When was the last time you thought about turning a doorknob or brushing your teeth? Probably not for a while, since these are habitual routines we build over time. Routines allow us to turn doorknobs and brush our teeth without even thinking about it—the action is so ingrained into us.
But sometimes our routines work against us. We can “check out” and not notice the details of what we are doing or the meaning behind our actions. If loving a spouse or a friend became a routine like turning a doorknob or brushing our teeth, we would say that something is wrong with this love. To truly love someone, the lover must be intentional and desirous in his love. But if it is merely routine, the love is lacking and can even offend.
Isaiah recognized this kind of love in the Israelites, and he accused them of turning their worship of God into a routine ritual. The people acted unethically within society but then rushed to pay their due to God in the Temple. “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me,” he says. “In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts” (Isa 29:13). Israel forgot the meaning behind their worship of God, these rituals that were meant to remind them of his mighty deeds in the past and his loving protection in the present. But their worship became more like turning a doorknob or brushing their teeth.
But God promised to shake them up: “Therefore I will again deal with this people in surprising and wondrous fashion: The wisdom of the wise shall perish, the prudence of the prudent shall vanish” (Isa 29:14). God did not want his people “checked out” in their worship, but he wanted them keyed into the mystery unfolding before their eyes. He wanted them to be amazed like Solomon in today’s first reading: “Can it be that God dwells on earth? If the heavens and the highest heavens cannot contain you, how much less this temple which I have built!”
And the same is true with us. Our actions as Christians can easily become routine to the point that we are “checked out” and need to be shaken awake. Going to Mass on Sundays can be a mere routine, and praying before meals might be just something we do as Christians. Perhaps we are not always thinking about what we are doing when we receive Holy Communion, or we are just checking another box by going to confession. When these actions become routine, we gradually lose a sense of reality—that God is transforming our hearts and calling us to a deeper and more divine love.
God transforms and calls us in this way because he wants more than our external actions: he wants our hearts. And real love is not like turning a doorknob or brushing our teeth. May our prayer today be for the wonder of Solomon, that we might be shaken and awoken from our mere routine actions and be amazed by the mystery of God’s loving presence among us, worshipping him not as a mere routine, but in love.
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Photo by Erika Fletcher on Unsplash
