I submit that worship of Mary or of God is not the issue. And again the answer was, as it so often has been in the past, that devotion and honor to the Saints and the blessed Mother is different than the worship of God. It sometimes is explained that honoring the saints in Latin is called dulia and that this raised to a higher level is called hyperdulia in Latin when referring to Mary. But worship is called latria. This has to be explained that latria is not simply raising honoring to a more intense feeling but is different in kind.
A good place to begin to make the distinction between dulia and latria is to recognize what the difference is between clergies in some denominations that only have ministers and those that have priests. As you know, the distinction that makes all the difference is that priests offer a sense perceptible sacrifice as worship! We do not worship Mary and that is why our devotion and honor of her does not include sacrifice to her! That is all that makes dulia and hyperdulia different than latria. This distinction is not made in Protestant circles and that is why what they call “Worship Services” so closely resemble our Marian devotions, and hence their confusion.
But you will hear protests by some Protestants that Jesus was sacrificed once and for all and that we are not to sacrifice Jesus again. To that we can add an “Amen”. His sacrifice to the Father was and is the only suitable sacrificial worship that can be acceptable. We acknowledge that in the Doxology, “In Him, with Him, and through Him all glory and honor is Yours Almighty Father, forever and ever; Amen”. But what we have to consider is what the “WHAT” that is “In Him, with Him, and through Him etc."?
What is included in this once and for all sacrifice, is the sacrifice, the consecration, the dedication, of all that is us to Christ, to be in union with Him in His sacrifice in the worship of the Father in the Holy Spirit Who was our gift at Pentecost. This is our sacrifice offered at the “Offertory” of the Mass that we strive as pilgrims to complete before our last breath.
The bread and wine elements that are the sense perceptible gifts are a representation of all that is us and that is what the priest prays that God will take and make holy. In this incorporation into Christ the Word send to earth does not return to the Father empty handed. Otherwise a gift at Mass of what is a sorry excuse for bread and a bit of good wine alone would be vastly more insulting as a gift to God than if we were to brag that we gave a saintly grandmother a penny every tenth Christmas!
To paraphrase what Bp. Fulton Sheen once said, if the bread on the paten does not represent all that is tangible in your life, and if the wine does not represent all that is spiritual in your life - then you have no business at Mass! See Redemptionis Sacramentum chapter II paragraph 36 & 37 for the priesthood of the laity.
Didn’t some saint once refer to all this as, “The great exchange”?
This is all very critical today where the cultural pernicious secular drive is toward the pay-off - self fulfillment, self gratification, and personal gain. Sacrifice is not on the radar screen even in the perspective of love. But worship (adoration), and love without sacrifice is absurd. See the first paragraph in Rom 12: 1 and in
newadvent.org/cathen/13309a.htm and the CCC #1368,
1369, & 2031.
In Dominicae Cenae we see, “Consequently, the celebrant, as minister of this sacrifice, is the authentic priest, performing – in virtue of the specific power of-sacred ordination – a true sacrificial act that brings creation back to God. Although all those who participate in the Eucharist do not confect the sacrifice as He does, they offer with Him, by virtue of the common priesthood, their own spiritual sacrifices represented by the bread and wine from the moment of their presentation at the altar. For this liturgical action, which takes a solemn form in almost all liturgies, has a “spiritual value and meaning.” The bread and wine become in a sense a symbol of all that the eucharistic assembly brings, on its own part, as an offering to God and offers spiritually.”
I have many other files on this subject as well.
We are left to wonder why this sense of self sacrifice is so absent in Catholic circles when it is so broadly and specifically emphasized in Catholic teaching.
This subject was most clearly written about in the book with the unfortunate title, “How To Get The Most Out Of The Eucharist” by Michael Dubruiel in the early chapters. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
“We are living in a time when we can no longer presume that if a person says that they believe in God that you can understand what they mean by that.” Fr Michael McDonagh
“Our country has gone insane because we have forgotten how to worship” Michael Cumbie
), as well as in His pressence in adoration, or in the most intimate way Christ chose to give Himself to us while we are on this earth, in the Eucharist.
