Adoration is in the strict sense an act of religion offered to God in acknowledgment of His supreme perfection and dominion, and of the creature’s dependence upon Him.
The rational creature, looking up to God, whom reason and revelation show to be infinitely perfect, cannot in right and justice maintain an attitude of indifference. That perfection which is infinite in itself and the source and fulfilment of all the good that we possess or shall possess, we must worship, acknowledging its immensity, and submitting to its supremacy. This worship called forth by God, and given exclusively to Him as God, is designated by the Greek name latreia (latinized, latria), for which the best translation that our language affords is the word Adoration. Adoration differs from other acts of worship, such as supplication, confession of sin, etc., inasmuch as it formally consists in self-abasement before the Infinite, and in devout recognition of His transcendent excellence.
The primary and fundamental element in adoration is an interior act of mind and will; the mind perceiving that God’s perfection is infinite, the will bidding us to extol and worship this perfection. Without some measure of this interior adoration “in spirit and in truth” it is evident that any outward show of divine worship would be mere pantomime and falsehood. But equally evident is that the adoration felt within will seek outward expression.
It is to be expected, then, that men should have agreed upon certain conventional actions as expressing adoration of the Supreme Being. Of these actions, one has pre-eminently and exclusively signified adoration, and that is sacrifice.
Other acts have been widely used for the same purpose, but most of them — sacrifice always excepted — have not been exclusively reserved for Divine worship; they have also been employed to manifest friendship, or reverence for high personages. Thus Abram “fell flat on his face” before the Lord (Genesis 17:3). This was clearly an act of adoration in its highest sense; yet that it could have other meaning, we know from, e.g., 1 Samuel 20:41, which says that David adored “falling on his face to the ground” before Jonathan, who had come to warn him of Saul’s hatred.
We read of other forms of adoration among the Hebrews, such as taking off the shoes (Exodus 3:5), bowing (Genesis 24:26), and we are told that the contrite publican stood when he prayed, and that St. Paul knelt when he worshipped with the elders of Ephesus. Among the early Christians it was common to adore God, standing with outstretched arms and facing the east.
Thus far we have spoken of the worship given directly to God as the infinitely perfect Being. It is clear that adoration in this sense can be offered to no finite object. Still, the impulse that leads us to worship God’s perfection in itself will move us also to venerate the traces and bestowals of that perfection as it appears conspicuously in saintly men and women. Even to inanimate objects, which for one reason or another strikingly recall the excellence, majesty, love, or mercy of God, we naturally pay some measure of reverence. The goodness which these creatures possess by participation or association is a reflection of God’s goodness; by honouring them in the proper way we offer tribute to the Giver of all good. He is the ultimate end of our worship in such cases as He is the source of the derived perfection which called it forth.
Whenever the immediate object of our veneration is a creature of this sort, the mode of worship which we exhibit towards it is fundamentally different, and we use the term dulia to denote it.
The word latria is never applied in any other sense than that of the incommunicable adoration which is due to God alone. But in English the words adore and worship are still sometimes used, and in the past were commonly so used, to mean also inferior species of religious veneration and even to express admiration or affection for persons living upon the earth. It is hardly needful to remark that Catholics, too, even the most unlearned, are in no peril of confounding the adoration due to God with the religious honour given to any finite creature even when the word worship, owing to the poverty of our language, is applied to both.
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dulia,
adoration,
worship
