Homily for the 26th Sunday In Ordinary Time – Year A

Why the Externals of Catholic Worship Matter

The sacred Liturgy is filled with external signs and gestures: the Sign of the Cross, genuflecting, kneeling, bowing, striking our breast, standing at particular moments, and countless other actions that Catholics sometimes perform almost instinctively.

But why do we do these things?

They are not empty gestures or remnants of another age. They give visible expression to an invisible reality. Our Catholic faith is not merely something we hold privately in our minds or feel within our hearts. We are creatures of body and soul, and therefore we worship God with both body and soul.

St. Paul gives us a beautiful example of this in his Letter to the Philippians:

“At the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”

Notice that St. Paul speaks about both the body and the voice. The knee bends. The tongue confesses.

Faith is interior, but faith expresses itself exteriorly.

Our Bodies Profess What We Believe

When a Catholic enters a church and genuflects toward the tabernacle, that simple action says something profound:

I believe Jesus Christ is truly present here.

When we kneel during the Eucharistic Prayer, our bodies proclaim that something extraordinary is taking place. When we bow, we acknowledge that we stand before Someone infinitely greater than ourselves. When we make the Sign of the Cross, we profess our faith in the Most Holy Trinity and in the saving Cross of Christ.

These actions also bear witness to others.

Someone watching a Catholic genuflect before the Blessed Sacrament may not know everything the Church teaches about the Real Presence, but the gesture itself says: There is Someone here before whom I bend my knee.

This is one reason the externals of Catholic worship matter.

The Liturgy Forms Us

There is an ancient Catholic principle:

Lex orandi, lex credendi — the law of prayer is the law of belief.

It is sometimes expanded with another important idea: lex vivendi, the law of living.

Put simply:

How we pray affects what we believe, and what we believe affects how we live.

The sacred Liturgy does more than express our faith. It also forms our faith.

When we kneel, our bodies teach our souls humility.

When we genuflect, we make an act of faith.

When we bow, we acknowledge God’s majesty.

When we maintain reverent silence, we remind ourselves that we have entered sacred space.

The things we repeatedly do eventually help form the people we become.

What Happens When the Signs Disappear?

This is why we should be careful about dismissing the externals of our Catholic faith as unnecessary.

If every outward expression of reverence gradually disappears, there is a danger that the interior reality those signs express will also become less vivid to us.

If we stop acting as though we are standing before the living God, it becomes easier to forget that we really are standing before Him.

If the altar begins to look and be treated like an ordinary table, our consciousness of the sacrificial character of the Mass can weaken.

If we cease showing particular reverence toward the tabernacle, our awareness of the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament can become less acute.

The Church understands human nature. We are not angels. We do not worship as disembodied spirits.

We have bodies.

And our bodies participate in our worship.

A Book Without Words

Consider what our Catholic gestures proclaim.

If Jesus Christ were not truly present in the Blessed Sacrament, why would we genuflect?

If the Mass were not the sacramental re-presentation of the Sacrifice of Calvary, why would we kneel before the altar?

Why incense the altar?

Why incense the Blessed Sacrament?

Why distinguish the sanctuary from the rest of the church?

Why maintain sacred silence?

These things make sense because of what Catholics believe is actually happening.

The externals of the sacred Liturgy are almost like a book without words. They teach the ancient and enduring faith of the Church in the divine mysteries taking place before us.

A child may learn something about the Real Presence before he can explain the theology of transubstantiation simply by watching his parents kneel.

A visitor may realize that Catholics believe something extraordinary about the Eucharist simply by seeing an entire congregation fall to its knees.

Our actions preach.

The Gestures of Love

There is an even simpler way to understand all of this.

When we love someone, we do not merely think, “I love you.”

We express it.

We embrace someone we love. We take a beloved person’s hand. A mother kisses her child. A husband kisses his wife. The outward gesture gives expression to something invisible within the heart.

Our gestures toward God are similar.

Every reverent Sign of the Cross, every genuflection, every bow, every moment spent kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament can become an act of love.

With our whole person—body and soul—we say:

“Lord, I believe. I adore. I hope. And I love You.”

May the way we worship deepen the way we believe.

May the way we believe transform the way we live.

And may our lives bear witness to the great truth proclaimed by St. Paul:

“At the name of Jesus every knee should bend … and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”