Worth & Worship – The Catholic Thing

What is a thing worth? In economics, it’s relative. Prices fluctuate. Markets rise and fall. A thing is worth what someone’s willing to pay for it. Back in the 1980s, my LPs were worth a lot. With the arrival of CDs, they were worth almost nothing. Then, when vinyl became cool again, they had new worth. 

The problem is that we apply the same economic, relativistic thinking to other areas. We fail to recognize the intrinsic worth of anything. Thus, our leaders don’t treat their offices as worthy of respect. Instead of yielding to an office, they twist it for their own purposes. In our culture of death, even persons are worth only what they bring us or what they contribute to society. We think that about ourselves, finding our worth in how much we earn, or accomplish, or win praise. We treat marriage and family as worth the goods they bring us, as a benefit to the spouses, perhaps, but not intrinsically worthy of sacrifice and perseverance. 

Worse still, we apply that same consumerist mindset to God. He has worth to the degree that He helps me. As a priest, one of the most maddening things is when people say, “God is really important in my life.” Really important. You know, like my dog and my yoga instructor. It’s a line that reveals how we relativize the worth of God.

So, what is God worth? Three times in today’s Gospel (Matthew 10:37-42), our Lord uses the phrase worthy of me. It’s shocking. He uses it to place His worth above that of family: Whoever loves father or mother more…whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And above even that of our own lives: whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Thus, His worth transcends the most important things in this world. It’s not just intrinsic but infinite. 

Jesus’ words are shocking to us for these reasons. But even more because we have such an attenuated notion of worth in general. In a culture that relativizes the worth of everything, it’s a shock to the system to hear that God is worth losing parents, children, and our own lives.

What our Lord says here is a claim only God can make. It’s a stark reminder of His transcendence and His right to our full devotion and love. We’re always tempted to tug God down to our level, to domesticate His transcendence and place Him among the many things that we “value.” We never get rid of Him, of course, because God is really important in our lives. But considering Jesus’ words in the Gospel, we must be renewed in our minds and recognize God’s absolute worth.

And what are you worth? Only God is all good and worthy of all love. That’s a shock to our relativistic mindset. But even more astounding is that He gives us a share in His eternal worth. He creates us in His image and likeness. The life of every human person has intrinsic worth – not because of what they produce or do – but because God has given us all a share in His dignity.

Interestingly, we can approach this from the economic mindset: you are worth what God is willing to pay for you. You are worth the death of the Son of God. He not only gave you a share in His dignity at Creation, but also a share in His own life at Baptism. We show God’s worth by preferring nothing to Him. He shows us our worth by dying for us.

The Christian life is thus founded on the proper, fitting, and worthy response to what God has accomplished. It is not a striving to make ourselves worthy or earn our own dignity. It is to recognize that He has revealed our worth by dying for us. We now are to live in a manner worthy of the call we have received. (cf. Ephesians 4:1)

Central to this is worship – a word that comes from the Old English worth ship. It means to give something worth or, better, to acknowledge its worth; to prize something – Someone – above all else, not because of any benefit we might gain, but simply because He is good and deserving of all our love and adoration. We are to worship God, not just value Him. This points to the wedding feast of the Lamb, and our participation in it at Mass. Worthy is the Lamb! the saints proclaim in Heaven. (Revelation 5:12) At Mass here below, we join in that acclamation.

Our worship also fulfills what Jesus adds in this passage: Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. We typically take those words in their moral and spiritual sense. They often get reduced to “You have to believe in something bigger than yourself.” But we should understand them first as a statement about worship, about acknowledging God’s infinite, transcendent worth. 

When we look to God only for how He benefits us, we miss the point. We lose our lives. But when we forget ourselves and proclaim Him as deserving of all worship and adoration, then we find our true worth. We find our lives. It’s in proclaiming the Lamb as worthy that we live our true worth.