True Worship

True Worship

He who prays must speak to God as though he were in God's very presence, for the Lord is everywhere, in every place, in every person, and especially in the soul of the righteous. Therefore let us not seek God on earth, nor in heaven, nor anywhere else, let us seek Him in our own hearts, as the prophet says, “I will pay attention to what the Lord shall say to me” (Psalm 85:8). In prayer, a person may pay attention to his own words, which I merely outward thing; or he may pay attention to the meaning of his words, which is study rather than prayer, or he may fix his thoughts on God, and this alone is true prayer. We must not consider the words or the sentences, but lift our souls above self and almost lose self in the thought of God. When the believer has attained this state, he forgets the world and worldly desires, and has a kind of foretaste of heaven's joy. The uneducated as well as the learned can just as easily rise up to this height. Indeed, it often happens that someone who recites the Psalms without particularly understanding what they mean, prays more acceptably than a scholar who can interpret them. Words are not essential to prayer. On the contrary, when a person is really caught up in a spirit of devotion, speech becomes a hindrance, and silent mental prayer should take its place. This shows the great error of those who tell us to work our way through a set number of spoken prayers. The Lord takes no joy in a multitude of words, but in a fervent spirit.

No doubt those whose only concern is to defend the Church's ceremonies and outward rituals will attack me for saying this. My answer is the words of the Saviour to the woman of Samaria: “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth” (John 4:21,23). This means that the Lord desires inward worship, without so many outward worship-practices. This was the custom in the early Church, when people could raise their thoughts to God without any need of being stirred up by organ music or singing. But when fervor grew cold, rituals came in like medicine to sick souls. However, in our day, Christians have become like a man who is so sick tat all his natural strength has vanished, and no medicines can help him. All fervor and inward worship are dead, and outward worship-practices become ever more numerous, although they have no sanctifying power. Therefore we proclaim to the world that outward worship must give way to inward, and that rituals are nothing unless they enable the human spirit to worship truly.

From Girolamo Savonarola, Concerning Mental Prayer.[1]



Girolamo Savonarola was regarded by Luther and others a a forerunner of the Reformation for two reasons. First, Savonarola was a strong Augustinian in his understanding of God's sovereign grace in salvation. Second, he defied the papacy, and paid for his defiance with his life.











[1] N.R. Needham. 2004. 2000 Years of Christ's Power, Part Three: Renaissance and Reformation. London, England: Grace Publications Trust.