"And Moshe gathered the entire assembly of the Children of Israel and he said unto them, these are the things which Hashem commanded to do" (Exodus/Shmos 35:1)
I once heard an awesome story from my father, the previous Kalover Rebbe ztvk"l, which he received from his holy ancestors:
In the town of Lizhensk, there was a very distinguished Jew, a young married man, who excelled in all areas. He would attend the tish of the Rebbe R' Elimelech of Lizhensk zy"a every Shabbos evening, where the chasidim would gather. Inexplicably, he suddenly stopped attending the tish. As a result, he lost the spiritual energy gained by this gathering, which led him to weaken in other areas of Judaism. His spiritual decline caused tremendous anguish to the holy Rebbe.
A few months passed like this, until one time there was a bris where the Rebbe was sandak, and this yungerman also attended the bris, The Rebbe called this yungerman over and asked him: "why did you stop attending the Shabbos tish?"
The yungerman told the Rebbe that: "late one Friday night, I was walking home from the tish, and I was feeling very inspired from the experience. All of a sudden, I met a man who was wearing burial shrouds. When I first saw the man from far away, I thought it was my imagination, but as he came closer, I became frightened and wanted to scream, but the man said to me, 'do not scream, I am your father!'. He asked me where I was coming from, and I answered 'from the Rebbe', he asked me 'which Rebbe'? I answered 'from the Rebbe R' Elimelech'. He then told me, 'my son, do not go to Meilech, as he is from the Leftists' (the side of evil is called the left side). I said, 'what are you talking about?! The Rebbe R' Elimelech is a gadol and a tzaddik!', but my father told me, 'this is the whole reason I made the trek from the Higher World, because I could not stand it that you spend time with him, and I came to rescue you from this charlatan'. I continued to argue with him, but he kept repeating his words, and he commanded me to never go to the Rebbe again, and from that time I stopped going."
The holy Rebbe from Lizhensk told the yungerman, "Listen carefully to what I am about to tell you:
"In a certain town, there was a very wealthy man, who was a scholar, a gadol, and a tzaddik. May this not fall upon any of us, but he lost his wealth. In the same town, there was another wealthy man who divorced his wife. She moved to a different town with the children. The ex husband was seeking a tutor to teach his children who were living with their mother. He wanted this tutor to also be a tzaddik, thus he was happy to find this man who was down on his luck, and he hired him to teach his children.
The wealthy man had in his employ a secretary, who was himself a single man. From time to time the secretary would visit the home of his employer's ex wife to check on the welfare of the children and report back to their father. After speaking to the divorcee he began to be interested in marrying her. Although he was a Kohen and forbidden to marry a divorced woman, the idea kept on growing stronger and he talked about it openly. The tutor heard about the shidduch, and rebuked the secretary, saying 'aren't you a kohen?!', but the secretary ignored him. The tutor screamed at him, 'This is prohibited by the Torah! I will not allow this shidduch to actualize! I will go into town and publicize your sin, and you will lose your job! They tried to offer the tutor a raise in his salary, as well as to pay for the weddings of his own daughters, but he insisted that nothing will stop him from preventing them from violating this prohibition.
They wrote a letter to the tutor's wife with all of the details, and she wrote her husband a strong letter, that he should not be so cruel to his daughters by preventing their own marriage, but this could not convince him to change his mind. When they saw this, they sent a carriage to bring his wife to him. She screamed at him, but he answered tersely 'you will never cause me to abandon the Torah path!'.
"One day, subsequently, as the tutor was studying Torah late into the night, he suddenly saw a man dressed in white standing in front of him. He wanted to scream, but the man said 'do not scream, I am your father! I came from the Higher World because I could not stand to see you do such a thing! You are not the one committing the sin! They are ready to support you financially and pay for your daughters to marry distinguished Torah scholars, and you will have good progeny from this!', but the son answered, 'Father, is there not an obligation we have to prevent other Jews from sinning?!'. They argued back and forth for a while, until he stopped answering the ghost, but the father continued to speak, and he listened. After a short time, the Tzaddik the tutor understood what was happening, and he got up and screamed out, 'you are not really my father! You are the the Satan in disguise!', and he took his walking stick and yelled 'get out of here!', and the apparition disappeared."
When the holy Rebbe from Lizhensk concluded telling the story to the yungerman, he said "this is the same ghost father who came to you". The yungerman started to come to the Friday night tish once again, and he once again became highly distinguished in holiness.
From this story it is possible to see how much holiness is accomplished when Jews gather together, to the point that the Yetzer Hara will go to supernatural lengths to prevent Jews from gathering like this. This is all the more so on Shabbos and Yom Tov, when there is a special mitzvah to gather together, as the Ramban writes in his comments to why the holidays are called "mikraei kodesh" – "holy convocations" (Leviticus/Vayikra 23:2), because there is a special mitzvah to invite people to gather in the shul to daven and to sing and praise Hashem. This is what the Midrash tells us on the verse "and Moshe gathered", that this teaches future generations that they should gather together in the shul every Shabbos.
Therefore, when a person tries to dissuade a Jew from attending shul on Shabbos, because of some difficulty or fear, etc., he must remember that the Creator commanded us to gather, thus we must be very exacting to discern whether or not this fear is justified, or if it is merely a temptation from the Yetzer Hara.
This is the meaning of "and Moshe gathered the entire assembly of the Children of Israel and told them these are the words", meaning the thing that they were doing at that time of gathering as a congregation, which Hashem commanded to do them", this is the thing that Hashem commanded us to do, because through this we will be elevated in holiness.
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