My God, I am sorry for my sins with all my heart. In choosing to do wrong and failing to do good, I have sinned against you, whom I should love above all things. I firmly resolve, with Your help, to do penance, to sin no more, and to avoid whatever leads me to sin. Our Savior Jesus Christ suffered and died for us, in His name, my God, have mercy.
…Whom I should love above all things.
One of my favorite priests in college taught my theology class that all sin is idolatry. No matter what our sin is, it is choosing to love something else more than we love God. Be it money, sleep over going to Mass, fame, sex, whatever, we choose to love something else over God. We should, if we truly desire holiness and heaven (and, at least on some level, we all do, whether we realize it or not), love God above all things.
Why should we love God above all things? The answer is simple, really: we love God because He alone is the giver of all of the things. He alone is the source of all that is good. Why worship the gifts when we should be worshiping the giver of the gifts? Why worship the creation when we should be worshiping the Creator?
It seems silly to listen to your favorite song and think, “What a wonderful, let me love on those lyrics because the lyrics are so fabulous!” Weird, right? When I hear a good song, I want to know who the artist who, whose voice it is that draws me in. Then I want to find out if there are any other songs by the same artist, what else have they created that I can enjoy? Shouldn’t it be the same way with God? We discover a gift of His and that gift is meant to draw us to Him, to worship Him more deeply. We long to know what else He has created. Enjoying His creations we are drawn to worship the Creator of the gifts.
What happens when we don’t love God above all things? We sin. We take place in the crucifixion just as much as if we had been alive at the time of Christ shouting “CRUCIFY HIM!” in the crowds that day. We pick up the hammer and nail His hands and feet to the cross because loving anything else seems to be easier than sacrificing and loving Him more. Besides, He loves us above all things, above the agony in the garden, the pain of the scourging, the piercing of the crown of thorns, the weight of the cross, and His exasperated last breath. Why should we not love Him above all things?
