through prayer one may encourage repentance and the desire to do what is needed to become happy. In this sense, its affliction can be shortened if, for its part, it contributes through its own goodwill. Aroused by prayer, such a desire to improve attracts to the suffering spirit other spirits who come to enlighten, console, and give it hope. Jesus prayed for the straying sheep. In doing so, he showed that one is culpable if one does not pray for those who are most in need.
The opinion that rejects prayer for the dead because it is not prescribed in the Gospels is answered by Christ’s words to all humankind: “Love one another.” This recommendation implies using all possible means to demonstrate love toward others, without going into detail regarding the way to reach this goal. If it is true that nothing can turn God aside from applying divine justice to every one of a spirit’s actions, it is no less true that prayer directed to God on behalf of those who inspire love is for them a testimony of remembrance that consoles them and contributes to relieving their sufferings. They can be helped when, and only when, they show the slightest repentance, but even then they never forget that a sympathetic soul has been concerned about them. This instills in them the sweet belief that such intercession has been useful. It necessarily results in a sentiment of love for the one who has shown this proof of friendship and piety. Consequently, the love recommended to humankind by Christ increases between them, and both have obeyed the law of love and union of all beings, the divine law that must lead to unity, the spirit’s objective and purpose.
One may pray to spirits. One may pray to good spirits since they are the messengers of God and the executors of the divine designs. Their power, however, is in proportion to their degree of evolution and always derives from the Creator of all things, without whose permission nothing is done. For this reason, prayers addressed to them are effective only if pleasing to God.
Polytheism
Polytheism is one of the most ancient and widespread beliefs, because the idea of one God could only have been conceived as human understanding developed. Incapable, in their ignorance, of conceiving an immaterial being without determinate form and acting upon matter, people attributed to God the properties of corporeal nature, that is, a form and a figure. From then on, everything that seemed to surpass the proportions of ordinary intelligence became for them a divinity. Whatever they did not understand had to be the work of a supernatural power, and from that to admitting as many distinct powers as there were effects was only a short step. Yet in all times there have been enlightened people who understood the impossibility of this multitude of powers governing the world without a superior direction, and who rose to the thought of one God.
Since spirit phenomena have occurred in all times and have been known from the earliest ages of the world, they may have contributed to belief in a plurality of gods. People called god everything that was superhuman; spirits were therefore gods to them. Likewise, whenever a person distinguished himself among others by actions, genius, or a secret power that the common people could not comprehend, he was made into a god and worshiped after death.
Among the ancients, the word god had a very broad meaning. It was not, as nowadays, a personification of the Lord of nature, but a generic designation given to every being outside the conditions of humanity. Since spirit manifestations had revealed to them incorporeal beings acting as powers of nature, they called them gods, just as we call them spirits. It is only a question of words, with the difference that in their ignorance, maintained by those who had an interest in maintaining it, they raised temples and altars to them that were very profitable, whereas for us spirits are only creatures like ourselves, more or less perfect, and stripped of their earthly envelope. If the various attributes of the pagan divinities are carefully studied, all those that characterize spirits at every degree of the spirit scale can easily be recognized in them, as can their physical state in more advanced worlds, all the properties of the perispirit, and the role they play in earthly affairs.
When Christianity came to enlighten the world with its divine light, it could not destroy something rooted in nature; instead, it directed adoration to the One to whom it belongs. As for spirits, their remembrance has been perpetuated under various names according to different peoples. Their manifestations, never having ceased, have been interpreted in different ways and often exploited under the veil of mystery. Religion has seen in them miraculous phenomena; unbelief has regarded them as charlatanism. Today, through more serious study carried out in broad daylight, Spiritism, freed from the superstitious ideas that obscured it for centuries, reveals one of the greatest and most sublime principles of nature.
Sacrifice
The practice of human sacrifice dates back to the remotest antiquity. Humankind was led to believe that such a thing could be pleasing to God, first because people did not understand God as the source of the good. Among primitive peoples, matter predominated over spirit. They yielded to their animal instincts, and that is why they were generally so cruel, for their moral sense had not yet developed. Second, primitive humans naturally believed that a living creature had much more value in God’s sight than an inert object. This led them first to immolate animals and later humans because, according to their erroneous belief, they thought the value of a sacrifice was in proportion to the importance of the victim. Usually, when you buy a gift for someone, you choose one whose value reflects the friendship and consideration you wish to show. The same applied to ignorant humans with respect to God.
The sacrifice of animals preceded that of human beings.
Human sacrifices did not originate from a sentiment of cruelty, but from a mistaken concept of what was pleasing to God, as in the case of Abraham. In time, people came to abuse the practice by immolating their national enemies and even their personal enemies. However, God has never demanded sacrifice, whether animal or human. God can never be honored by the useless destruction of God’s own creatures.
Human sacrifices could never have been pleasing to God, even if performed with pious intentions. But God does judge the intention. Since they were ignorant, those ancients may have believed they were performing a praiseworthy deed in immolating one of their fellow beings. In that case, God would have regarded the thought but not the deed. As they evolved, human beings had to recognize their error and reject such sacrifices, which could no longer be acceptable to enlightened spirits. Back then, spirits were shrouded by the veil of matter. By their free will, however, people were able to perceive their origin and their final purpose, and many already intuitively understood the evil they were committing, although, in order to continue gratifying their passions, they did not cease practicing it.
So-called holy wars proceed from the same origin only insofar as fanatical peoples think they are pleasing God by exterminating the greatest possible number of those who do not share their beliefs. Such peoples are driven by evil spirits. By waging war on their fellow beings, they act against the will of God, who requires that people love their neighbors as themselves. All religions, or rather all peoples, worship the same God, whether under one name or another. There is no reason to wage a war of extermination because a religion is different or has not yet attained the religious progress typical of enlightened cultures. Peoples may be excused for not believing the word of the one who was animated by the Spirit of God and sent by God, especially when they have neither seen God nor witnessed the divine acts. They cannot be expected to believe that word of peace when they are approached by those bearing a sword. They must be educated and enabled to understand his doctrine by persuasion and kindness rather than by force and blood. Most do not believe in communications with certain mortals, so strangers cannot be expected to believe such words when acts belie the doctrine professed.
The offering of the fruits of the earth had more merit in God’s sight than the sacrifice of animals. God judges the intention; the deed itself has little importance. Offering the fruits of the earth rather than the blood of victims would obviously be more agreeable to God. A prayer spoken from the depths of the heart is a hundred times more pleasing to God than all the physical offerings that could be made. The intention is everything; the deed, nothing.
Offerings would be more pleasing to God if they were consecrated to the relief of those who lacked the necessities of life. The sacrifice of animals, if directed toward such a useful end, would have been more meritorious than an abusive sacrifice that served no useful purpose or profited only those who lacked nothing. There would be something truly pious in consecrating to the poor the firstfruits of the earth that God has granted us.
God always blesses those who practice good. Helping the poor and afflicted is the best means of honoring God. This does not mean that God disapproves of the ceremonies used in prayer; however, a great deal of money spent on such ceremonies could be employed more usefully. God loves simplicity in all things. The person who attaches importance to external acts and not to those of the heart is a narrow-minded spirit. God should be honored more through depth than through form.