Should we glorify God?

May 18, 2025

In the Gospel of today we hear Jesus saying that God will be glorified through him, and we know from the earlier part of the passage that he said this just after Judas had left to betray him, and so Jesus was referring to how God would be glorified through his suffering and death.  This theme of God being glorified in suffering is repeated in the New Testament multiple times: “But if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed but let him glorify God in having that name” (1 Pet. 4:16).

But the question is: Why does God need our sufferings, or any of our actions  or even praise, to feel glorified? After all, we all know, and theologians too tell us, that one of God’s attributes is God’s aseity - which means that God is self-sufficient, and doesn’t need anything.  All of creation, all of our prayers of praise and glory and even worship, do not add the slightest to God’s own self-sufficient existence.  In fact Paul too, in his first address to the Greeks in Athens, acknowledges this when he points out that God doesn’t really  need a temple in his name, or even human hands to serve him, because God doesn’t need anything.  (Acts 17:24-25).  

In an earlier blog I had used the analogy of a mirror to explain the dogma of Jesus being fully God and fully Man (Was Jesus "God who became Man", or a "Man who reflected God fully"?  January 7, 2024). In that I had explained that we could understand this dogma to be telling us that Jesus’ life mirrored God’ glory so perfectly that when people saw/met him, they saw the full light of God as in a mirror that reflects light a 100%, so that as John’s Gospel writes, in him “we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth”. (John 1:14b). And yet the disciples also knew for a fact that he was fully a Man.  And, accepting the limitations of human language in speaking of a reality that is beyond our human concepts, the early Church felt the best way to articulate this simultaneous and dual experience was to say that in Jesus they saw one who was fully God and fully Man. That mirror analogy also applies to us.  So if we consider our own lives as a pilgrimage in which we are constantly striving to become more and more like the kind of person God wants us to become, then we are in a sense continuously polishing the mirror that each of us is, so that this mirror reflects the ‘light’ of God more and more clearly. And the more our lives reflect this ‘light’ of God, the more it is that God’s light/glory is revealed to others. This mirror analogy could then help us understand Jesus’ teaching: “My Father is glorified by this: that you produce much fruit and prove to be my disciples” (John 15:8) Or again: “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matt. 5:16).  So it is not that God’s glory increases by our glorifying God, but that God’s glory is seen even more by our world and other human beings, the more we (like a mirror) reflect God.  And so it is not through our suffering that God is glorified, but just that living like God wants us to live, often leads to a lot of suffering - and if in spite of that suffering we soldier on, that is what makes ‘our’ mirror reflect even more the glory of God.  

And so, when Jesus says in today’s Gospel that what is going to happen to him (namely his suffering and death) will glorify God,  he is saying exactly that - not that God will get added glory by his suffering and death, but that God’s glory will be seen even more by the world when he (Jesus) lives and dies as God calls him to.

Then why is it that in almost every religion, we are told to praise and glorify God in our prayers?  At Mass we even have a whole prayer - the Gloria - giving glory to God.  But if God really is self-sufficient, these prayers should have no meaning, right?  IF we see these prayers as ways of keeping God happy, (like courtiers who spend time praising the king in order to gain his favour! ) then maybe we  have misunderstood the meaning of these prayers.  Perhaps, we need to see these prayers as ways of reminding ourselves that God is to be glorified in our lives. The Gloria then is said not to just shower praise on God, but to remind ourselves that we have to live our lives in ways that will bring praise, blessing, adoration and glory to God.

In fact, in the the only prayer that Jesus taught his disciples (the Our Father), there is no prayer of worship or praise or glorification of God.  In the first part of this prayer, we are basically articulating what we hope for, and in a sense, by praying for it, we are committing ourselves to try and bring about the fulfilment of that hope - that God be revered by all, that God’s kingdom comes, that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  In the second part, aside from the single line requesting God to help us fulfil our daily needs,  we are then reminding ourselves that we are called to forgive others if we want to be forgiven ourselves.

So our prayers are really to remind us of what we need to do - and by praying to God about what we hope for, we are asking for God’s help in realising that hope. That is why I have often felt that in the Prayers of the Faithful at Mass, our Response should not be “Lord hear our prayer”, as if we are asking God to bring about what we have asked for, but rather, “Lord help us work to fulfil our own prayer”, reminding us that we have to work (as God's hands) to bring about what we have asked for.

So it is not our prayers glorifying God that actually glorify God.  These prayers are just reminders to us, to help us remember that it is in the fulfilment of our own call as human beings to be the kind of person that Jesus was, that we glorify God.  St. Irenaeus expressed this simply when he said: “the glory of God is a human being fully alive!”.  And so to pray the Gloria without making the necessary effort to live in such a manner that our lives bring glory to God, is actually making a travesty of that prayer and others like it. 

First Reading: Acts 14: 21-27

After they had proclaimed the good news to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, then on to Iconium and Antioch. There they strengthened the souls of the disciples and encouraged them to continue in the faith, saying, “It is through many persecutions that we must enter the kingdom of God.”  And after they had appointed elders for them in each church, with prayer and fasting they entrusted them to the Lord in whom they had come to believe.

Then they passed through Pisidia and came to Pamphylia.  When they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Attalia.  From there they sailed back to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had completed.  When they arrived, they called the church together and related all that God had done with them and how he had opened a door of faith for the gentiles.

 

Second Reading: Revelation 21: 1-5a

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.  And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

“See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them and be their God;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.”

And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.”

 

Gospel: John 13: 31-33a, 34-35

When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.  If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself  and will glorify him at once.  Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’  I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”