Veneration & Worship - Difference?

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Hi everyone!

Right now I’m writing a response e-mail to the website www.gotquestions.org (A protestant site) to their articles about Mary.

I think I have most things down, but one thing is troubling:

What’s the difference between veneration of Mary and worship of God?

I can’t think of a response. There are prayers to Mary (Well, asking Mary to pray for us, but some Catholics do actually pray TO her I think), ceremonies for Mary, statues of Mary. Despite the obvious (No true Catholic worships Mary, a point on which the site simply won’t budge) what are the visible differences between veneration of Mary and worship of God?

Thanks, and God Bless.
 
JJ59 said:
Hi everyone!

Right now I’m writing a response e-mail to the website www.gotquestions.org (A protestant site) to their articles about Mary.

I think I have most things down, but one thing is troubling:

What’s the difference between veneration of Mary and worship of God?

I can’t think of a response. There are prayers to Mary (Well, asking Mary to pray for us, but some Catholics do actually pray TO her I think), ceremonies for Mary, statues of Mary. Despite the obvious (No true Catholic worships Mary, a point on which the site simply won’t budge) what are the visible differences between veneration of Mary and worship of God?

Thanks, and God Bless.
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For one, we could see how Catholics and many Protestants define ‘worshipping’ differently.

While many Protestants may define ‘worship’ as being composed of singing hymns, reciting sermons or reciting prayers, Catholics define it as being composed of the sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Jesus. No Catholic would dare offer a sacrifice of the body and blood OF Mary, Paul or Peter or TO Mary, etc. They would be in error if they do so.
 
JJ, that’s a good question, and one I was thinking of asking too 😉
Patrick, that is a good answer which I think gets right to the heart of the matter. Only God can redeem us, can be sacrificed for that redemption, and accept that sacrifice. I wonder if this could be a reason that Protestants have such a problem with venerating Mary. If they were to give her what we give her, that would be equal to what they also give Jesus, since they don’t have the Eucharist.
Another difference between veneration and worship, I think, is intent. We intend to give Jesus higher praise than Mary. Although, perhaps at times we give Jesus veneration/dulia/hyperdulia, in addition to latria?
 
Worship means aligning/directing your life toward something. Catholics worship God in the sense that they worry about keeping the Commandments of God (tell them to take a look at the CCC) about making it to holyness, purity of heart, loving their neighbors as God commanded, see Mother Theresa for example. This is worship.

Veneration is taking a saint for a particulary unique example. Observing them closely and asking their help and guidance to worship correctly. Mother Mary and other saints teach us to worship. Them, being great worshippers, and being purely humans, they have a unique way of role modeling us in worship.

So in few words, we venerate Mary so we can worship God better.
This is why Jesus gave her to us under the Cross.

God bless
 
971 “All generations will call me blessed”: “The Church’s devotion to the Blessed Virgin is intrinsic to Christian worship.” The Church rightly honors “the Blessed Virgin with special devotion. From the most ancient times the Blessed Virgin has been honored with the title of ‘Mother of God,’ to whose protection the faithful fly in all their dangers and needs. . . . This very special devotion . . . differs essentially from the adoration which is given to the incarnate Word and equally to the Father and the Holy Spirit, and greatly fosters this adoration.” The liturgical feasts dedicated to the Mother of God and Marian prayer, such as the rosary, an “epitome of the whole Gospel,” express this devotion to the Virgin Mary. (CCC 971)

It is so obvious, Worship and Adoration are reserved for God Only!

We can respect, honor and venerate others who are made worthy by God’s grace, especially Mary, Mother of our Savior Jesus Christ, but we never worship or adore her.

This is such a weak argument, yet so many fall for it. Sort of like “Freedom of Choice, or reproductive rights or sexual privacy rights…”, the old bait and switch.

No Catholic who understands the faith has ever worshiped Mary, but any Christian who loves Jesus had better honor His Mother!

The false argument saying we Catholics worship Mary is an easy way to misrepresent the faith and to try to steal souls away from the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church that Jesus founded.

Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, Ora Pro Nobis Peccatoribus!

Mark
 
The sticking point is really the communion of saints. Protestants can not get past the fact that saints are dead in their bodies and this fact evokes the popular superstitions about the dead.But the dead in Christ are alive in Christ, because He is the Life and they are therefore “partakers of the Divine Nature” and " . . . like him, because we will see him as he truly is," or again, that they now “know even as they are known.”

They believe that people go to heaven, but that those people are not really partaking of the Divine Nature, or “know as they are known” or any of the rest of the promises of God which serve the Church’s faith regarding the communion of saints.

The Jews venerated the tombs of the patriarchs; the Ark of the Covenant; the bones of Elisha, etc., but were they worshipping bones or a gold-plated box with graven images of angels? Were they involved in necromancy in honoring the tombs of the Patriarchs?

If Jesus is Truly God and Truly Man; If Jesus is a Jew who kept the Law; if Jesus is the same, yesterday, today and forever, then Mary is strill honored as Jesus’ Mother by the Son Himself. Do you think He lavishes all things upon His own Mother? Of course, He does. Does Jesus worship Mary? Absurd!

He obviously venerates her though, because that is what a faithful Jew is bound by the Law to do, and He is the Same, yesterday, today and forever; therefore, Jesus still honors/venerates His Mother. She is also Our Mother, given to the disciple by Christ Himself, and if we believe in Life everlasting, and that to be with Christ is to behold Him face to face, thereby seeing Him as He truly is and being a partaker of the Divine Nature, then we are to believe the Scriptures, and apply those promises first and foremost to Jesus’ Mother, which means she is set above all women (and all men) in heaven, and that, owing to His Eternal and Divine Nature this fact can never fail. If the Command of God is to honor our Father and Mother, and Jesus has given to us His own Mother, then how shall we defy the commandments of God and deny her the honor she is due and the honor given her by her Son?

I just do not think that many protestant sects think these things through, because if they did it is as obvious as the revelation of the promises of God in the Scriptures. They are, ironically, just too superstitious, and lacking in faith in the promises and commandments of God.

All my best . . .
 
St. Augustine says it better than I could. This reading is an excerpt from his treatise against Faustus and is used in the Roman Catholic Office of Readings:
We, the Christian community, assemble to celebrate the memory of the martyrs with ritual solemnity because we want to be inspired to follow their example, share in their merits, and be helped by their prayers. Yet we erect no altars to any of the martyrs, even in the martyrs’ burial chapels themselves.
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No bishop, when celebrating at an altar where these holy bodies rest, has ever said, “Peter, we make this offering to you”, or “Paul, to you”, or “Cyprian, to you”. No, what is offered is offered always to God, who crowned the martyrs. We offer in the chapels where the bodies of those he crowned rest, so the memories that cling to those places will stir our emotions and encourage us to greater love both for the martyrs whom we can imitate and for God whose grace enables us to do so.
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So we venerate the martyrs with the same veneration of love and fellowship that we give to the holy men of God still with us. We sense that the hearts of these latter are just as ready to suffer death for the sake of the Gospel, and yet we feel more devotion toward those who have already emerged victorious from the struggle. We honour those who are fighting on the battlefield of this life here below, but we honour more confidently those who have already achieved the victor’s crown and live in heaven.
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But the veneration strictly called “worship”, or latria, that is, the special homage belonging only to the divinity, is something we give and teach others to give to God alone. The offering of a sacrifice belongs to worship in this sense (that is why those who sacrifice to idols are called idol-worshippers), and we neither make nor tell others to make any such offering to any martyr, any holy soul, or any angel. If anyone among us falls into this error, he is corrected with words of sound doctrine and must then either mend his ways or else be shunned.
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The saints themselves forbid anyone to offer them the worship they know is reserved for God, as is clear from the case of Paul and Barnabas. When the Lycaonians were so amazed by their miracles that they wanted to sacrifice to them as gods, the apostles tore their garments, declared that they were not gods, urged the people to believe them, and forbade them to worship them.
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Yet the truths we teach are one thing, the abuses thrust upon us are another. There are commandments that we are bound to give; there are breaches of them that we are commanded to correct, but until we correct them we must of necessity put up with them.
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crossroadsinitiative.com/library_article/107/Venerate__do_not_Worship__the_Martyrs_____St._Augustine.html
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St. Augustine here clearly disguishes between devotion to and veration of the martyrs and saints, and the worship (Latreia) due to God alone. This distinction was clear to the early Christians, but abuses and misunderstandings certainly existed, as noted by this bishop of the late fourth century. Clearly, liturgical or ritual celebration of the memory of the saints through a eucharist celebrated at their tomb on the anniversary of their death, was already a long standing tradition by the time of St. Augustine (ca 400 AD).
 
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