To understand the significance and importance of proper sacrifice in worship to God, we need only go to the fourth chapter of Genesis and the story of Cain and Abel. It is
important to see the significance of this story in the context of right-worship, which we define as the fullness of worship, requiring sacrifice. It is not the opposite of wrong worship.
In a quick recap of the story, we see both brothers offering a sacrifice to God. Abel offers his first fruits, his best, while Cain only offers what is left over. God accepts Abel's
sacrifice and rejects Cain's. Ultimately, Cain murders his brother, and God bans him from the land. If God accepted Abel's sacrifice and rejected Cain's, there must be some criteria that God has for proper sacrifice and right worship. We'll get to the importance of the first fruits in a minute.
From the beginning, the worship of God has required sacrifice. Psalms tells us that God swore an oath to Abraham to free the Israelites from their enemies so that they would be free to worship him without fear. The books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy show God's requirement for sacrifice for right-worship. We see different types of sacrifices depending upon the sins for which they seek atonement. For example, there were animal, peace, burnt, grain, bloody, and unbloody sacrifices. For these sacrifices to be accepted, you needed a priest, an altar, and the sacrificial item. The purpose of the sacrifice was to give thanks to God, acknowledge his holiness and majesty, and repair their relationship with God. To do so required offering something of value to God. Sacrifice is once and for all fully realized in the crucifixion of Christ. Right-worship for the past 2,000 + years still involves sacrifice and is realized when we unite our sacrifice to the continual offering of the sacrifice of the Son to the Father through our eternal High Priest, Jesus Christ. As Catholics, we offer this sacrifice in the Eucharist.
Let’s back up for just a minute. Does God need us to worship him? Is he that narcissistic to require that we constantly worship him? Of course not. God doesn't need anything from us. However, he knows what we are made for because he made us. The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that out of love, God created us and calls us to seek, know, and love him. So, no, God does not need anything from us, worship or otherwise. But he does know that we innately need to worship him.
Sacrifice is to acknowledge the goodness, glory, holiness, and majesty of God as the Creator. It is a feeble, yet acceptable to God, way of putting God first and attempting to give God what he is due. The only way to approach God in this way is with humility, gratitude, obedience, and an offering of something of ourselves in sacrifice. It has been this way since Adam and Eve.
Why do we need to worship God in a right-worship that requires sacrifice? Let's look at four reasons. First, worship requires us to make God our priority. That is something that is sorely lacking in the world today. You cannot worship God from afar, or not at all, and label him your top priority. Right-worship requires community and sacrifice. We have to come together and offer something. That is according to God. Not properly worshiping God is telling him he is not your priority. As Catholics, we are obligated to attend Mass each week. Only when you genuinely understand the Mass, which is not for this book, will you know the richness of the worship and how we, as Catholics, feel that we get to go to Mass versus having to go to Mass. Think about it like this. Mass in every Roman Catholic Church is the same anywhere in the world—more on why that is important in a minute. Where I live, I looked at how many different Mass times there were at all Catholic Churches that would allow us to fulfill our weekly obligation. The answer is 19 different times across Saturday evening and Sunday. So, to not attend Mass and properly worship God, we have to tell God 19 times that he came in at least second to whatever else we had to do or felt like doing. Worship allows us to stop and make sure God is our priority.
Second, right-worship is a statement of trust. We must trust that if we bring God our sacrifice and unite it with Christ's, he will find it acceptable. That is why God required the first fruits as a sacrifice, not just what you had left over. If I give my first and best fruits, I trust that God will provide. If I take care of myself first and ensure I have what I need, there is no trust in that. There is only selfishness and a false sense of self-importance.
Third, worship provides access to the joy that Jesus promised. Jesus promised that if we stay connected to him as the vine (what we do when we receive the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist), do what he commands, and remain in his love, we will receive his joy, and our joy will be complete.
Fourth, worship is an act of love. The sacrifice of Jesus on the cross is the ultimate act of love. In the Eucharist, we are allowed to enter into and participate in the mystery of that sacrifice. Obedience and sacrifice in right-worship is our act of love back to the Father. Without obedience and worship, we have nothing else to offer.
How we worship as Catholics differs from how our Protestant brothers and sisters worship. They do not primarily offer sacrifice. There is prayer, song, praise, scripture reading, and preaching. Those are beautiful and powerful things, but something is missing. That something is sacrifice, as required by God for right-worship.
As mentioned earlier, I can attend Mass in any Roman Catholic Church in the world, and it will be as if I were in the church where I attend Mass each week. The only difference will be the homily or sermon. The readings, prayers, and Eucharist will be the same. As such, there is one form of worship and an example of the unity of the Church that Jesus prayed for. That is not the case for the multiple Protestant denominations. James Whited identifies at least nine different worship styles or traditions in his book, Protestant Worship. They are Lutheran, Reformed, Anabaptist, Anglican, Separatist, Quaker, Methodist, Frontier, and Pentecostal. The problem is that the holiness and glory of God do not allow us to approach God as we desire and call it worship. We see this throughout scripture when, time and time again, people and nations put their own spin on worship, and it never ends well.
Another difference between the single worship tradition of the Mass and Protestant traditions is what is the center of the worship. Remember, in a Catholic Church, the focus is on God and sacrifice. The altar and what takes place on the altar in the Eucharist is the entire source and summit of the Catholic faith. In a Protestant setting, the pulpit and the preaching are front and center. In his book, The Pastor’s Guide to Leading and Living, O.S. Hawkins, one of the most well-known Protestant preachers, confirms this when he said, “That pulpit, like most pulpits in Baptist life, stands in the middle of the building, on center stage, so to speak. It is there to make a statement that central to Baptist worship is the preaching of the book of God to the people of God. …Proclamation, the preaching of the gospel should be central to Christian worship. The sermon is the central dynamic in the worship experience. It is the fulcrum upon which the entire service of worship hinges. Everything that comes before it should point to it, and everything that comes after it should issue out of it.”
As Catholics, we would respectfully disagree. In the Catholic faith, Jesus Christ in the Eucharist is the central dynamic of worship. It is the real presence of Christ given to us at the last supper when Jesus instituted the Eucharist and told the apostles the bread IS my body, and the wine IS his blood, and to take, eat, and “do this in remembrance of me.” So, at Mass, that is what we do. Paul, the Church Fathers, and early Christians understood that the Eucharist was a sharing of the body and blood of Christ, not a symbol. As it did then, the Eucharist requires an altar and a priest. The Church tells us that everything does not point to or flow from the preaching of a human being but from the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ, which the Church re-presents in a non-bloody way at each Mass. Through faith, we take Jesus at his word and accept his invitation to enter into the mystery of the Eucharist and truly encounter him in a real way and in our time. Otherwise, we relegate the sacrifice of Christ to a historical event.
Finally, we occasionally hear that we should be able to worship however, whenever, and wherever we want. The only thing that matters is that I get something out of it. If I don't, I'll shop around until I find something that fits my taste. Some believe that God doesn't have regulations about worship. Here's the problem: it's not about you. It's about the right-worship of God. We worship God to give, not get. If you believe that worship is about you, I encourage you to explore the Mass in greater detail. You will be amazed at the scriptural foundations of Mass.
Both the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation clearly show that God has specific regulations for right-worship. It is not logical or reasonable to think that God is taking a break from these regulations between the Old Testament and the end of time. Jesus gave us those regulations at the Last Supper. Right-worship, the fullness of worship, is found in the Eucharist at Mass in the Catholic Church.