What’s the Point of Religion?
The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast
Ascension
4.9 • 7.7K Ratings
🗓️ 16 September 2021
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What does God really want from us?
When you look at every religion, Christian or otherwise, you’ll find worship at the heart. No matter who or what our religion is calling us to, we are meant to worship. And even further, the heart of worship is sacrifice. In order to truly love and worship something or someone, we must give something up in return, whether that be time, attention, or material possessions.
Today, Fr. Mike explains what’s at the heart of religion, and how realizing this can strengthen our relationship with God.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Oh gosh, this is so incredible. You guys, this changed my life when I realized this in the deep way. |
| 0:12.6 | Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and this is The Scent to Presents. We did this series a |
| 0:15.4 | number of years ago called Come to the Alter. It was all about worship. And one of the points |
| 0:19.1 | we were trying to make was the heart of religion. I mean, I crossed the board from the beginning of |
| 0:23.4 | time to now whenever there was any kind of world religion, actually even any kind of local religion, |
| 0:28.5 | any religion whatsoever, the heart of religion wasn't just the creed. Like, it wasn't just, |
| 0:32.8 | here's what we believe, although that's really important. And heart of religion wasn't just |
| 0:37.9 | morality. Like, here's how we live, although that's really, really important too. |
| 0:41.8 | But if you look at world religions from the beginning of humanity, up till now, |
| 0:47.2 | you recognize is the heart of religion is worship. Is that sense of like, okay, we need to come |
| 0:53.1 | before the God, whoever the God is and offer something. And so I would say this, the heart of |
| 0:59.6 | religion has been worship. Like, that's the key thing we do. And the heart of worship is not just |
| 1:05.6 | gathering, it's not just singing songs, it's not just listening to whatever sacred texts people have. |
| 1:12.3 | But the heart of worship is sacrifice. So let's say, we say it like this, the heart of religion |
| 1:18.6 | is worship. And the heart of worship is sacrifice. Basically taking what one has and saying, |
| 1:24.0 | God, I give this to you. So in the Old Testament, you have the first fruit, sacrifice of the first |
| 1:29.0 | fruit. So, you know, the first goat or lamb or ox or whatever to open the womb. That's what we |
| 1:34.5 | give to the Lord. The first fruits of the field, the first fruit of the vineyard, those are given |
| 1:39.0 | to the Lord and they're offered as a sacrifice. Or we have serial offerings or there's grain offerings. |
| 1:43.5 | That's the same thing I think. There's thank offerings. There's all these different kinds of |
| 1:46.4 | offerings all across the board in the Old Testament. Why? Because the heart of religion is worship. |
| 1:54.1 | And the heart of worship is now give God something that's of value. Give God something that's of value. |
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