. . .As a Catholic, I was so attached to the church and all it’s pomp and circumstance, that I felt a slave to her; constantly needing her intercession to attain God’s grace. Very attached to the formal prayers, rosaries, liturgies, statues, art, devotions, music - all these tangible, sensual mediums. I used to love all of it, but I eventually have found it all very distracting and restricting. This is what I mean by pure worship. I think those things are very distracting, restricting and potentially idolatrous. Perhaps it is not that way for everyone (?) - I cannot know, but I felt they were obstacles and I fear that God is offended that people turn to all of these things instead of coming directly to Him. . .
You are approaching this without thought of the Incarnation and how with that great event the world of matter is shown to truly matter. The Church responds to this Mystery by putting the beauty of created things (music, art, liturgy, icons, statues, etc.) to the service of the Incarnate Christ and our intimate connection with Him. The liturgy is a Mystery, a sacrament unveiling before eyes of faith the sacred scene of the Church, the mysteries of God’s life among men.
The Church is a liturgical theology in wood, glass, metal, and music if it is purposefully, wisely planned. Every part of it should speak of consecrated space and time where God takes up His presence and acts. We can point to it as the dramatic scene where the secular and sacred spheres fuse, where heaven and earth meet. Every bit of creation is swept into the liturgical movement leading up to God. The liturgy integrates the most elementary human actions – drinking, eating, washing, speaking, acting, living – and direct them to their destiny. We who live in cosmic space and time must reverberate with the sacred. The rhythm of our liturgical life must set the tempo for family and community life, and also must set the rhythm of our interior life that seeks to grow in its intimacy with the One we encounter in the Sacraments.
In the sacraments a loving familiarity with Christ develops; this familiarity should deepen our commitment to spend time with Him beyond the time of the liturgy of the Church. We will then see how the richness of our life in Him in the solitudes of divine encounter makes more vibrant our participation in the liturgical life of His Mystical Body.
The pivotal point to be understood is that Christ acts on us in the sacraments. By these material rites, these signs, the power of His resurrection is brought to the world. A sign is a way of expressing something; it is an outward visible mark of some spiritual state or action. Gifts express friendship, tears are the marks of grief – or of joy; a kiss is a sacred symbol of love. A world such as ours is filled with symbols for this reason; we are humans, a peculiar composite of body and spiritual soul, the meeting point of the worlds of matter and spirit. The implication of that is far-reaching: what is in our soul, in our heart, our mind, our will, find expression through the body and material things.
Consider how this enters into God’s plan of salvation. We could hardly expect the Lord to have a design for men and then proceed to treat them as angels. A plan of salvation for men will treat them for what they are: creatures composed of body and soul. And so the whole world of symbol, of sign, of human expression, of physical religious expression will be involved. St. John sums it up when he writes: “The Word was made Flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory as it were of the Only Begotten full of grace and truth.” When God intervened to save men He became Man. By this tremendous fact the whole world of human and material things was radically elevated and transformed. Through its contact with the body of the God-Man, the world of matter is given a new polarity. Christ has assumed solidarity with our race, has entered in the deepest possible way into the world of humans and into the universe of matter as well. As a consequence, the final term of human things will be completely renewed and transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit coming to matter by its contact with the resurrected Body of the Man Who is God.
One cannot disdain the Liturgy and all the material accoutrements associated with worship of the Triune God and be found to be living a truly full - and human - response to the Incarnation.
. I should have stayed with him, but he is now only available if you ask for him at this point. He is about 95 years old, and I feel guilty watching him walk for 30 minutes to get from one end of the chapel to the confessional 
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. I haven’t done a novena in ages, but I do pray every day for God to lead me and show me His will.